High doses of THC from marijuana may have psychoactive effects that are hard to distinguish from those caused by the psychedelic psilocybin, according to a new study.
The results, researchers said, could have implications for future clinical trials of psychedelics by helping to address the problem of “unblinding” where participants are able to tell whether they have received the drug being tested, a place or a comparator substance. That issued could potentially be avoided by administering cannabis products to participants in the non-psychedelic control group, the new paper indicates.
The study, conducted by researchers with the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, involved four adults who underwent three or four sessions during which they were given either 25 milligrams of psilocybin, 25 milligrams of THC, 50 milligrams of THC or a placebo. The THC was administered either as a synthetic (dronabinol) or a whole-plant cannabis distillate extract.
Participants were told that ketamine, dextromethorphan, (DMT) and (MDMA) could also be administered, but they weren’t actually used during the study. Both the participants and the facilitators of their sessions were blinded to what was actually received at the time, and they were asked to guess afterwards.
Every participant was able to correctly
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