Using cannabis only a few times a week might sound like the gentle approach. In a new lab trial, men who did exactly that reported some of the strongest highs, sedation, and unpleasant feelings, even compared with women who use it as often and men who use it more. Blood tests did not explain it. Levels of THC, the ingredient that causes the high, were similar to those in occasional female users, so extra drug in the body did not appear to be the reason.
Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, had 44 adults smoke cannabis cigarettes of different strengths in a controlled setting. They tracked how high participants felt, measured THC in their blood, and watched whether participants paid to smoke more afterward. Frequent users, defined as more than four days a week, and occasional users, four days a week or less, were compared across both sexes. Results appeared in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.
Animal studies and some human studies had pointed to females being more sensitive to THC. In this trial, sex alone did not predict who felt the strongest effects. How often someone used cannabis appeared to matter alongside sex.
Lab Trial Compared Cannabis Effects in 22 Men and 22 Women
Volunteers were healthy adults ages 21 to 55, split evenly between men and women. Within each sex, 12 used cannabis frequently and 10 used it occasionally. That let researchers compare sexes and use patterns together, a pairing earlier studies rarely examined.
Each volunteer came in for three sessions and smoked a cannabis cigarette with no THC, a moderate dose, or a stronger dose roughly three times as large, in random order and without knowing which. Blood draws tracked THC while volunteers rated how high, sedated, uncomfortable, or impaired they felt. About 2 hours and 45 minutes after smoking, they could spend study earnings, $1 each, on up to three more puffs of the same cannabis, a test of real wanting, not just what people said.
Women were tested in the middle to late part of their menstrual cycle, the window when hormones were expected to make sex differences easiest to spot.
Occasional Male Cannabis Users Reported Stronger Effects, Even at a Moderate Dose
Both cannabis strengths made volunteers feel higher than the no-THC cigarette did, as expected. At the moderate dose, occasional-use men rated their high roughly 30 points above occasional-use women and frequent-use men on a 100-point scale. That was a follow-up comparison, not one of the study’s main planned tests.
Occasional-use men also reported more sedation, impairment, and distress, a cluster of feelings that included anxiety and misery, and judged the drug’s effects as worse than their counterparts did. Only in this group did those ratings rise at either strength compared with the no-THC cigarette. After accounting for blood THC levels, heart rate rose only in these men too, another follow-up result. The mood and impairment findings came from self-ratings, not performance tests, so the trial cannot say how well anyone could actually function.
Frequent-use men, meanwhile, tended to carry the most THC of any group, especially at the moderate dose. Lower tolerance, meaning less adjustment to the drug from repeated use, is one possible explanation for the occasional-use men’s strong reactions. Researchers also noted that occasional-use women were, on average, slightly older and had used cannabis for more years, which could have built tolerance for reasons unrelated to sex.
Source : https://studyfinds.com/occasional-cannabis-users-men-stronger-effects
