Weed is known for its psychoactive effects but how does that affect our dreams? Naturally, marijuana has a psychoactive component called delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which is known to have sedative effects.
In ancient Chinese pharmacology weed combined with datura is used to create “sagacious sleep powder” or shui sheng san. As for Western medicine, we are still playing catch up when it comes to weed and its effect on our sleep cycles. But first, let's break down what happens after we close our eyes.
How does dreaming really occur?
Apparently, it's not as simple as closing your eyes and dreaming away. There are actually four stages we go through every night. The body resides in either non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep known as quiet sleep for the first 3 stages and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep or active sleep during the final 4th stage. The first stage NREM is known as the drowsy period, it’s where you pretend to sleep in order to fall asleep, it lasts around 5-10 minutes.
NREM stage 2 is where the body temperature begins to drop and our heart rates begin to slow down, this stage lasts around 20 minutes. NREM stage 3 is where slow brain waves, known as delta waves, start to emerge. The body will release all tension in our mussels, and our blood pressure and breathing begins to slow down. Stage 3 is the deepest stage of sleep where people can begin to sleep walk. When we get enough NREM sleep in stage 3 we feel more refreshed the next day, as this is where our brains consolidate declarative memories such as our personal experiences.
The final stage is our REM sleep, it is the time our brains are most active and our muscles become immobilised. Our brain's activity during this stage is similar to its activity while we are awake but only our bodies become paralysed temporarily, so we don’t randomly get up and start acting out our dreams.
How does smoking a spliff affect our dream cycles?
Now that we have the science out of the way let's get into how weed can affect how we dream or prevent us from remembering our dreams at all. Dreaming isn’t all about just having fun and living out our fantasies, it is where our brains work to restore the processes of our memory and learning apparatus.
The overall answer to how it affects our sleep is not a clear answer as it varies for everyone. “Cannabis consumption, and specifically the consumption of THC, shortens REM sleep, eliminating most people’s ability to dream due to insufficient time in this phase,” said Kebra Smith-Bolden, registered nurse and CEO of CannaHealth.
Personally I love primary research as everyone experiences things differently so I asked some people in the stoner community. I found everyone had a different answer. Some don’t even remember their dreams while others explain how they have had dreams that were very animated and vivid. So, does it boil down to the strain or are we up again something entirely different? What do you think? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK10996/#:~:text=In%20the%20deepest%20level%20of,usually%20takes%20about%20an%20hour. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5345167/
