Heimat CBD cigarettes as an alternative to psychotropic drugs
Can cannabidiol (CBD) help with psychosis? Two scientific studies conducted with CBD cigarettes from Heimat suggest so. The results show that smoking CBD cigarettes can reduce the use of antipsychotic medication.
Two studies recently published in the scientific journal "Frontiers in Psychiatry" investigated to what extent the consumption of CBD cigarettes in patients with severe psychoses (schizophrenia, anxiety, delusions, etc.) could possibly reduce the intake of common psychosis medication as well as illegal cannabis use. It was also investigated whether the consumption of CBD would increase the overall well-being of the users (fewer side effects from medication, higher acceptance than tablets, etc.). The experimental set-up deliberately provided for the smoked hemp cigarettes to be an over-the-counter product. This allowed natural conditions to be simulated. It was speculated that conventional and hemp cigarettes might be better accepted by patients than medication.
In the clinical study, two groups of a total of 31 persons were examined over a period of 25 weeks. In the patient group, it is known that in addition to tobacco, THC-rich cannabis is also frequently consumed and that this often aggravates the psychosis symptoms. The first group smoked CBD cigarettes, the second group consumed placebos in the form of pure tobacco cigarettes.
CBD cigarettes as supportive adjunctive therapy
The results of the study suggest that smoking CBD cigarettes could reduce the use of antipsychotic medication, as the CBD group had a lower prescription of these drugs than the placebo group. In addition, the group whose tobacco use was replaced by CBD tobacco cigarettes reported better subjective well-being than the placebo group whose subjects smoked tobacco-only cigarettes. "The main group effects (...) were higher subjective well-being and lower total consumption of antipsychotic medication during acute therapy in the CBD group," the science journal said.
Improvement of the mental state
These results are supported by the single-case study: thanks to CBD cigarettes, the patient was able to greatly reduce his consumption of THC-containing cannabis and at the same time managed to get away from cocaine use during the study period. Since both THC-containing cannabis and cocaine had negative effects on the patient's mental state, discontinuing them had a positive effect on the subject's mental health. He was thus able to better reflect on his condition and was only then ready for further therapeutic measures.
Based on the two studies, the authors see evidence that CBD cigarettes can be a promising additional tool for the treatment of smoking patients with psychoses and can help those affected as a supplement to conventional therapy in individual cases.
The scientific study had to be approved by the Ethics Committee Northwestern and Central Switzerland. The producer of the "Heimat" cigarettes used in the study, Koch & Gsell AG, was not involved in the content of the study and had no influence on the study protocol, evaluation and interpretation of the results.
Further research is needed to analyse these results in more detail and to better understand the mode of action of CBD in general. Follow-up studies are already being planned.
Case study: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.712110/full
Clinical study: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.736822/full
