What is the potential of CBD in treating drug addiction?

Are you addicted to drugs?

Drug addicts tend to deny the problem. If you don't want intoxicants to dominate your whole life answer these questions honestly and evaluate if you have an addiction problem:

1. Do you use drugs alone?
2. Do you use psychoactive substances regularly?
3. Do you take drugs when you feel sad or stressed?

Substance use disorders are chronically relapsing conditions and the risk of relapse persists for a number of reasons, including drug-induced craving, susceptibility to stress, increased anxiety, and impaired impulse control. There are indications of the pharmacotherapeutic potential of CBD, especially with regard to the spectrum of indications relevant to the prevention of relapse to drug use. Drug addiction is a chronic, recurrent disease of the brain.

The therapeutic potential of CBD is influenced by its properties:

- anxiolytic

- reducing stress

- anti-depressants

- anti-compulsive

CBD is believed to be effective in reducing drug relapse risk conditions by reducing drug-related anxiety and stress and by mediating antidepressant effects. In addition, CBD has an effect on the brain circuits responsible for drug craving and the search for behaviors caused by context and drug-related stress.

A recent study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, led by Yasmin Hurd, shows CBD's ability to reduce drug cravings in heroin addicts.

The study involved 42 men and women with a history of heroin abuse who tried to keep from relapsing. The participants were divided into three groups: those who took 400 mg of CBD, those who took 800 mg of CBD, and the placebo group. The interventions were carried out on three consecutive days. The experiment was double-blind, meaning that neither the researchers nor the participants were aware of the conditions they were assigned to during the experiment. Participants who took CBD as part of their treatment reported fewer drug cravings than those in the placebo group after exposure to drug-related cues. The results also showed a reduction in anxiety as well as a reduction in heart rate and cortisol, which is the "stress hormone". The effects of the intervention were visible as early as an hour after the administration of CBD and were still visible up to a week after the intervention.

Drug addiction treatment is a difficult, arduous and long process, fully dependent on the involvement of the addict who wants to get out of the addiction. Mitigating the negative effects of getting out of addiction is an important element and since CBD has such potential, it should be used.

It is worth recalling that in addition to the above-mentioned properties, CBD affects the restoration of the correct functions of various systems in our body, which manifests itself in the pursuit of homeostasis, i.e. balance in the body. An addicted person has a disturbed functioning of the body's systems, which affects a number of emerging disease entities. Phytocannabinoids with their neuroprotective and immunomodulating functions are beneficial in this case.