The Science of Cannabis: Does It Help or Hurt With Anxiety? Is It Addictive? What's the Safest Way To Use It? | Dr. Riley Kirk

Everything you want to know about cannabis, but were afraid to ask. Dr. Riley Kirk is a cannabis research scientist and educator with a Ph. D. in pharmaceutical sciences, specializing in natural product chemistry. Her new book is Reefer Wellness: Understanding Cannabis Science, Culture, and Medicines https://tracking.us.nylas.com/l/f89f725a8c1749ab911631e1d24ac2c2/1/a26799ad08af529bba55e2d94ca1f08d93b635ccae79012f648361962d6e84c2?cache_buster=1751381368. In this episode we talk about: The endocannabinoid system – and how it works in the body The science-backed health benefits of cannabis The risks of cannabis use – including questions about psychosis, schizophrenia, and specific risks for adolescents The fascinating history of the cannabis plant The criminalization, racism and propaganda machine within that history The legality of cannabis now in the US Different modes of use Where to source your products And much more Join Dan's online community here http://www.danharris.com/ Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD Additional Resources: Bioactive podcast https://www.bioactivepodcast.com/ @cannabichem https://tracking.us.nylas.com/l/f89f725a8c1749ab911631e1d24ac2c2/0/53380cb74278c7b79c24105d80a19ae28e173628c3f8870feabce2d21a7d89dc?cache_buster=1751381368 The Network of Applied Pharmacognosy (NAP) https://www.appliedpharmacognosy.org/ Thanks to our sponsors: AT&T:   Happy Holidays from AT&T http://www.att.com/. Connecting changes everything. Airbnb: Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com/host http://airbnb.com/host. Function Health:   Visit www.functionhealth.com/Happier https://www.functionhealth.com/happier or use the gift code Happier25 for a $25 credit towards your membership. To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Dan Harris?

  This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

• 0:46Dan Harris?

  Hey, hey, how we doing, everybody? As somebody who's had anxiety since sentience, I am both intrigued by and very scared of cannabis. As you'll hear me say in this interview, my first panic attacks ever were when smoking weed as a teenager, and yet, there appears to be some evidence that there are cannabis products that can really help with anxiety. So I was really excited when my team suggested today's guest, Dr. Riley Kirk, who is sometimes described as a radical scientist because she not only studies cannabis, but also uses it herself. This interview is kind of an everything you wanted to know about cannabis, but were afraid to ask type deal. We're going to dive into the science of whether it helps with chronic pain, sleep, inflammation,

• 1:29Dan Harris?

  seizures, productivity, creativity, and of course, anxiety. We're going to talk about the risks of addiction and schizophrenia and panic. We're also going to talk about how exactly cannabis works in your body, which is fascinating. Before we dive in, just a little bit more on my guest. Dr. Kirk earned her PhD in pharmaceutical sciences with a focus on natural product chemistry, and she's written a new book. It's called Reefer Wellness, a takeoff on the movie I used to watch when I was a teenager, Reefer Madness. Today's episode, I should say, comes with a custom guided meditation guided by my friend and favorite Canadian weirdo, Jeff Warren. Suffice it to say, this meditation is sobriety optional. It's called Not Your Grandma's Body Scan. You should check that out.

• 2:12Dan Harris?

  You can access all of our guided meditations if you sign up over at danharris.com. Membership also gets you access to our weekly live meditation and Q and A sessions, which we do every Tuesday at 4 Eastern. Jeff and I will be live tomorrow, Tuesday, December 9. Okay, we'll get started with Dr. Riley Kirk, the radical scientist, right after this.

• 2:33Speaker 02

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• 3:02Speaker 03

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• 3:22Speaker 04

  Get started at safeguardveterans.net. Click on Community Organizations. Safeguard Veterans is a 2026 pilot research program funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

• 3:35Dan Harris?

  Dr. Riley Kirk, welcome to the show.

• 3:37Speaker 05

  Thanks so much for having me on. I'm so stoked for this conversation.

• 3:40Dan Harris?

  You've already used the word "stoked." I mean, you're just like a...

• 3:44Speaker 05

  That's just the beginning.

• 3:48Dan Harris?

  So I'd just love to get some background on you first. What got you so interested in cannabis in the first place?

• 3:54Speaker 05

  I was one of those people who started consuming cannabis quite young, and I'm not advocating for this, but you know, I was probably 14 years old when I first consumed cannabis. And immediately, I kind of felt something in my brain shift. And it wasn't until a bit later, maybe late high school, early college, where I realized that I was having seizures and I stopped having seizures once I started regularly consuming cannabis. And when you start to research it and when you start to talk to people, there's almost always like a preconceived notion about cannabis that's not always backed in science. It's often backed in stigma or propaganda. So I really wanted to learn about the science so I could learn more about

• 4:35Speaker 05

  how to communicate and how to use it myself for the most medicinal potential possible. It was kind of my hyper fixation for a while and I just dove deep into the science. And then in school, I was studying natural products. So I was studying different medicinal plants and then I was able to start studying cannabis in a professional setting. And that's really when I became just absolutely infatuated with this plant because it really is special compared to other medicinal plants. It has so much potential with the way it works on the body and the just multitude of purposes that we can use it. So I wanted to be an advocate for the plant and start to discuss the science in a more professional setting.

• 5:15Speaker 05

  So people can take the plant a little more seriously, not just as something for stoners to use, which we love the recreational purposes, but we also need people discussing the science so we can take it as seriously as we take other medicines because it should be taken seriously.

• 5:32Dan Harris?

  I have so many questions about the plant and the science, but let me just stay with you for a second. You mentioned that your seizures stopped. What else did weed or cannabis, whatever you want to call it, do for you interpersonally and intrapersonally?

• 5:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, I would say it definitely helped me socialize and like connect with people better, especially other people using cannabis. I was always kind of a social person, but using cannabis really helped me like look deeper into people and connect on a deeper level and not feel kind of distracted when you're having those conversations. You kind of just wanted to deep dive and just honestly enjoy life more. You know, being outside and looking at the trees and the grass and just seeing things in a different light. You don't feel kind of messed up like you do on other substances. You just feel a little closer to yourself and to the environment. And like you can almost feel energy a little bit stronger when you use cannabis.

• 6:29Speaker 05

  And that was a really positive effect for me and really helped shape the way that I'm interacting with the world.

• 6:37Dan Harris?

  It's interesting you said your initial experiences with cannabis were so positive. I also started quite young and I also don't recommend this. I think I started at 13, 14. Actually, one of my friend's moms, this is really crazy, would sell us weed that I would then resell. I would sell $2 joints. Uh, yeah, I was not the best kid. But I must have had some positive experiences with it because I kept using it. But my first panic attacks of my life were on weed. And they were really, really traumatizing and horrible.

• 7:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, and unfortunately, that is quite common, especially now because cannabis is so strong. Like, we're currently breeding to breed cannabis with as much THC as possible. And typically, panic attacks are happening with these quite high THC percentages. And THC can work in what we call a biphasic manner. So if you kind of picture like a curve, at low doses, it can absolutely help with anxiety. And low doses are almost like micro doses of THC. But if you're using too much THC, it can absolutely cause anxiety and give people panic attacks. And I think that's a little confusing to people because they're like, well, weed helps with anxiety. And it's like, mm, dosing is really, really important.

• 7:55Speaker 05

  Like, if you use a really low dose of THC, if you use CBD products, that can help with anxiety. But if you're smoking a full 25% joint, that's not going to help with your anxiety ever. It's almost always going to make it worse.

• 8:10Dan Harris?

  So I get that. It really is dose-specific. And I think every human has a different tolerance and it can get quite nuanced. I will say, though, I almost never smoke weed now because I've had so many experiences of panic with it over the years, including a couple of years ago when a friend of mine who's in the cannabis industry gave me a sleep gummy.

• 8:29Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 8:30Dan Harris?

  That was, he said, very, very low THC. And I ate a third of this sleep gummy and an hour later, panic attack.

• 8:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, so you're probably extremely sensitive to THC, which we can get into how cannabis works in the body and why some of us are much more sensitive to it. But in your case, like I would stay away from THC products in general, or always mix them with CBD products because CBD can help protect your brain from being overstimulated. So for people who are really sensitive to THC, I always recommend like buying hemp flower. And I think hemp gets kind of a bad name because you might see the headlines where it's like, you know, we have this new cannabinoid that's developed on the hemp market. But hemp flower can be extremely like smokable flower. Like this is a nug of hemp flower. This is CBD flower. And it still smells really great.

• 9:22Speaker 05

  It still has all of these beneficial compounds, but it's CBD dominant. It's not THC dominant. So you can still roll a joint with just CBD flower. You can vape CBD flower. You can use CBD products either alone or with THC products to really bring down the amount of THC that you're ingesting and help balance out that ratio. So it's not all THC entering your brain. You have CBD there to like protect it.

• 9:49Dan Harris?

  So I think what you're saying is even for people who are super sensitive but are looking for something to reduce their anxiety or help them fall asleep, there are ways to use this plant that might minimize one of the active ingredients, which is THC, which is the stuff that gets you high, and get some of the benefits of the plant without the detriments.

• 10:10Speaker 05

  Exactly, yeah. So, you know, whether that's using CBD products, using really low THC products, but even strain-specific effects. Some strains give people anxiety, whereas other strains do not. So I think part of this conversation, which is going to keep coming up, is we often think of weed as like weed is weed is weed. It's all the same. If you're smoking weed, you're smoking weed. But there are so many changes that you can make and that you can be in control of as the consumer. But it takes quite a bit of education to get to the point where you can curate your experience. But we have all the tools to do it, whether you're purchasing hemp flower. Maybe you're really sensitive to smoking, but you can take an edible and feel really good. Maybe you need, I'm going to use the terms indicocative.

• 10:56Speaker 05

  Those need a little nuance too, but if sativas give you a lot of anxiety, maybe you need to stay away from sativas because the profile of sativas is making your heart rate faster because it's kind of like an upper. Whereas if you had some more of like a calm weed, you wouldn't have that same anxiety inducing effect.

• 11:15Dan Harris?

  Okay, let's pause for a second and define some terms because we've used a bunch of terms without defining them. People may know anyway, but it's just worth, I think, disambiguating here. THC, CBD, hemp, indica, sativa. So at least five terms. Can you just give us a glossary?

• 11:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, let's start with THC versus CBD. These are the two like famous compounds in the cannabis plant. THC gets you high. That is the compound that gets you high. And that is really what dominates the legal cannabis industry is THC products that are going to be used for either medicine or for adult use purposes, recreational purposes. Then you have CBD. CBD does not get you high, but it has a ton of medicinal potential. So I mentioned anti-anxiety. That's one of the most studied reasons that people use CBD products, but also things like inflammation. CBD can be amazing for inflammation and for autoimmune conditions.

• 12:16Speaker 05

  So CBD is very medicinal, but it's not going to make you feel high. It's not going to change your perception on the world. It's really just a medicinal product. And then we won't get into it right now, but there's even more in this category beyond CBD and THC that you can use as tools in your toolbox of cannabis. But that's kind of like the advanced lesson on cannabis and active ingredients. So then we have hemp products. So hemp products are non-THC products. So typically we would think of like CBD products as hemp, but there are also other active ingredients in hemp products that are not CBD, but still medicinal, but still don't get you high. So I held up the product earlier.

• 13:00Speaker 05

  That is cannabis flower. That is hemp. So that is a CBD hemp product. You can also buy hemp vapes, which do not have THC in them. But this is where it gets really confusing and people are really confused about this because the hemp industry also synthesizes products in a laboratory and does make products that get you high that start off being made from CBD. So the starting material CBD, which doesn't get you high, then they go in a laboratory and they make new compounds that are technically synthetic compounds and those can get you high, but they're not produced in the plant. And that's kind of the weird part of the hemp industry that I'm not like super supportive of, but I think it's worth talking about.

• 13:43Dan Harris?

  Yeah, just let me just jump in for a second. We'll get to indica and sativa in a second. THC, I think everybody's clear on that's the shit that gets you high. CBD, I feel like at least a few years ago, there was this massive wave of hype around it. It was just being advertised for everything. This thing will, whatever, fix. Anything you got CBD will help with it.

• 14:05Speaker 05

  And in like every form possible, like a bath bomb, a lotion, a pillow. Like there was CBD products everywhere.

• 14:13Dan Harris?

  How do we separate the hype from the reality?

• 14:16Speaker 05

  There's a couple of ways. One is following brands that actually do research and are very reputable brands, but I think the divide here is dosing. I don't want to get like too into the science of dosing, but a lot of products have CBD in them, but at really low doses. So like five milligrams of CBD, 10 milligrams of CBD. No research supports that five milligrams of CBD does almost anything for you. You need almost 200 milligrams of CBD to get some of the benefits that we see for things like anxiety, for things like seizures. The most researched ways that we use CBD and very few products on the market

• 14:57Speaker 05

  are actually at the doses that the research supports. So that's, I think, where we're seeing this big divide is companies are making products not backed in research. They just know people are like, ooh, CBD, that helps with something. I'm gonna buy that. I mean, I wouldn't say it should be on the customer to understand exactly what the dose of CBD is that they need, but unfortunately, these brands know that people don't know that. So they're just tossing a little bit of CBD in everything and hoping that people just hop on the hype train and just get it because it has CBD and they're not putting enough of it in to actually get the medicinal benefits from it.

• 15:34Dan Harris?

  So if we're considering a CBD product, we should just make sure it's got more than 200 milligrams.

• 15:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, 200 or more milligrams of CBD, that is what I would highly recommend. And CBD is incredibly safe. It's not going to get you high, so you're not going to have that, ooh, is this too much? Am I going to like overwhelm my brain? It's very safe, even at high levels. So I would personally recommend starting at 200 milligrams of CBD. And then you might actually notice a difference in something like your anxiety. If you're taking it at those doses that are like backed in research.

• 16:08Dan Harris?

  Okay, so then hemp flower is a CBD product? Is that what you were saying? But that sometimes in the lab, they synthesize cannabinoids that are not found in nature, but will get you high. And so you want to be careful for that.

• 16:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, and that's not going to be in flower products. The reason I really love flower is because typically if you're smoking or vaping flower, you can actually smell it and hold it and see it, and it is the plant. But I'm talking about more of like vape carts or edibles that you sometimes see on the hemp market. They might say like HHC, THCP, kind of these really weird acronyms that you might be super unfamiliar with. And that's because they were made in a laboratory. They're acronyms of new cannabinoids that were made in a laboratory. I'm not saying that these are inherently unsafe, but they are not under the same testing regimens that our legal industry is. So it's definitely not something I would recommend.

• 17:10Speaker 05

  And especially for people who are really new to cannabis and exploring it for the first time, I would not try any of those hemp products.

• 17:18Dan Harris?

  So what is the difference fundamentally between CBD and hemp? Or is hemp just a delivery mechanism for CBD?

• 17:27Speaker 05

  Hemp is what we would call the flower. Essentially, that's what it started as.

• 17:31Dan Harris?

  Got it.

• 17:31Speaker 05

  The flower version. You have marijuana and hemp, essentially. Of marijuana is the THC dominant one, and then hemp is the CBD dominant one.

• 17:40Dan Harris?

  Got it. So you can get a nug or a bud of either marijuana or hemp. And the hemp is going to, if you smoke that, is not going to make you high. It will just make you less anxious because it has CBD in it.

• 17:55Speaker 05

  Exactly, yeah. The term marijuana, like, I use it because a lot of people, that's how they refer to THC-dominated cannabis. But that term, I know a lot of people have problems with because it's rooted in a lot of racism. That's how we got to marijuana, the term, because it is essentially used to target Mexican-Americans. So I'm saying it here because like, that's usually the way we reference it, but typically, I'm just calling the plant cannabis in other situations, just for like, a little reference of the discussion.

• 18:26Dan Harris?

  So cannabis, as opposed to hemp, those are two different types of flowers. You could either call cannabis marijuana, if you want to be a little racist, or just call it cannabis, and then hemp is hemp.

• 18:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, that would be a good way to discuss it. And the reason this is so confusing is because there's so much overlap. And even in our legal infrastructure, it's very loosely defined. So that's why we're kind of using all these different terms. In our legal infrastructure, we're still trying to figure out the hemp industry versus the THC-dominated cannabis industry, because there is a little bit of overlap there that some people really like and some people really don't like. We'll see lobbyists going both ways for how to kind of settle out the different worlds of cannabis.

• 19:13Dan Harris?

  We'll get into the history of the plant and some of the lingering and pernicious effects of racism in the history of the plant in a second, but let's just stay with these terms. So we've talked about THC, CBD, hemp, and then indica and sativa, those are two different strains of cannabis?

• 19:32Speaker 05

  No, they're not two different strains. They're all cannabis sativa. All cannabis is cannabis sativa. The difference is, if we were to go way back in time to when cannabis was first being cultivated, your sativa-type varieties, where your really tall varieties that had very stringy leaves, kind of, and they were grown in different places than your indica-type varieties, which were short and stout and had really fat leaves. And they're both kind of known for producing different effects in people. So sativa varieties are going to make you really uplifted, energetic. You want to do a bunch of things. It sometimes gives people anxiety. Whereas your indica type varieties where people refer to them as indica couch.

• 20:17Speaker 05

  They're really, really mellow. They're going to make you kind of just vibe out and become part of your couch. But the reason we say like these don't hold a lot of weight in today's legal market is because almost all cannabis that you're going to purchase nowadays is a hybrid. So it's a sativa and indica bred together to produce something unique. So it's not like you're going to get a product that is a pure sativa on the legal cannabis market. Same thing with a pure indica. So right now, when we reference indica and sativa, we're really talking about what effects we're after. If you're looking for a sativa type effects, you're looking for that uplifting type effect. If you're after indica type effects, you're after those mellow, low chill type effects.

• 21:02Speaker 05

  But we're usually using them to describe effects and not really like the plant anymore.

• 21:08Dan Harris?

  Got it. How much do you smoke or ingest generally? Are you high right now?

• 21:15Speaker 05

  I'm not high right now. I would say I used to consume multiple times a day, every day, using different consumption methods. So I would smoke, I'd vape, I'd dab, I'd use edibles, topicals, all of it. Although I recently had a baby just a few months ago, so I have not been using THC products. I use a lot of CBD products right now. So the reason I had this hemp flower with me is because that's really what I've been consuming right now. Because I'm still breastfeeding. Obviously, I don't want to be like too incapacitated when I'm taking care of my little baby.

• 21:50Dan Harris?

  So then what are you consuming for?

• 21:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, mental health, 100%. I had a pretty traumatic experience bringing little baby into the world and I've never been on a pharmaceutical medicine. So for me cannabis is always my medicine and I feel very comfortable dosing for that. So I've been using CBD products just to supplement my mental health, make me feel more like myself, make me feel social, make me want to get out of the house and just make me feel a little more relaxed and calm compared to where I was at before.

• 22:23Dan Harris?

  Got it. One of the points you make in your book that I think is really interesting is that cannabis is not a pharmaceutical product, it is a living plant. And that makes it in many ways much more interesting, but also much more complex to navigate as a consumer and a user.

• 22:42Speaker 05

  Yes, and this is why it's so difficult to figure out exactly what product is going to work so well with yourself. Cannabis is a living plant. So I think a lot of times we want to think of it like a pharmaceutical because we're like, okay, this is a medicine, this is a drug. And we're used to thinking of a drug as like a little pill that's just one thing. But cannabis is 400 things. It's a living plant that has so many different compounds in it. And every strain that you may try has a different ratio, a different presence or absence of these molecules of these drugs. And we are living beings as well that we're all different. So my brain chemistry is

• 23:24Speaker 05

  different than your brain chemistry, Dan. So we're going to react to things really differently. And then we have the plant where maybe we're smoking the same thing, maybe we're smoking different things. There's a lot of variability which can go into our cannabis experience. So unfortunately, I think, I won't say unfortunately, I think it's fortunate that we have to learn a little bit about ourselves and the plant before we can really lock in on our ability to use the plant in the right way. But once you respect the plant and study the plant and learn the plant, I think it's one of the best medicines in the world. Because you really do have control over what's going into your body and how you want to feel. And you can curate your medicine. You can use a different product in the morning compared to the afternoon. You can say, okay, how do I feel right now?

• 24:09Speaker 05

  And what product do I want to take right now? To either help how I'm feeling, to supplement how I'm feeling, to be in a social situation, to watch a movie. You know, you have control over that, which is very different than a pharmaceutical, which is very one size fits all. Take this pill, it's gonna make you feel better, period. So, the reason we're having this conversation is there's so much nuance behind it and there's so many layers that you can continue to dive down to personalize your cannabis experience. And once you lock in on that, it's like the most gratifying thing in the world.

• 24:44Dan Harris?

  I can imagine, just to play devil's advocate, I can imagine some people listening to this and thinking, oh, you're using cannabis products all day long, every day. You're an educated consumer, but you're still using it all day, every day. Isn't that dependency? What's the line between what you're describing and drug addiction?

• 25:02Speaker 05

  The line is actually, by definition, on how your body reacts to addiction. So you have addiction pathways in your body and cannabis does not activate those addiction pathways, like highly addictive substances do, like heroin, fentanyl, and compounds that actually do cause addiction. But there is definitely some dependency on cannabis for a lot of cannabis consumers. But I would also say, for anyone taking a SSRI every single day, there's a lot of dependency on that as well. So, I mean, I depend on caffeine as well, right? We're dependent on a lot of things in our life. And as long as cannabis isn't causing harm to you, to your family, to your finances, to your life,

• 25:46Speaker 05

  in my opinion, it's okay to lean on the plant a little bit. It has helped so many people in so many different ways that it's okay if your brain does need cannabis. There's a lot of people, including myself, whose brains act and react a lot better on this plant. And I think that we- Think of this as a negative thing because of the stigma associated with cannabis. We say, ooh, you can't use cannabis every day because then you're a drug addict. Well, I say the same thing about people who take pharmaceuticals every day. It's like, you're dependent on that. That is something that your brain is dependent on. And that's okay, as long as it's improving your quality of life. Depend on it. It's great. We have tons of resources in our life. Use them.

• 26:28Dan Harris?

  I think one definition of addiction, and I could be wrong about this, but I believe I've heard that one definition of addiction is continued use despite adverse consequences.

• 26:37Speaker 05

  Yes, and that's why I was saying like, as long as it continues to benefit you in your health, in your life, in your relationships, then it's a positive. But there's definitely a level of cannabis use that is not healthy. And it can be seen as definitely on the addiction side of things. If you can't socialize, if you can't leave your house, if you can't eat, if you can't do anything without cannabis, you're probably leaning on it a little bit too hard. And that's when you kind of have to reel it back in and say, do I need to lower my dose? Do I need to see a therapist? Do I need to dive a little bit deeper into what's going on with myself? Am I using cannabis as escapism instead of as a wellness product? So there are levels to it.

• 27:22Speaker 05

  And I've seen people that had a very negative relationship with cannabis. So I'm not saying all cannabis use is positive and therapeutic, but for a lot of people, especially daily consumers, it's what we think of as our medicine. And it can be sustainable despite what some physicians think.

• 27:42Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Dr. Kirk talks about the history of the plant, which I found totally fascinating. The criminalization, racism, and propaganda machine within that history. The legality of cannabis now in the US. The endocannabinoid system and how it works in your body. Some of the many science-backed health benefits of cannabis and more.

• 28:06Speaker 06

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 28:33Speaker 03

  We work with veterans every day. Caring about people isn't the same as knowing how to help. Safeguard Veterans gave our team free online on-demand training to better understand military culture, recognize when someone may be struggling, and connect veterans to support and resources. It's practical, flexible, and our staff actually use what they learned.

• 28:53Speaker 04

  Get started at safeguardveterans.net. Click on "Community Organizations." Safeguard Veterans is a 2026 pilot research program funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

• 29:06Dan Harris?

  Okay, so we'll get more into the risks coming up, but let's step back for a second and go into something I probably should have started with, but you just said so many interesting things and I followed you. I'd love to know a little bit more about the history of the plant. And one of the things I think you talk about, and I believe I knew this, but it's just interesting to be reminded of it, that some plants create drug-like molecules, including cannabis, but also psilocybin and ayahuasca. Some plants create these molecules for self-protection against bugs?

• 29:43Speaker 05

  Yeah. This is my whole background as a natural product chemist, is most plants are producing these compounds, like THC, like codeine and morphine in the opium plant. They're producing them to protect themselves against bugs. So bugs and plants kind of co-evolved. So they're always kind of like working with each other to try to combat each other. Because bugs are always munching on plants, trying to lay their eggs in plants, all of the different things. So they're plants' kind of biggest enemy. And bug brains are actually more similar to our brain than you would think. They have a lot of similar pathways. They produce a lot of similar compounds. So we're almost like giant, giant bugs.

• 30:26Speaker 05

  And in the case, like, I always use the example of tobacco and nicotine. So if we think of the tobacco plant, it's producing nicotine and that acts as an insecticide. It can actually kill bugs that are eating it. But since we're kind of giant bugs and we're a lot bigger and a little bit different, that nicotine, when we ingest it, it's still gonna act on the same receptors in our brain or really similar receptors in our brain as it did the insect. But we're so big, it's not gonna kill us. It's just gonna make us feel a little weird, a little different, a little something. Because those compounds have co-evolved to act on similar brains. So we have the receptor for it.

• 31:09Speaker 05

  But in almost all cases, it's not gonna kill us. It's just gonna make us feel a certain way. And then we, as pharmaceutical scientists, started to kind of lean on that a little bit and say, okay, all these plants co-evolved with these bugs. These plants are producing these really cool molecules. How can we use these for our medicine? How can we start to use these to heal ourselves? Because they're acting on receptors in our body. And a lot of diseases are caused by dysregulation, which links back to receptors. So because we're kind of big bugs and because plants produce really cool compounds, we're able to utilize that medicine. So we have examples.

• 31:49Speaker 05

  I mentioned the opium poppy plant, the nicotine plant, the cannabis plant, ayahuasca, cava, kratom. There's so many different medicinal plants that are producing these really unique compounds that we use as medicine.

• 32:03Dan Harris?

  So can you tell us a little bit about the specific history of cannabis within this context?

• 32:09Speaker 05

  The co-evolution of cannabis and insects?

• 32:12Dan Harris?

  That and then how it was discovered by humans and used by humans and then studied by scientists and outlawed and demonized and now it's gone from hysteria to hype. Like, I'd love to hear that whole journey from your perspective.

• 32:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, so it's a very long story and the first uses of cannabis as medicine, we see them in traditional Chinese medicine where they typically would use the seeds, actually not the flower, they'd use the seeds and the oil in the seeds, typically hemp. And all of these products were really, really low THC that they were using as medicine. They were not like the plants that we see today on the legal market. They were mostly CBD with a little bit of THC. And same thing, these plants grown in Afghanistan and these mountains, these Hindu mountains that we've seen, these cultures have used cannabis at really low levels of THC. They started actually by throwing the plants on fire and then breathing in the smoke and

• 33:14Speaker 05

  realizing that that made them feel a certain way. Because you have to actually like ignite cannabis to feel the effects of it. You can't just eat a nug. You won't feel anything if you eat a nug of cannabis. So it took a little while, you know, people were cultivating, people were using the oils of the seed and the plant, but they weren't getting high from it. But once we started to learn that introducing fire actually makes you feel a different way, that kind of started the smoking trend of cannabis. And then we have kind of cultures, not Western cultures, but cultures around the rest of the world, really started to use cannabis. We think of Jamaica a lot. Jamaica's cannabis culture is still incredibly thriving. It's part of their spirituality. It's part of their religion there.

• 33:59Speaker 05

  So cultures around the world start using cannabis and then eventually it starts to reach the Western world and especially in the realm of jazz music is really when cannabis became popularized because musicians were using cannabis to just vibe and let loose and like feel the music coming through them and it was part of that counterculture of music. And this is kind of where the racism came in. Well, it's kind of been there for a while, but this is where it became normalized in America because It was typically African Americans who were using cannabis products because that was where the jazz scene was. So especially our legislators start to associate cannabis use with African Americans

• 34:43Speaker 05

  and with this counterculture of drugs at nighttime and kind of these like clubs and stuff. So that's when we kind of started to think about outlawing it, which did eventually happen and the term marijuana came up. And then we had all of these propaganda schemes telling us that cannabis is going to make you stupid and lazy and you're not going to be a member of functioning society if you start to use cannabis. You might've seen like the images of people melting in the couch or like a woman like using cannabis and it's kind of like a pinup, but it looks evil. We see a lot of those propaganda type posters emerging.

• 35:23Speaker 05

  And then the war on drugs really started where cannabis became a schedule one drug, not based on any science, but really to prohibit Mexicans, Mexican-Americans and African-Americans from using the plant because they were the ones that were mainly the face of cannabis. So to target these populations, we made cannabis a schedule one drug because they were typically the ones that were holding the cannabis, that were smoking the cannabis. And we were able to put these populations in prison for using the product because that's typically what we associated with. Then we weren't able to research the plant. We were really unable to study the plant because it was a schedule one drug.

• 36:04Speaker 05

  And the United States kind of fell off for any research relating to cannabis while other countries like Israel really started to get a lot better at researching cannabis. One of the best-known cannabis scientists ever is Dr. Raphael Meshulam, and he's the one who actually discovered THC for the first time. And discovering THC eventually led to discovering the receptors in our body that THC binds to. And that was discovered in the United States by Dr. Alan Howlett. And she's still doing research to this day. So this was not that long ago that we discovered how THC works in the body. And when we discovered how THC binds to a certain receptor, we named that receptor

• 36:49Speaker 05

  the cannabinoid one receptor, named after the cannabis plant. And then eventually, we discovered the CB2 receptor, or the second cannabis receptor in the body that other compounds bind to. And eventually, this kind of started the revolution of studying cannabis, how it works in the body, and how our own body produces cannabinoids as well that bind to these same receptors, which is really the basis of how cannabis works in the body. I know that was a lot.

• 37:19Dan Harris?

  It was great. I do want to follow up on how it works in a second. Just to say, you know, in the anti-weed, anti-cannabis hysteria phase, there was a famous movie that I remember watching as a kid, Reefer Madness, which is, of course, the inspiration for your, the name of your book, which is Reefer Wellness. You're kind of taking it back. And just to say on, on the racism, my understanding is there are some really ugly residual effects of this, where you have people in prison now who got there for selling, or distributing, or growing this plant, which is now increasingly legal.

• 38:04Speaker 05

  It's bananas to think about that people are still in prison for cannabis as we have this multi-billion dollar cannabis industry in our country. It's, it's really sad. And there are nonprofits completely dedicated to getting people out of prison associated with cannabis charges. You might have heard of the Last Prisoner Project. That's probably the best known one, where they're really trying to advocate for getting no more prisoners related to cannabis. And it's still black and brown communities that are at a much higher rate of getting charged with cannabis-related felonies because of the racism and the stigma associated with the plant. So. When we tell these stories of cannabis and the history of cannabis,

• 38:47Speaker 05

  this was not a long time ago. This is just a few decades ago. So this is recent history that we're talking about. So it's still very much relevant and we need to care about this still. So it doesn't continue to happen. It is extremely sad that we still have people in prison for it. And you know, it's something I think about every time I'm giving a lecture at a university, on a podcast, all these different things. The privilege we have being in the legal industry and still having people in prison is kind of heavy on everyone that is still representing the plant out there.

• 39:20Dan Harris?

  Yeah, it's fucked up.

• 39:21Speaker 05

  It is fucked up.

• 39:23Dan Harris?

  What is the legal picture right now? Is marijuana, marijuana?

• 39:29Speaker 05

  You can keep saying, it's okay. I just wanted to put the context out there that I think if you're using the term marijuana, like in just referencing cannabis, it's okay. But some people use it the wrong way. So I think it's still okay, but I just wanted to put it out there about where that word came from.

• 39:44Dan Harris?

  Got it. And where it came from is marijuana is Spanish for Mary Jane.

• 39:48Speaker 05

  Exactly. It's the Mexican word for weed. So that's part of how it was being used to target Mexican Americans by saying marijuana is bad. Marijuana is going to cause you to have all these issues, blah, blah, blah. That was kind of part of the campaign. And it was very purposeful to use the term marijuana because it made people think about Mexican people.

• 40:09Dan Harris?

  Yeah. Kind of otherizing the people and the drugs simultaneously.

• 40:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 40:15Dan Harris?

  How legal is it now cannabis? I live in New York. You can't walk down the street without smelling it everywhere. But what's the status federally? How many states still have it criminalized? What's the picture?

• 40:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, so it is not federally legal. It's still a schedule one drug in America, meaning it has a high potential for abuse and no medical purposes at all, which is absolutely bananas when we think about that and think about especially the whole no medicinal potential. Because we have over 30,000 publications on cannabis, the endocannabinoid system, how it works in the body, the different medicinal benefits of it. So that's just a clear, like, purposeful. The government does not want to acknowledge that cannabis is used as medicine. We also have two pharmaceutical drugs that are actually from the cannabis plant. Two drugs, one is based on THC, it's called Marinol,

• 41:13Speaker 05

  and one based on CBD, and it's called Epidiolex. We have two pharmaceutical drugs from cannabis, but we're still saying that it has no medical use. It just drives me insane right off the bat. But it's still a Schedule I substance in the United States, so we cannot sell across state lines, individual states. I need to check on the exact number of states that have legalized at this point. But the majority of states do have a legal cannabis market. And the ones that don't have a legal cannabis market is typically where you see these synthetic hemp compounds still available, because people don't have access to the plant. So instead, they do whatever is the next best thing, and they use these sketchy products,

• 41:57Speaker 05

  because they want some sort of cannabis, and they just don't have access to the tested plant products in the legal industry. We have so much data that the people want cannabis. We've taken, maybe it's 65 to 70% of Americans want to see legal cannabis across the United States. But I think there's also a lot of big players trying to keep it not available to people. When we think about Big Pharma, when we think about Big Tobacco, when we think about Big Alcohol. In all of these cases, cannabis use causes a decrease in their profits, because it makes you want to stop drinking. It makes you want to stop using tobacco products. It makes you want to stop using pharmaceuticals. I think if we dig a little deeper, we'll see a lot of money going to these lobbyists

• 42:42Speaker 05

  and to these other industries to try to keep it exactly where it's at, because it's not based on research and it's not based on any of the experts' opinion on the subject. It's just based on a couple of decision makers in Washington trying to keep it at bay.

• 42:58Dan Harris?

  Frustrating.

• 42:59Speaker 05

  Oh, my god, yeah.

• 43:01Dan Harris?

  We've been circling around this for a while, so let's go straight at it. How does cannabis work in the human body?

• 43:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, and this is where it gets pretty sciency, but in my opinion, I think when people learn about this, they actually kind of get a little addicted to learning about it because it's so cool because it's in your body. So the basis of how it works is all of our bodies, you, me, my cat, my dog, almost every animal on earth, has what we call an endocannabinoid system. So this is an endogenous, meaning inside our body, a system that produces cannabinoids. They're different from the ones in the plant, but these cannabinoids act on our cannabinoid receptors in our body, and then they cause a ton of different things to happen. So some

• 43:50Speaker 05

  of the best known reasons that the endocannabinoid system is occurring in our body is to help us regulate things like sleep, like appetite, like mood, and all of these things are the same things that we use cannabis for because it's acting on the same receptors. So our bodies, whether you use cannabis or not, no matter if you use it or not, no matter if you've never smelled it or never touched it, you still have an endocannabinoid system. And the whole purpose of the system in our body, I mentioned it's related to sleep and appetite and pain and all of these different things, but the purpose of the endocannabinoid system, which I'm just going to call the ECS, is to maintain balance in the body. So this is also called

• 44:34Speaker 05

  homeostasis, or just balance in all of our different systems. So it's interacting with our dopamine system, our serotonin system, our GABAergic system. It's interacting with all these other systems in our body. And when one system becomes maybe overactive or underactive, your endocannabinoid system turns on and brings regulation back to that system. So it's kind of the master regulator in the body, and it's incredibly important for us maintaining balance in our body, which is why cannabis is good for so many different things. Is it because it acts on this system that controls almost everything in our body?

• 45:14Speaker 05

  So it's also part of the reason why if somebody has a certain condition or disease and they use cannabis, it's going to react with their body a little bit different because their body's dysregulated in a different way than my body's going to be dysregulated. So that's kind of part of the individualistic experience as well.

• 45:33Dan Harris?

  That was very, even I understood that, so bravo. Well, I'm stoked to talk about this next subject, which is, given what we know about how it works, how this plant works through the endocannabinoid system, the ECS, what are the health benefits? And I'd be curious, like, where is the science the strongest? Because you hear about, I'll just list them, cannabis as being helpful for chronic pain, cancer, which has been referenced, insomnia, inflammation, nausea, which of course can come along with cancer treatment, migraines, appetite, multiple sclerosis, seizures, mood enhancement, also things like creativity and productivity. So that's a long list. Is that a legit list?

• 46:18Dan Harris?

  And where is the science the strongest?

• 46:21Speaker 05

  Absolutely a legitimate list. I think those are some of the best examples. So some of our science is the strongest. I will say, because we do have two pharmaceuticals from cannabis, there has been a lot of research done in those realms. So Marinol, which is the THC pharmaceutical, was used for HIV and AIDS and for patients that needed appetite stimulation and pain reduction. So a lot of research has been done in pain as well as appetite. You know, you or I might think of the munchies as a negative thing associated with cannabis, like, oh, no, I'm watching my weight. Like, I don't want to eat a lot. But for cancer patients or HIV/AIDS, typically, they need appetite stimulation. So this is actually one of the medicinal benefits of cannabis that's backed by quite a bit of

• 47:06Speaker 05

  science. But for chronic pain as well, I mentioned that the ECS, when we activate the ECS, it can help bring balance to our body. So in the case of chronic pain, it's your body sending too many pain signals. So it just keeps sending pain signals, even though you might not have something painful happening to you. Your body just keeps producing those pain signals. So in the case of THC and activating your endocannabinoid system, your body can actually stop some of those pain signals from being sent to your brain so you don't feel as much pain. So there has been a ton of research in the chronic pain world, in the appetite world, and in the seizure world. I mentioned Epidiolex

• 47:50Speaker 05

  is the other pharmaceutical that is a CBD product. Epidiolex is just straight up CBD.

• 47:57Speaker 05

  It is used for rare and severe forms of seizures. It is one of the best seizure medicines we have, and it's sometimes used in isolation. And sometimes it's used with other seizure medicines. But CBD has been studied extensively for seizures. Now, cancer is kind of a tough one because cancer is an umbrella term, right? It doesn't mean one thing, like there's 100 different types of cancer. So in some forms of cancer, we have more research. Testicular cancer or pancreatic cancer, we know that cannabis could be good for. But in other cases, we either have no data or maybe it hasn't shown to help extensively with other forms of cancer. We have some data, but not like enough data to say cannabis helps with absolutely every

• 48:41Speaker 05

  form of cancer. So those are kind of the big ones. And then sleep, we have a lot of data on cannabis for sleep, especially, you know, we know that using cannabis, especially THC or CBN products, they can help you get to sleep faster, they can help you stay asleep longer. But sometimes it does affect the quality of sleep that you're getting. So you might not be getting as much REM sleep, even though you're still getting more hours of sleep, it might not be as much deep sleep, which is part of the reason why if you use cannabis a lot, you might not dream a lot anymore. You know, you might be sleeping really well, but you might not have dreams anymore. And that's because it is interrupting how much REM sleep that you get.

• 49:23Dan Harris?

  So that's an interesting question. I've had sleep experts on before who talk about the crucial difference between sleep and sedation. And I know people who use cannabis products every night to fall asleep. And I do worry a little bit that long term, that might not be awesome, given the fact that it is, as you indicated, not the highest quality sleep.

• 49:48Speaker 05

  Exactly. And we actually do have some data that depending on how long you use cannabis and your tolerance is going to develop over time, that at the beginning, you're not getting as much quality sleep. But as your body balances out, you might start getting more REM sleep later on, after you've been using it for, say, six months or so. But that data is still a little kind of up in the air. I think there's only been one publication on that. But to your point too, because I've helped a lot of women experiencing menopause, use cannabis products. And for these women, they're not getting any sleep. So they're just getting zero sleep if they don't use anything to help them sleep. So in my opinion, even getting less REM sleep, but you're still sleeping,

• 50:31Speaker 05

  is extremely beneficial over getting no sleep. Because getting no sleep can absolutely mess you up. You're going to go into like borderline psychosis if you stop getting sleep. So I would agree if you're just like using it before bed every night just for funsies, maybe that's something to be aware of, that it can kind of mess up your quality of sleep. But if you're using it because you can't sleep, I think any sleep is better than no sleep.

• 50:56Dan Harris?

  Fair point. Say a little bit more about peri-menopause and menopause, and how cannabis can be helpful.

• 51:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, so menopause is your body's going through a lot of changes. And whether it's sleep or hormonal imbalance, your body is kind of at the baseline dysregulated at that time. So you're experiencing hot flashes, you're experiencing mood swings, you're experiencing issues with sleeping. And a lot of women will start to seek out cannabis at this time, because nothing else is working for them. And honestly, if we think about what cannabis is good for, bringing regulation to dysregulated systems, it's one of, I think, the best times in a woman's life to use cannabis products, because it can help your body bring back some regulation, can kind of help balance out your hormones and your mood and your sleep, and allow you to feel a little bit more normal.

• 51:48Speaker 05

  But at the same time, I'm almost always recommending relatively low doses of cannabis, especially if you're still quite naive to cannabis, or you've never used it your whole life, and you want to start using it during menopause. Start low and go slow. Start with just maybe CBD products, add in a little bit of THC, see how it feels, and go from there.

• 52:09Dan Harris?

  We also mentioned creativity and productivity. Is there any real evidence beyond the anecdotal there?

• 52:15Speaker 05

  There is like survey based evidence, but there's not a lot of laboratory type studies, but a significant amount of people will say that cannabis helps them, especially with creativity. And this kind of goes back to like the jazz musicians writing songs and playing music, using cannabis as a tool for that. Same thing with a lot of artists. You're in New York City, there's a lot of artists there and I'm sure a lot of them are using cannabis to just feed their brain. It's really not like it like turns on a creativity button in your brain. It's more like it kind of turns off these other things in our brain that might inhibit us from being creative where we're like, oh, I have to feed my cat. I have to go for a walk. I didn't call my doctor. I didn't do all these things. You kind of can push those out of the way and just let your brain flow a little bit

• 53:00Speaker 05

  better. It helps a lot of people get into the flow state. So whether that is for creativity or whether it's for exercise, a lot of people use cannabis for exercise. They use it as a pre-workout before the gym to help them get into the flow state. And it actually does increase blood flow throughout your body. It's a vasodilator, so it makes your blood vessels a little bit wider, which is how pre-workouts work. It's not a crazy concept and a lot of people hid that for a really long time because they're like, I don't want people to know I'm getting stoned before the gym. But now that we have more research going out and more people are kind of advocating for it, you're seeing more and more people actually use it as a pre-workout, which I think is a really interesting use of cannabis.

• 53:44Dan Harris?

  It is really interesting and surprising to me, given the whole in the couch thing.

• 53:48Speaker 05

  You gotta use the right variety for sure. If you can find like uplifting sativa type varieties, they're probably the ones that are going to help you the most, but you also need to be careful of your dosing. And I'm going to say this like way too much. If you use too much cannabis, you also like might feel a little lightheaded or you might get to the point where you're not, you know, super motivated anymore. Instead, you kind of reach that point where you just want to chill out. So I think a lot of people are using just like a low dose before the gym, getting themselves into that flow state, getting those blood vessels, you know, a little bit wider, blood moving a little bit better, but they're not like taking 10 rips of the bong before running on the treadmill. Maybe they are.

• 54:30Dan Harris?

  That may be the first reference to bong rips that we've had on the show, which I love.

• 54:39Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Dr. Kirk talks about the pitfalls and risks of cannabis use, including questions about psychosis and schizophrenia and specific risks for young people, different ways to use cannabis, where to source your products, and much more.

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• 55:58Dan Harris?

  Okay, so let's talk about the risks. What are the downsides and potential pitfalls of the cannabis path?

• 56:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, so we talked about anxiety a lot, and I think that's probably the number one adverse effect that people are going to experience from cannabis. I mentioned it like helps people get in the flow state, helps get their brain working a little, a little better. But in some cases, if you have all of these thoughts flooding your brain at the same time, that can be extremely anxiety-inducing. It can make people feel paranoid. It can give people anxiety attacks. And that can be really scary for people. So anxiety is definitely something that we need to look out for, especially if you experience anxiety in the past. You're much more susceptible to feeling anxiety from using cannabis products and especially if you don't have a tolerance to THC.

• 56:51Speaker 05

  If you are an everyday cannabis consumer, you're going to build a tolerance and you're going to start to feel less and less anxious when you consume. So the quote stoners, stoners feel anxiety a lot less than people who are a little newer to cannabis or use it more sporadically. If you use it more sporadically, you're more susceptible to getting anxiety. And I can go into the biochemistry of that if you want, but there are other adverse effects too. I think a lot of people talk about schizophrenia when they talk about cannabis. And this is something that needs to be part of the conversation because it is definitely actually linked to your endocannabinoid system. There's been quite a bit of data that shows that people who are schizophrenic have different

• 57:35Speaker 05

  levels of endocannabinoids in their body. What exactly does that mean? I don't know. But we also need to frame the conversation around schizophrenia a little differently because I hear people talking about it like it's the common cold. Like I use cannabis and I caught schizophrenia. Like what do you mean? That's not how it works. So you definitely need a genetic predisposition of schizophrenia to be at risk of schizophrenia. So if your mom, if your grandma, if some relative has schizophrenia, then I would not recommend using cannabis products because the data shows that THC does not cause schizophrenia,

• 58:16Speaker 05

  but it can decrease the age in which you experience your first episode related to schizophrenia.

• 58:24Speaker 05

  So if the average age of schizophrenia onset is 25 years old, then people who use cannabis may experience that at 22 or 23 years old instead of 25 years old. So it can decrease the age in which you experience it, which can be really scary, and it can make the episodes worse with schizophrenia. So it's something to be aware of, especially if you're genetically susceptible. But if you're not genetically susceptible, it's not something you have to worry about like catching. I think that's just something that we need to frame the conversation around because I've heard a lot of stigma and a lot of misinformation presented around that topic. So it's something to be aware of, but you don't need to be like scared of catching it.

• 59:07Speaker 05

  And then other adverse effects, I mean, obviously, smoking anything is not necessarily great for your lungs. So that is something to be aware of, but smoking cannabis produces way less carcinogens compared to smoking tobacco products. So they're not on the same playing field. Smoking tobacco products, nicotine products, it directly produces carcinogens that we call nitrosamines, and these are not produced by smoking cannabis. But smoking cannabis does still produce tar, and tar can kind of clog up those really delicate airway tubes that you don't want to clog up with tar over time. So something to be aware of as well if you're a chronic smoker.

• 59:51Speaker 05

  You know, if you start to feel like you're coughing up a lot of phlegm or it's getting harder to breathe, or you can't do your exercises anymore, then that is absolutely an adverse effect from smoking because smoking anything is not recommended for lung health.

• 1:00:05Dan Harris?

  Is vaping healthier or worse?

• 1:00:10Speaker 05

  Vaping, I would say is healthier, but there's a variety of types of vapes that you can use. I think the healthiest way to inhale cannabis is using, actually, I have one right here. So this is a dry herb vape. Dry herb, meaning you are putting cannabis flower in it. So if you're watching the video of this, I'm holding it up. You can see that there's cannabis flower in the chamber. And then you close it up, you press a button and it just heats it up to a temperature that's going to be able to vaporize your medicinal compounds in that flower. So your THC, your CBD, the flavorful compounds that we call terpenes. And then when you inhale it, you're only inhaling the vapor of those compounds.

• 1:00:54Speaker 05

  You're not smoking, you're not taking in all the byproducts of combusting all the other stuff in the plant. Instead, it's like a really selective process of only vaporizing what you want to vaporize. So I think this is probably the healthiest way to inhale cannabis products. But there are also some vapes that I wouldn't recommend. Vape oils that you might get at a dispensary or a smoke shop. I shouldn't say they're not medicinal, but some of them are really made from what we call distillate. So it's just distilled THC, it's like pure THC in oil. And then you're just vaping that. And over time, we have data that you can vaporize some heavy metals in your vape carts.

• 1:01:35Speaker 05

  And the distillation process really takes out a lot of the medicinal components of the plant. So you're just like only vaping THC. It doesn't have all these other beautiful components of the plant. And it's in this oil that you don't really know how it was processed. So for me, I always stick to cannabis flower because I like to smell the flower. I like to touch the flower. I like to know where the flower came from. And then using a vape like this, you can actually still vape, but use flower rather than some oils. But some oils are high quality, some of them are low quality.

• 1:02:08Dan Harris?

  What about edibles and tinctures?

• 1:02:12Speaker 05

  Those are also great options, but we also have data that up to 20% of people can't feel edibles. So it's not an option for everyone. So part of the reason people can't feel edibles is because when you like take a gummy, you chew it, you eat it. It's processed in your liver by certain enzymes. And for some people, they either are lacking that enzyme or that enzyme is a little bit different depending on your genetics. So it's not able to process that THC. So some people can literally ingest a gram of THC. That's a thousand milligrams of THC and feel nothing. They don't feel high at all. They just feel completely, completely normal.

• 1:02:55Speaker 05

  So for some people, edibles are not an option and tinctures can kind of help bypass this if you just kind of absorb it under your tongue. But they do feel a little bit different than inhaling products. So it kind of depends on what you're going for. If you like the feeling of edibles, which is a little bit more of a body high. So you feel like a little more heavy typically from an edible compared to smoking. It's a little bit more of a head high or vaping. It's a little more like cerebral. It's in your head a little bit more. It's a different feeling. So I think this is part of like curating your cannabis experience. Do you like edibles? Do you hate edibles? Do you like smoking? Do you hate smoking? Do you enjoy vaping? It's kind of personalized medicine at that point.

• 1:03:40Speaker 05

  But it is still like a healthier option compared to smoking where you're putting in those, those sticky substances in your lungs. And over time, that can kind of build up and cause some adverse effects.

• 1:03:52Dan Harris?

  Let's just go back to the risk for a second. I'm specifically interested in the risks for adolescents. I have a soon to be 11 year old and you and I both started smoking weed at 13, 14. So this feels like a looming issue that I'm going to have to figure out how to deal with it. Is it so many young people smoke, whether we like it or not? Are there special risks for young people with developing brains?

• 1:04:17Speaker 05

  There definitely are risks. There's been some data that it changes the ratio of gray matter to white matter in your brain if you are a really young consumer, which again, we don't exactly know what the lasting effects of that would be, but clearly it's not a great thing if it's changing the way that your brain is developing. But I would say what I'd be most concerned about nowadays is that the cannabis that you and I consumed when we were 13 and 14 years old. I don't know about you, but the stuff I was consuming, it looked like hay. It was really low in THC.

• 1:04:52Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:52Speaker 05

  It wasn't like a beautiful sparkling nug that we might see now. And it certainly was not a vape cart. And when young kids are getting into cannabis now, it's typically vape carts. That's typically the first THC product that they're gonna use. It's not cannabis flower, it's vape carts. And these are usually really high in THC. Like, some vape carts can be 98% THC and have almost nothing else in them. So, my biggest concern with the younger generation is I don't know what to expect when people are consuming vape carts this young. Whereas if they're consuming really, really low dose cannabis products like what we consumed, you're gonna get high, but it's not gonna be like you're overwhelming your brain with THC.

• 1:05:37Speaker 05

  And like vape carts as well, it's when we like smoke a joint, you have to put it in a grinder or you can grind it, roll it up, go outside, smoke it, light it up, chill, whatever. It takes kind of a long time, right? With vape carts, you can just hit it 10 times in your room, no problem. It's gonna be way less smelly, it's a lot more discreet, and it's just an unbalanced product. It doesn't have everything that the plant has to offer. So, I don't really know what to expect from younger people consuming vape carts at higher ratios than we've seen before. But I think it's definitely a less sustainable, less healthy option for the brain compared to how people used to be consuming cannabis at young ages.

• 1:06:23Dan Harris?

  What are you gonna say to your kid, is it a boy or a girl?

• 1:06:26Speaker 05

  Boy.

• 1:06:27Dan Harris?

  As he approaches the age at which you started using cannabis, what are you gonna say to him?

• 1:06:35Speaker 05

  Oh, such a good question. I mean, I hope that I can have the conversation way before that about cannabis. But I think for me, I would say, one, wait as long as you can, two, I would rather use cannabis than any other drug out there. If you do like need to use a substance, cannabis, I think, is the safest one out of the other options available to young people. But also, like, I would really hope he would come to me first. And I know that's like crazy to think about because you're like, okay, you're obviously a new mom. Your kid's not going to come to you and be like, Mom, should I smoke this weed? But I would just encourage like low doses of everything. You can always take more of something, whether it's alcohol, whether it's cannabis, whether it's tea.

• 1:07:19Speaker 05

  You can always take more, but you cannot reel back as easily. So I think I will teach him the art of titrating your dose, no matter what you're taking. And then hopefully that will be a harm reduction strategy in the future, no matter what situation he's in, that hopefully he can take a low dose, see how it makes him feel, and then go from there. And hopefully prevent something bad from happening.

• 1:07:45Dan Harris?

  Is it safe to drive after having consumed THC?

• 1:07:48Speaker 05

  We have some really interesting data on this. So the data that we know about THC and driving is that people who are naive to cannabis, new users, it is not safe to drive. It messes up their hand-eye coordination, their motor control quite substantially. However, people who have a tolerance to cannabis, people who are either medical consumers or have been consuming for a long time, there was really statistically not a danger to the road. Their hand-eye coordination was fine. They were able to drive without being a risk. It's really dependent on your comfortability with THC and how much it affects you. And I think this is really important, though, because this is a conversation around tolerance to THC.

• 1:08:32Speaker 05

  And the reason why people who have a really high tolerance to THC are at less risk of anxiety or have a better hand-eye coordination when they're driving. It's because as you build the tolerance, you have less cannabinoid receptors in your brain. So THC has less things to bind to. So it's causing less of a reaction in your brain. So if you have a really high tolerance, you're actually going to experience less of an effect of cannabis compared to somebody who's really naive to cannabis. And they have a shitload of receptors in their brain that are all ready to be activated by THC. And then when you smoke or take an edible, all of those are going to get activated and you're going to feel a lot compared to somebody

• 1:09:17Speaker 05

  who's been using cannabis for 10 years. And they have an extremely high tolerance and they just are also comfortable with the feeling of cannabis and what to expect from cannabis. It's much less of a surprise to them. It's something that they're experts in dosing themselves, they're experts in curating their products and they're experts in understanding what their body's going to feel like.

• 1:09:37Dan Harris?

  You and I are both on TikTok. It is not unusual for me to see videos of super high dogs who got into their owner's stash. How safe or unsafe is cannabis for pets?

• 1:09:52Speaker 05

  I hate seeing dogs that are dosed on cannabis because it's not safe for them. And we should not be giving dogs THC unless it is like a microdose of THC. CBD has been shown to be safe for animals, but THC has not been. And it's really important, you know, I mentioned that you, me, my dog, my cat, we all have endocannabinoid systems. But we all don't have like the same distribution in our body of our endocannabinoid system. So for dogs, they have more of these receptors in the parts of their brain that control their movement and their bowel control. So if you give a dog too much THC, you might see them unable to move for a little bit.

• 1:10:37Speaker 05

  It's called static ataxia. They might get a little nauseous, they might vomit, they might pee, they might not be able to control their bowels. It's a really sad situation and you know, they won't die. You're not going to die from using cannabis and your pet's not going to die from using cannabis. But it's going to be really uncomfortable for them and they don't understand cannabis. They're going to feel like they're being poisoned, like they might, you know, that they're out of control. It's a sad situation. So whether you're hotboxing your car with your animal in it, or you're dosing your animal, like just don't do it. Dose yourself, don't dose your animals, don't dose your friends, but it's not safe for animals.

• 1:11:15Dan Harris?

  On a practical tip here, we've talked a lot about, you know, with THC, start low and go slow. We've talked about the different delivery mechanisms, edibles, vaping, smoking, takers. What about sourcing your product? What's the best and safest place to shop for this stuff? And what should we know as we're shopping?

• 1:11:36Speaker 05

  I'd say the two best places to source products are either one, a legal dispensary, where your products are tested and you can understand exactly how much THC, CBD, terpenes, all the different things are in that product. Or number two, grow your own, or have a friend growing with you or for you. Because I'm a huge, huge proponent for homegrown cannabis, because it typically is lower test. So it's not going to be like 30% THC, it might be like 10% THC. And that's going to be a lot more similar to the cannabis that you might be imagining in your head of like what we used to smoke 10, 15 years ago. So it's usually a

• 1:12:19Speaker 05

  lower test, it's a little more balanced, and you know exactly where it came from. If you're growing it, you know where that seed came from, you know it's in your soil, maybe you have a spiritual connection with that plant. It's kind of all in one. So huge proponent for home grow. And then of course, yeah, your legal dispensaries are another great option, but a lot of dispensaries do not carry CBD products, or like balanced one-to-one THC/ CBD products.

• 1:12:47Speaker 05

  Because you can purchase CBD online. So why would a dispensary spend all the extra tax money that they're going to get taxed on that, like an egregious amount, when people can just purchase it online? So unfortunately, there's not a lot of incentive for dispensaries to carry CBD products. I think this should change, but I'd say those are your two best avenues. And then, um, yeah, I think everyone should start growing. You'll get a completely different appreciation for the plant when you're able to smell it every day, see what goes into producing quality flower, drying it, and then smoking something that you put all of your love and energy into. It's like a completely different cannabis experience

• 1:13:28Speaker 05

  than, you know, purchasing something from a farm that maybe you have no idea about the product at all.

• 1:13:35Dan Harris?

  Seems like the bottom line for anybody who's interested in using this plant, either somebody like me who might want to get reintroduced to it, or an experienced user who's trying to figure out how to go even deeper, or somebody who's totally new to it and looking for some relief from chronic pain or menopause. It seems like the bottom line is this is really individual. You can, you, Dr. Kirk, can arm us with some information, but we need to be running careful tests in our own bodies.

• 1:14:10Speaker 05

  Yes, and that's always my advice is like, you know, try a few different strains. Try a puff, try a little bit, see how it makes you feel. Cause it really is personalized medicine. And honestly, I get why people don't want to dive into this because it is like a lot of time and energy to learn how to use weed, which kind of is a little counterintuitive to how we think about weed. Cause it's like, oh, just spark it up, dude, chill out. But it's like, if you really want to learn how to use it in a sustainable way, you kind of do have to dive deep into yourself and into the plant. But there's also a lot of dispensaries now will have somebody on staff who can help walk you through this. So it doesn't just need to be you on your own. There are like actual professionals that can help you find products that work really well with your

• 1:14:55Speaker 05

  body. So that's another great avenue to go to and use your resources at the dispensary and talk to them and say, okay, I'm a really anxious person, but I also have fibromyalgia, but I have trouble sleeping, but I'm looking for a daytime product. You know, you're able to talk through it with them and they can either help you find one product, a couple of products, learn how to dose yourself. So you don't need to be on the journey absolutely alone. There's definitely a ton of resources, especially in the legal industry that you can lean on.

• 1:15:24Dan Harris?

  And of course, you can read Reefer Wellness: Understanding Cannabis Science, Culture, and Medicine by Dr. Riley Kirk. And you can follow her on TikTok. You're on Instagram and other platforms, too?

• 1:15:36Speaker 05

  Yep, I'm on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.

• 1:15:40Dan Harris?

  Do you have a website?

• 1:15:42Speaker 05

  No, I don't.

• 1:15:44Dan Harris?

  Okay.

• 1:15:46Speaker 05

  Probably should. I do have like a research website that's linked on all my profiles for some of the research initiatives that we do.

• 1:15:54Dan Harris?

  Anything else that you put out into the world that we should know about?

• 1:15:57Speaker 05

  I do have a podcast. It's called Bioactive, and it discusses cannabis, as well as other natural products, how they work in the body, talking to some researchers in the industry, and kind of just getting a different perspective on it. And then I mentioned, I also do research through a nonprofit organization that I co-founded. It's called NAP. So if you want to check that out, we do a lot of research with cannabis consumers, as well as other natural products like Kava and Kratom, how people are dosing themselves, and what medicinal benefits that we're seeing.

• 1:16:29Dan Harris?

  Anything else you want to say before I let you go on with your day?

• 1:16:33Speaker 05

  No, but I would say like cannabis can be extremely safe and effective medicine. So I would highly recommend people explore it because of the way the ECS works. It can be good for almost anything. But if you continually have negative experiences with cannabis, it's okay to stay away from it as well. Not every single person is going to react well to cannabis. That doesn't mean that we should limit access to this plant. It just means that your body isn't vibing well with cannabis and that's totally fine. That's expected with every single medicine that's out in the world. Same with cannabis.

• 1:17:09Dan Harris?

  Dr. Riley Kirk, thank you very much.

• 1:17:12Speaker 05

  Thanks so much for having me on, Dan. This has been fun.

• 1:17:19Dan Harris?

  Thanks again to Dr. Kirk. We talked about my getting high during this episode, but excited it was best not to have a panic attack live on this podcast. Anyway, love talking to her. Go check out her book and go check out the very funny guided meditation that comes with this episode. Sobriety optional guided by my friend Jeff Warren, who's our teacher of the month over on danharris.com. If you sign up, you can get access to all of the guided meditations that come with our full length Monday, Wednesday episodes. You can also come to our weekly live meditation and Q and A sessions, which we do every Tuesday at four Eastern. Jeff and I will be live tomorrow, Tuesday, December 9. Finally, thank you so much to everybody who works so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili.

• 1:18:04Dan Harris?

  Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

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