Some recently published research from a team at Northwestern University has concluded that, despite widespread opinion, marijuana does not positively impact the user’s quality of sleep.
Even though the user may believe that it does.
Poor quality sleep, including insomnia, is among the most common reasons given for marijuana use. The benefits of marijuana as an aid to sleep has long been subject to debate in the scientific community, however.
Now comes a study that may at long last put an end to at least some of the arguments.
The researchers made use of sophisticated wrist monitors to track the quality of sleep for some 1300 subjects over the course of 35 years, beginning in adolescence and extending into middle-age. They looked at both long-term users and those with more recent use. They measured the different aspects of sleep, including disturbances that the user might not be consciously aware of.
They found that cannabis use consistently resulted in:
- Less time actually spent asleep during the night,
- More frequent nighttime awakenings and other disruptions, and
- More total time spent awake.
In other words, not only was cannabis not helping the user, the drug was interfering with their rest.
I would imagine that the results of this research, as impressive as they are, might lead some users to reconsider cannabis use at night. As for the majority, I doubt it.
“It’s something I can do,” one woman explained. “And it’s safer than sleeping pills. I won’t get addicted.” I wondered if she was already addicted to cannabis, nightly experiencing mild withdrawal symptoms, and simply didn’t recognize it.
In fact, the researchers noted that those who used cannabis generally did not perceive or report that they were sleeping poorly.”This suggests,” they wrote, “that cannabis induces a sedative feeling that helps people fall asleep or masks nighttime awakenings…”
If true, that’s pretty darned tricky. Cannabis can help someone fall asleep, and then proceed to disrupt it, again and again.
