PSYCHED OUT! DEPRESSION

Words by Sol Fonseca

Imagine you just had the most productive day. You Aced a test, had a wonderful day at work and went to bed with euphoria ready to attack the next day. A couple of days pass by and you start to slowly feel gloomy and unmotivated. It gets to a point where you can’t find a way to get out of bed so you stay in and miss school and work. You turn on the tv and see that depression is the second most leading mental disorder and notice that you are having similar symptoms, so you decide to go to the psychologist. 

After a couple of session, you get prescribed seven pills and you start to wonder “Do I have seven types of depression?” Don’t worry, you Do Not have seven types of depression. Let me explain. Depression is a chemical imbalance as well as a structural change in the brain. So, all the pills you have on the bag work to stabilize all of those changes happening at the same time. 

You may look at all those pills and start considering natural resources. You go to your computer and an add on medical marihuana pops up. You start to read stories of people self-medicating marihuana as a means to treat depression. But you also see inconsistencies, people reporting an increase on depression symptoms and others reporting episodes of euphoria. Now you are wondering if you should even consider self-medicating cannabis. Maybe I can help you. I will explain some of the most studied changes on the brain do to depression and how cannabis can alter them. This can help you opt for the best alternative for yourself.

The leading cause of depression is anxiety. So, one of the pills in your bag is going to work on increasing cortisol levels to attenuate anxiety. In depression, there is also a lack of neurotransmission of serotonin and dopamine, which are the neurotransmitters associated with pleasure and reward. They are like natural brain happy pills, so low levels of happy pills will result in a sad brain. 

This happens when AMPA, the receptor in charge of receiving serotonin and dopamine detaches and there is a low influx of these neurotransmitters. Now at least two of the pills in your bag will work on stimulate the release of this natural brain happy pills. Lastly depression reduces neuro plasticity which is the capacity of obtaining new information, by doing so there is a correlated reduction on grey matter, particularly at the amygdala. The amygdala is a little nut in the brain associated to mood and emotions, low gray matter alters the balance of emotions thus the sadness associated to depression. There is no particular pill in charged or regenerating grey matter so don’t look for it on your bag. 

Let’s see how marihuana works. Marijuana is known to be an anxiolytic, it causes the influx of cortisol as well as anxiolytic pills, so you may have discharged one of the pills from the group. Another effect of cannabis is the inhibition of MAO. And what is MAO, imagine a little pacman on the brain and the happy pills are the little pellets it eats. So, by inhibiting MAO there is a greater volume of neurotransmitters in the brain. On the other hand, the relation of THC to the CB1 receptors produces the development of BDNF which is the protein associated to the development and maintenance of neurons. So, cannabis increases grey matter which can stabilize emotions. 

Of course, these effects occur under a controlled substance. Abuse of marijuana results in the complete opposite effects. Increasing anxiety and depression symptoms.

This is some food to process differing from pills, marijuana doesn’t have a controlled level of specified effects at a neuronal level. Pills work for a certain amount of time at a particular area of the brain.

Marijuana is not a single chemical compound. It has more than 500 chemical substances and less than a fraction of these have been studied. We just saw some of the effect it has, imagine all the possibilities we are missing. Marijuana has the potency to be a natural medical resource we just have to impulse research on it.