鈥淎ll I can remember really is that it felt like time had completely stopped,鈥� says . 鈥淚t felt as if I鈥檇 be stuck there forever.鈥�
A neuroscientist at King鈥檚 College London, Stone is describing a feeling that is very commonly reported by people after they use cannabis: time seems to slow down.聽When Stone volunteered for a cannabis study 15 years ago, he experienced this strange sense of time dilation firsthand.
The episode stayed with him, and it sparked his interest in studying cannabis鈥檚 effects on time perception. For a study published in 2010, Stone and his colleagues recruited 16 volunteers and injected them with either 1.25 milligrams of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) 鈥� the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis 鈥� or a placebo. Then, the team had the volunteers press a button at a self-timed interval of 1 second for 70 presses. The subjects who received THC were than the placebo group. On average, they pushed the button at 1.73-second intervals, while the volunteers in the placebo group did so every 1.49 seconds on average.
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The volunteers who were given THC also reported a strange disconnect between their thoughts and reaction times, as if their hands started moving before their brains gave the command. Based on the results, 鈥渋t certainly looked like THC caused changes to people鈥檚 perception of time鈥�, says Stone.
Other studies back up this observation. A 2012 review of 20 studies on cannabis and time perception found that, in 70 per cent of the papers, . People who use cannabis less frequently may be than regular users of the drug.
The science of cannabis
As the use of marijuana and its compounds rises around the world, 快猫短视频 explores the latest research on the medical potential of cannabis, how it is grown and its environmental impact, the way cannabis affects our bodies and minds and what the marijuana of the future will look like.
Some research even suggests that the particular strain of marijuana a person uses may have an impact on how they experience time passing 鈥� in some cases even speeding it up, rather than slowing it down. A 2021 study of 50 cannabis users and 49 non-users found that people whose drug came from the Cannabis sativa plant or a hybrid strain , while people whose drug came from the Cannabis indica plant tended to underestimate it, even compared with a control group that was given neither drug but still asked to judge how much time had passed.
What is still unclear, though, is exactly how marijuana alters our perception of time. One theory is that molecules of THC known as the suprachiasmatic nucleus (or SCN), which regulates our body鈥檚 internal clock. When THC binds to the receptors in this region, it could send the neurons into overdrive. But so far, the only evidence that this occurs comes from mouse studies. Until researchers investigate with human volunteers, the mechanism will remain a mystery.
