More than 51 million people in the United States suffered from chronic pain in 2021, according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC). In some cases, illness is the result of a previous injury or health problem; in some cases this is associated with psychological distress or trauma.
In both cases, the official recommendation from the CDC is that doctors avoid prescribing opioids to patients with chronic pain. Because they are highly addictive, can be deadly, and negatively affect people’s mental health, the CDC says opioids should never be a “first-line” form of treatment for patients with chronic pain.
New research may suggest that cannabis could be a legitimate alternative to opioids for patients with chronic pain. In fact, the study, published in the Journal of Cannabis Research in November 2023, the study not only found that cannabis was “equally effective” as opioids in reducing pain intensity in chronic pain patients, but it also found that cannabis helped improve sleep, concentration and emotional well-being of patients.
“The results of the present study support the hypothesis that the effects of (cannabis) on the experience of pain are more holistic than those of opioids,” the study concludes.
The researchers wanted to compare cannabis to opioids when used to manage pain in patients with chronic pain. Led by Jussi Jylkkä, professor of psychology at Åbo Akademi University in Turku, nine researchers examined a sample of 201 patients suffering from chronic pain: 40 used medical cannabis to treat their pain and 161 used opioids. There was some crossover between samples. About 45% of patients who used cannabis also used opioids for pain relief, and about 4.3% of opioid users also used medical cannabis.
Following the study, participants completed retrospective surveys about the positive and negative “phenomenological effects” of the drug. The researchers then compared the scores between the two groups and analyzed them.
They found that cannabis had just as powerful an effect on chronic pain management as opioids and also improved other aspects of the patient’s well-being. Long-term opioid use is commonly associated with insomnia and insomnia, anxiety, and depression. Cannabis is used to treat and improve these problems. This research highlights why.
“(Cannabis) may relieve pain by affecting a wide range of pain-related experiential factors, such as relaxation, improved sleep and mood, the ability to not react to pain as well as ‘a feeling of control’, we can read in the conclusion. “These holistic effects of (cannabis) could explain inconsistencies in clinical trials, where the focus has been primarily on pain intensity rather than a broader phenomenology of pain.”
There is also no evidence that cannabis disrupts the cognitive processes of consumers. Despite its holistic effects on consciousness, cannabis was seen to improve memory, concentration and clarity of thought – which could have contributed to subjects’ feelings of relief.
The authors note that while neither cannabis nor opioids are first-line treatments for chronic pain, both are commonly used when other treatments fail to provide sufficient pain relief.
In the United States at least, the reason the CDC recommends against prescribing opioids to treat chronic pain has to do with their addictive qualities and the current opioid crisis, which is costing the lives of more than 80,000 Americans every year. In Colorado alone there were 1,289 opioid overdose death in 2021, which accounted for 68% of all drug overdose deaths in the state that year.
Conversely, the reason cannabis is not widely prescribed to treat chronic pain is due to its federal ban, even though it is a naturally occurring, non-addictive medicine with which it is virtually impossible to overdose.
According to these results, cannabis could potentially constitute an alternative treatment for patients suffering from chronic pain. For those who have not found current treatments effective or who do not want to take prescription medications to manage this problem, cannabis could be an effective alternative, or a complement to other treatments, just as effective as opioids .
“In summary,” the authors conclude, “the results support the idea that the psychoactive effects of (cannabis) are relevant to its therapeutic effect on pain, consistent with suggestions from previous literature. »
