The team of New York-based scientists suggests CBD may have a potential role in helping to break the cycle of addiction.
Add the possibility of reducing cravings and anxiety in heroin addicts to the growing list of potential CBD uses.
Researchers at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York announced Tuesday that results of a small study found a promising, and unexpected, new use of CBD: a reduction of cue-induced cravings and anxiety in individuals with a history of heroin abuse, suggesting a potential role for it in helping to break a heroin drug addiction.
The results of the study are published in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
“To address the critical need for new treatment options for the millions of people and families who are being devastated by this epidemic, we initiated a study to assess the potential of a nonintoxicating cannabinoid on craving and anxiety in heroin-addicted individuals,” said lead study author Yasmin Hurd, director of the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai in a statement.
“The specific effects of CBD on cue-induced drug craving and anxiety are particularly important in the development of addiction therapeutics because environmental cues are one of the strongest triggers for relapse and continued drug use.”
Hurd and her team at Mount Sinai previously studied the effects of CBD in animals on heroin. They found that CBD reduced the animals’ tendency to use heroin in response to a drug-associated cue, so they decided to study the drug’s effects on humans.
The researchers looked at 42 drug-abstinent men and women — ages 21 to 65 — with heroin use disorder. Half of the group, who had recently stopped using heroin, received CBD — 400 mg or 800 mg once daily — and the other half received a placebo. Participants were then exposed to neutral and drug-related cues during the course of three sessions: immediately following administration, 24 hours after CBD or placebo administration, and seven days after the third and final daily CBD or placebo administration.
They found that those who received CBD had significantly reduced drug cravings. They also found that the participants reported less anxiety when looking at pictures of people using drugs. Moreover, CBD seemed to have a lasting effect — the drug continued to reduce cravings and anxiety for seven days, well beyond the time the drug is expected to be present in the body.
Vital signs including skin temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, and oxygen saturation were obtained at different times during the sessions. To the researchers’ surprise, they found that CBD reduced heart rate and salivary cortisol levels, which typically increase when anxiety-provoking images are shown to addicts. This objective finding further supported Hurd’s idea that CBD may be a promising tool in helping to curb opioid addiction.
“Cravings and anxiety are very subjective effects. One of the things people can do is trick themselves. That’s why we measured their physiological responses. These drug cues increase heroin users’ heart rates and the levels of cortisol so we know it’s not subjective because with the CBD their heart rates and levels of cortisol decreased — that’s really important,” Hurd told NBC News.
Still, without more research, it is impossible to prove if the findings were due to the use of CBD alone, a combination of multiple factors, or by other factors entirely.
