Don’t lose your snooze! Using cannabis to fight insomnia and improve sleep

I am a chronic insomniac — have been since I was a kid.

It started out just with Sunday nights, tossing and turning, flipping the pillow and then flipping it back, over, and over and over again, until finally if I was lucky, I’d doze off an hour or two before the alarm clock went off.

I like to blame it on my fourth grade teacher, Ms. Maguire; I’m ninety percent certain she was an actual witch. But as the years went on it only got worse. By the time I got into my mid-30s my Sunday night bouts with sleeplessness started creeping into Monday and Tuesday nights until finally it was almost every night.

I tried various over-the-counter products and prescription drugs, but nothing ever really worked for me. The OTC stuff was usually just strong enough to help me fall asleep, but not stay asleep; and prescription drugs like Ambien were too strong, leaving me feeling like an extra from “The Walking Dead” in the morning.

For me, nothing ever worked quite like cannabis.

I remember the first time I tried cannabis for sleeping. I was a freshman at Boston University, and I had been up cramming for days. I had just finished my last term paper for the semester, which was due the following morning and then I was officially done; now all I had to do was get to sleep.

But I couldn’t.

After days of grinding my gears nonstop, I couldn’t shut my motor off. Apparently, I also couldn’t shut my mouth. That’s when Steve, my roommate at the time, offered me a few hits of some pretty amazing stuff to help me calm down and get to sleep. Looking back, I’m pretty sure Steve was just trying to get me to shut up so he could sleep. Either way, I slept like a rock that night.

It was far from my first time smoking cannabis. But until that point, it had always been a recreational thing to me; I had only ever associated it with “partying.” This was my first experience with cannabis from a health and wellness perspective, in this case, as a sleep aid.

Turns out I’m not alone — far from it. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between 2013-2020 more than one-third of U.S. adults said they got less than the recommended seven hours of sleep a night, and more than eight percent of adults in a separate study said they took some form of medication for sleep on a nightly basis.

Apparently, I’m also not the only guy out there who’s using cannabis to get to sleep. In a 2022 survey of 27,000 medical marijuana users in the U.S. and Canada, almost half said they used cannabis for a sleep-related issue.

SCIENCE SAYS

So far, the research is still growing and some results have been mixed. Some studies indicate that cannabis is beneficial in fighting insomnia; some suggest that long-term use can negatively impact sleep quality.

Of course, that really depends on how you define “sleep quality.” If you’ve struggled with insomnia for an extended period of time, you might measure sleep quality based on the total quantity of hours spent sleeping versus lying awake, tossing. And turning. And tossing.

In keeping with our promise to keep the science simple, cannabis helps you fall asleep by suppressing arousal and increasing the release of adenosine, a natural chemical produced in the brain that promotes sleep. In general, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) acts as a natural sedative, helping to promote sleep, and taken in larger doses, cannabidiol (CBD) can also promote sleepiness. There is also growing research about the role of a third cannabinoid, cannabinol (CBN), in promoting sleep.

What we do know is that cannabis use has been demonstrated to help people fall asleep faster but it can change what experts call “sleep architecture,” increasing the amount of time spent in deep sleep, which is largely responsible for restoring energy levels and leaving you feeling refreshed, but minimizing REM sleep, which is responsible for dreaming.

For many people, this is a fair tradeoff: more hours of deep, restorative sleep and fewer hours spent in REM without dreams. For people dealing with PTSD this can be a very welcomed side effect; if you can’t dream, you can’t be tortured by nightmares. For people managing chronic pain and myriad other health conditions that impact sleep, cannabis is helping them get to sleep and stay asleep longer through the night with less waking up.

For me personally, I don’t miss dreaming. Most of the dreams I remember tend to be recurring, archetypal “stress” dreams, leaving me mildly panicked upon waking: having to take a final exam for a class I didn’t even know I was registered for; being a fugitive on the run for a crime I not only didn’t commit but I’m not even sure what it is I am accused of…who needs that?

WHAT TO CHOOSE

As we’ve noted before, cannabis isn’t exactly a “one-size-fits-all” proposition. In general, different strains will affect different people differently, depending on anything from potency to personal tolerance, to the way certain terpenes — the organic compounds in cannabis and other plants that gives them a unique smell and taste — affect different people. For example, for some the terpene limonene, which has a citrusy scent, can help sharpen focus and concentration; for others, it just gives them a headache.

Choosing a cannabis strain for insomnia is no different. In general, you will want to look for Indica-dominant strains, which tend to have more calming, sedating effects versus Sativa-dominant strains, which generally produce more active, energetic highs. You should know the difference if you’re looking for help falling asleep.

I am reminded of a former neighbor of mine who wanted to get a little something to help her sleep. Rather than tell her budtender that she just asked what was good these days. She bought an eighth of an ounce of Durban, went home and smoked some that evening and spent the remainder of the night bouncing off the walls, cleaning her apartment. She had an awful night’s sleep but on the bright side her place was never quite so clean.

1. My favorite strains for sleep: Mendo Breath, Garlic Breath and Grandaddy Purple.

2. Form matters: Edibles tend to be less potent than smoking flower, but the effects can be longer lasting even if they do take longer to kick in. If you choose an edible, you’ll want to take it at least an hour before bed if you’re goal is to get to sleep and stay asleep.

3. Tolerance changes: One caveat for chronic insomniacs like me is that, over time, your tolerance will build up and you may wake up in the middle of the night. My advice is not to fight it. Rather than toss and turn, just get up, have another puff or two and go back to sleep. For me, it just works.

Still have questions? Feel free to email me — just hit the “contact us” button and we’ll do our best to get back to you within 24 hours.