In December 1968 I was a newly minted Navy corpsman assigned to the Oakland Naval Hospital. I still remember walking up to the hospital entrance and hearing a car backfire. I reflexively hunched my shoulders. Then after straightening up I looked around for the source of the backfire. Around me laying on the pavement were three men in uniform. While I hunched my shoulders, they hit the ground. I later learned this was a reflexive response many soldiers have to loud noises after returning from “in-country” in Vietnam. These were noises that resembled the sound of explosions from enemy fire. Even though they were safe at home they acted “as if” they were still vulnerable to incoming fire.
In my 4 years as a Navy Psychiatric Corpsman, I encountered hundreds of men and women with this sensitivity to loud noises. Along with over-reactivity to loud noises they often had a permanent state of increased arousal, always being on guard. This was accompanied by reexperiencing combat events in dreams, thoughts, or flashbacks. Additionally, they had an emotional numbing and avoidance of stimuli that reminded them of the trauma. This syndrome was eventually called Vietnam Syndrome. It was not called PTSD until the early 1980s. In the 1960s and ’70s, as in previous wars, it was called: soldier's heart, shell shock, war neurosis, or gross stress reaction.
Per the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, during the Vietnam War about 15 out of every 100 Vietnam Veterans were diagnosed with PTSD. Follow up studies from the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study estimated that about 30 out of every 100 Vietnam Veterans have had PTSD in their lifetime.
In the general U.S. population, about 7 or 8 out of every 100 people will have PTSD at some point in their lives. Many individuals who experience trauma from childhood abuse and neglect, domestic violence, sexual assault survivors develop PTSD. You can read more about PTSD symptoms and causes here.
According to Dr. Sue Sisley, MD Internal Medicine, and President/Principal Investigator at Scottsdale Research Institute, there has been a lack of research into medications to address PTSD: “…there has not been a new treatment for PTSD approved in 18 years. So, since Paxil and Zoloft initially got approved, nothing else since then. And so, all these other meds that we use to treat PTSD are all just being used off label and they are mostly very disappointing.”
In Dr. Sisley’s research and other studies, it has been demonstrated that cannabis can ameliorate many of the PTSD symptoms detailed above.
In addition to reducing PTSD symptoms, cannabis also acts as an anti-inflammatory and may be useful in psychological and pain conditions that involve elevated inflammatory processes. You can read more about the research on Cannabis as a powerful antidote to pain and adverse psychological conditions in the scholarly journal article “Cannabis: A potential efficacious intervention for PTSD or simply snake oil?”.
As Dr. Lester Grinspoon, Psychiatry Professor at Harvard University has written: “Contrary to what we’ve all been mistaught [marijuana is] not a very harmful drug… it’s a drug remarkably free of toxicity providing it’s used intelligently.”
Given the emerging research on cannabis, it is no surprise that people who suffer PTSD symptoms are trying cannabis as a replacement for the shopping bag full of pharma medications with their witches’ brew of side effects. It seems like a reasonable thing to try.
For more information about Medical Cannabis and the management of PTSD symptoms please join us Wednesday, February 24, 6-7:30 PM for a FREE CPPNW zoom talk.
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