What cannabis does to your body and brain

Despite humans having used cannabis for thousands of years, it is only recently that we have started to work out why it affects us the way that it does. Chemicals in cannabis called cannabinoids activate receptors throughout our bodies that form the endocannabinoid system. This system is involved in regulating everything from mood to memory, and so could explain why the effects of marijuana can be so varied. In "The anatomy of a high", the second in our special podcast series on the science of cannabis, Christie Taylor investigates what we know about how cannabis hits our bodies and brains, how it affects our creativity and how it warps our perception of time. Christie Taylor: The year was 1964, and in a lab at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, Raphael Mechoulam had finally figured out how to get monkeys stoned. His mission for the past several years had been simple. He knew ingesting cannabis makes people euphoric, sedated, and induces a variety of interesting effects in the mind, but which of the hundreds of chemicals within the plant were responsible? So, he began a step-by-step process of isolating individual compounds called cannabinoids from hashish, which is a form of cannabis that uses very compressed, purified resins, and typically from cannabis flowers. He then gave standard amounts to rhesus monkeys, and observed what happened. In 1963, he isolated cannabidiol, or CBD.