Feeling High Was Linked to Greater Symptom Relief in an Observational Medical Cannabis Study
A 2023 study found that medical cannabis patients who reported feeling “high” also tended to report slightly greater short-term symptom relief—but they were more likely to experience unwanted side effects as well.
Published in Frontiers in Pharmacology by researchers at the University of New Mexico and MoreBetter, the study analyzed de-identified data from the Releaf App. The researchers examined 16,480 cannabis-flower administration sessions recorded by 1,882 people between June 5, 2016, and March 11, 2021. App users tracked their symptoms before and after using cannabis, along with product characteristics, dose, consumption method, and reported side effects.
Patients reported feeling high in 49% of the sessions. After accounting for factors including starting symptom severity, dose, THC and CBD potency, plant phenotype, and consumption method, sessions involving a reported high were associated with a 7.7% greater reduction in symptom severity than sessions in which users did not report feeling high. The average symptom change across the study’s main sample was a reduction of about 3.82 points on a 0-to-10 scale; the additional association linked to feeling high was comparatively modest.
Feeling high was also associated with a 14.4-percentage-point increase in the likelihood of reporting at least one negative side effect and a 4.4-percentage-point increase in positive side-effect reporting. Common experiences correlated with feeling high included feeling “chill,” “happy,” “thirsty,” or “tingly,” as well as dry mouth, red eyes, dizziness, confusion, and feeling foggy or clumsy.
THC potency and the amount of cannabis consumed were the strongest predictors of whether patients reported feeling high. Contrary to common assumption, vaporizer use was associated with a lower likelihood of reporting a high compared with other flower-consumption methods in the study’s adjusted analyses. The researchers also found that the relationship between feeling high and symptom relief remained statistically significant for pain, anxiety, depression, and fatigue, but not for insomnia. The association was stronger among patients age 40 or younger; gender and prior cannabis experience did not appear to substantially change the relationship.
These findings do not show that feeling high causes symptom relief. The research was observational, relied on voluntary app reports, and did not include a randomized control group or standardized cannabis products. Participants may also have differed from medical cannabis users who do not track their consumption through an app. In addition, the app data were provided by MoreBetter, whose employees were among the study’s coauthors.
The results nevertheless raise a useful question for future research: whether some of cannabis’s perceived therapeutic effects are connected to the altered mood, attention, and sensory experience produced by THC, rather than occurring independently of intoxication. The authors also pointed to the need for more research on dose, delivery method, and non-cannabinoid compounds such as terpenes. However, evidence for cannabis and cannabinoid treatments varies considerably by condition, and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health notes that established benefits are limited to certain uses, with research for many other conditions still developing.
Feeling high can also involve impaired attention, coordination, reaction time, and decision-making. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s overview of cannabis health effects emphasizes that potential symptom relief should be weighed against these risks, as well as the possibility of cannabis use disorder and other adverse effects. For patients considering cannabis as a treatment, the study supports individualized medical guidance—not the assumption that stronger intoxication is necessarily better medicine.
