Does Marijuana Damage Sleep, Particularly For Regular Users?

As more and more people search for sleep aids, and marijuana is slowly being decriminalised throughout the world, many people are turning to the humble flower to help them sleep. While many smokers of marijuana claim that it helps them with their sleep, the research on this topic is far from settled.

“[W]e really lack solid evidence demonstrating whether cannabis helps or hurts sleep”, says sleep specialist Wendy Troxel, senior behavioural and social scientist at the RAND Corporation. This comes off the back of a recent article published in the British Medical Journal which found that adults who use weed 20 or more days during the last month were 64% more likely to sleep less than six hours a night and 76% more likely to sleep longer than nine hours a night. These figures are troubling considering both short and long sleep durations are correlated with a host of conditions including atherosclerosis, diabetes and coronary artery disease.

While this remains an open question, some studies have suggested withdrawal phenomena following the cessation of nightly marijuana use for sleep related purposes. Until more research is done, experts recommend exercising caution in this area.