Cannabis intoxication

Cannabis effects on the mind and toxicity. Acute intoxication due to use of Cannabinoids. Cannabis, also known as marijuana among other names, is a psychoactive drug from the Cannabis plant used for medical or recreational purposes.
The primary psychoactive component of cannabis is tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), one of the 483 known compounds in the plant, including at least 65 other cannabinoids.
Cannabis can be used by smoking, vaporizing, within food, or as an extract. Cannabis has mental and physical effects. It causes a high, or stoned, feeling and other effects including a general change in perception, difficulty thinking, impaired short-term memory, altered sense of time, impaired body movement, relaxation, and an increase in appetite. At high doses, mental effects include psychosis, delusions, hallucinations, paranoia, and ideas of reference, sometimes with anxiety and panic. Its physical effects include increased heart rate, difficulty breathing, nausea, and behavioural problems in children whose mothers used cannabis during pregnancy.
Short-term side effects may include dry mouth, red eyes, and feelings of paranoia or anxiety.
Long-term adverse effects may include addiction, decreased mental ability in those who started regular use as adolescents, chronic coughing, and susceptibility to respiratory infections.
There is a strong relation between cannabis use and the risk of psychosis, though the cause-and-effect is debated. Onset of effects is felt within minutes when smoked, and about 30 to 60 minutes when cooked and eaten. The effects last for two to six hours
There must be dysfunctional behaviour or perceptual disturbances including at least one of the following:
Euphoria and disinhibition
Anxiety or agitation
Suspiciousness or paranoid ideation
Temporal slowing (a sense that time is passing very slowly, and/or the person is experiencing a rapid flow of ideas)
Impaired judgement
Impaired attention
Impaired reaction time
Auditory, visual or tactile illusions
Hallucinations, with preserved orientation
Depersonalisation
Derealisation
Interference with personal functioning.
At least one of the following signs must be present:
Increased appetite
Dry mouth
Conjunctival injection
tachycardia
Fresh cannabis contains tetrahydrocannabinolic acid (THCA),
which is converted into THC after heating
and then metabolized by the body into 11-hydroxy-THC
and then into 11-nor-9-carboxy-THC;
both compounds can be glucuronidated and mainly excreted into urine.
Both compounds, along with THC, are assayed in blood tests.
THC and its major (inactive) metabolite, THC-COOH, can be measured in blood, urine, hair, oral fluid or sweat using chromatographic techniques as part of a drug use testing program or a forensic investigation of a traffic or other criminal offense
Δ9-THC and other cannabinoid receptor agonists include therapeutically beneficial effects of analgesia, attenuation of the nausea and vomiting in cancer chemotherapy, appetite stimulation in wasting syndromes, and decreased intestinal motility.
Untoward side effects accompanying these therapeutic responses include alterations in cognition and memory, dysphoria/euphoria and sedation.
Animal models that distinguish cannabinoid receptor activity include drug discrimination paradigms in rodents, pigeons and primates, a typical static ataxia in dogs, and a tetrad of responses in rodents (hypothermia, analgesia, hypoactivity and catalepsy).
Indeed, it is now generally accepted that most CB1 receptors are located at central or peripheral nerve terminals and that their main function is to mediate inhibition of on-going release of certain excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters.
These receptors are also expressed by some non-neuronal cells, for example immune cells.