How Smoking Cannabis Affect Your Dreams

Believe it or not, cannabis actually inhibits some of us to dream when sleeping.

Think about your own experience. On the days you smoke, do you remember dreaming? Contrarily, how are the quality of the dreams when you lay off of cannabis for a while?

Many smokers have reported to experience the most vivid dreams when they take a break from cannabis intake. This leads to some scientists to believe that the cannabinoid properties within cannabis inhibits our ability to sink into the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep. However, no conclusive evidence has been found as of yet. Lets take a closer look on how cannabis can impact our sleep and dreams.

The Science of Dreaming

To get an understanding on how cannabis affects our dreams, first we need to understand more about dreams. While there is no scientific evidence to support the types and content of dreams we experience, it is a fact that to dream, we must achieve the fourth step of our sleep cycle. The steps are:

Light sleep (N1): 1-5 minutes
Medium sleep (N2): 10-60 minutes
Slow wave sleep (N3): 20-40 minutes
REM sleep: 10-60 minutes

When we dream, our minds are in the REM stage, which stands for “rapid eye movement”. It is then understood by correlation that cannabis properties may hinder our chances of entering this stage of sleep, which could either be a good or bad thing dependent on whether you like dreaming.

Is Not Being Able to Dream a Good Thing?

Not at all! It really comes down to preference. Some people prefer to have a calm night of sleep, with nothing to remember when they wake up (sleeping like a baby). If this is what you like, taking a strong indica marijuana products such as Dose Strawberry Champagne Edible before sleep can help you enter a peaceful night’s sleep, feeling energized the next day.

Skipping the dream stage of your sleep can have several unique benefits. If you’ve been having nightmares in recent days, or are dealing with traumatizing or stressful events in your life, it might be beneficial to skip REM sleep in general and instead pursue the effects of a quick and deep sleep with sativa edibles.

Does Cannabis Directly Inhibit Sleep?

Science has yet to proof a direct relation between consuming cannabis and users experiencing less dreams in sleep. Additionally, most reports have been from users consuming cannabis in the form of smoking, not so much from edibiles or topicals.

If you are an avid smoker and loves dreaming too, consider trying some edibles instead of pre-rolls or vape pens. Here is our list for our favourite edibles for the year thus far.