What type of cannabis is most typical when targeting symptoms of anxiety or depression?
Anxiety and depression get grouped together a lot, and they do occur together but they’re separate syndromes. As for anxiety – for an agitated central nervous system – I wouldn’t want to prescribe a sativa that might be stimulating and might increase the anxiety. For anxiety, we generally tend to seek cannabis from the indica families; things like Afghani, the funky gas family, and the sweet ones like Girl Scout Cookies and Wedding Cake. Whereas for depression, a heavy indica like those might exacerbate the depression, might make one feel worse and more tired and more behind the beat. And so for depression by itself, we’d probably be looking at a sativa, something like Jack Herer or Maui Wowie, something that’s stimulating and creative and uplifting, to pull that person out of that depression. Now, if it’s mood swings, if it’s back and forth forth like what they used to call manic depression or currently bipolar disorder, that’s a different ball of wax. There are some specific terpene profiles that work more for that. It’s often a combination of caryophyllene, which is peppery, both of the pinenes alpha and beta, plus limonene and myrcene. But if the limonene is in too high of a concentration, it’s gonna be too stimulating. So it really takes some trial and error from the user to figure out which of these is going to work for them.