Why did the human body develop the ability to engage with cannabinoids? I’ve heard people postulating that we’re practically build to get high, as a justification for cannabis usage, but I can’t really believe it would be the main cause for this specific natural selection. I mean; from a darwinian perspective it doesn’t really make sense – how would getting high be survival of the fittest? Also, there exist other cannabinoids than THC, so what is the effect of these, and how present are they in our daily lives and what are the effect of these?
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You have natural selection backwards here. There was already an endocannabinoid system in our bodies, and the cannabis plant just happened to make these chemicals that interact with the system already in place. Once we discovered that, artificial selection has occurred to the cannabis species to select for production of those chemicals. The plant world has tons of different chemicals, some of which are good for us, some are heavily toxic, most are neutral or unknown. The original purpose of the endocannabinoid system was internal regulation of hunger, sleep and pain, as near as we can tell, which makes sense, as that’s what cannabis mostly affects when ingested. More of an ELI10, sorry.
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