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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There’s no natural selection involved. It’s just a coincidence that the shape of cannibinoids mimics the shape of certain neurotransmitters in our brain. There are many compounds in nature like that. For instance, aspirin originally came from the bark of the willow tree. It’s not like we evolved to eat tree bark when we had a headache.
There’s some artificial selection going on, though. Cannabis has been cultivated for more than a thousand years. The original versions probably just had mild pain-killing or calming properties. The modern strains are super potent because we bred them to be that way.
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