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New research from Northeastern University finds that regular marijuana use suppresses the effects of Adderall on the brains of mice
Adderall is prescribed for attention deficit disorders as a way to help focus.
Marijuana is legal in two dozen states and is used by many to relax.
New research from Northeastern University says you shouldn’t use the two in combination — finding that regular marijuana use suppresses the effects of Adderall on the brains of mice.
The research was conducted at the Center for Translational Neuroimagery at Northeastern, an MRI lab run by psychology professor Craig Ferris, and it was published in the journal Frontiers of Pharmacology.
The study involved two groups of mice.
The first group acted as a control, while the second group was exposed to vaporized cannabis for 30 minutes a day for 10 straight days. The daily exposure was enough to achieve blood levels of THC — the active ingredient that produces the psychoactive effect in cannabis — comparable to those recorded by humans.
Twenty-four hours after the last cannabis session, all the mice were injected with Adderall and their brains were scanned.
The scans revealed that the Adderall didn’t work on the mice that had been exposed to cannabis but it worked normally on those that had not.
Two weeks later, the mice were injected with Adderall and scanned again. Both groups showed the same normal, increased brain activity, according to the study.
Ferris says that the study is “incredibly topical” as marijuana and Adderall are two readily available, commonly used drugs — especially among people in high-stress environments.
But polysubstance use is rarely studied, Ferris says, and the recent work raises many more questions.
For instance, what if you’re using cannabis every day for months; will it have permanent effects? Is there a difference between recreational Adderall users who take the drug intermittently, and someone who takes the drug daily for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder? How about marijuana and Adderall use on an adolescent brain?
And not knowing the answers could lead to harmful consequences.
“If you’re a regular marijuana user now finding you’re not getting any kick from Adderall, you might take twice as much,” Ferris notes.
Jack Ognibene, a 2024 Northeastern graduate, led the research.
“If you really think about it on a very basic sort of intuitive level what marijuana and Adderall do, they’re contradictory to each other,” he says. “So, it makes sense that they would in certain systems work antagonistically.”
Ognibene also cautions people who use Adderall for conditions such as ADHD.
“It’s a very early sign that there is probably some interaction between these two substances in a way that decreases the actual clinical benefits that Adderall might have for someone with ADHD,” Ognibene says.