Cannabis, lived time, and the disruption of temporal self-experience
Valerio Ricci, Domenico de Berardis, Giuseppe Maina, Giovanni Martinotti
Frontiers in Psychiatry October 30, 2026 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2026.1921211 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Measures | Examination of Anomalous Self-Experience (EASE) |
| Topics | Cannabis |
| Key points | Argues that cannabis-related psychopathology is best understood as a disruption of lived temporality, with cannabis acting as a 'temporal modulator' on a temporally constituted minimal self. Proposes that this reframing yields low-cost clinical implications, including brief inquiry into time experience, EASE-informed assessment, and serial monitoring of self-disturbance. |
Abstract
Cannabis is the most widely used psychoactive substance subject to legal restriction worldwide, and one of its best-characterized acute effects is a distortion of the lived sense of time: users reliably report that time slows, fragments, or loses its ordinary continuity, an effect documented since the earliest controlled studies of marijuana intoxication and confirmed across decades of subsequent research. This paper argues that the relationship between cannabis use and psychopathology cannot be fully understood without attending to the phenomenology of this temporal disturbance. Drawing on the phenomenological tradition, on the clinical study of self-disorder through the Examination of Anomalous Self-Experience (EASE), and on the empirical literature on cannabis and time perception, we propose that cannabis functions as a temporal modulator whose disruptive action falls on an ipseity, or minimal self, that is itself temporally constituted. We treat the integration of a phenomenological vocabulary with an empirical, dose-response literature as a deliberate and contestable interpretive choice, which we make explicit rather than assume. Because cannabis is used across the lifespan and its subjective effects depend substantially on dose, frequency, expectation, and context, we discuss individual variability in temporal experience as a constraint on the model rather than a footnote to it. Adolescence and the clinical high-risk state are treated as one developmentally significant context for this disturbance. Reframing cannabis-related psychopathology as a disruption of lived temporality yields concrete, low-cost clinical implications: brief inquiry into the experience of time and the ownership of thought, EASE-informed assessment, and serial monitoring of self-disturbance.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on cannabis, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delta-8, Delta-10, HHC, THC-O, THCP, and THCV: What Should We Call These Products? | 2023 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Model Psychoses Induced by LSD-25 in Normals | 1956 | Historical analysis | |
| Is there a specific ‘cannabis psychosis’? | 2004 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Peak-experience and the entheogenic use of cannabis in world religions | 2021 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Out of Harm's Way?: Illicit Drug Use, Medicalization and the Law | 2003 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
Citations in the library
Cites 19
- Neural correlates of the LSD experience revealed by multimodal neuroimaging. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences April 11, 2016
- Constructing drug effects: A history of set and setting Drug Science, Policy and Law 2017
- Self-disturbance and schizophrenia: structure, specificity, pathogenesis (Current issues, New directions). Schizophrenia Research 2014
- From Self-Disorders to Ego Disorders Psychopathology 2015
- Disordered Selfhood in Schizophrenia and the Examination of Anomalous Self-Experience: Accumulated Evidence and Experience. Psychopathology 2021
and 14 more in the library