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A Little Bit of Coffee Might Help You Kick Your Weed Habit

A new study has found that just a tiny bit of coffee can help you curb your addiction to cannabis. The flipside? Drinking lots of coffee makes it even worse.

Brace yourself, Internet. A study published last week in The Journal of Neuroscience examines the pharmacological connection between the Dream Team of all drugs: coffee and marijuana.

According to the study, which examined the effect of intravenously giving squirrel monkeys THC before and/or after caffeine, there is a clear, but weird, correspondence between caffeine and THC consumption.

READ MORE: This Is Why Weed Gives You the Munchies

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The monkeys, who are obviously doing God's work, were apparently less likely to self-administer THC if there was just a small amount of caffeine present in their system. So if you're looking to kick the habit, hit the coffee, but just have a little.

The reason? Small amounts of coffee seems to block our presynaptic A2A receptors, while a lot of coffee seems to block our postsynaptic A2A receptors. Researchers theorize that selectively blocking presynaptic A2A receptors could treat pot dependence.

But things are never simple in the strange bundle of chemicals and synapses that we call the human condition. As it turns out, too much caffeine will have the opposite effect. In other words, you will be toking with gusto if you enjoy double-fisting doppios. As neuroscientist Gary Wenk states on the Oxford University Press's research blog: "high doses of caffeine will increase marijuana self-administration."

Regardless, this isn't the first time a tangible link between THC and a caffeinated stimulant (like coffee) has proven to have effects on the pre- or postsynaptic adenosine receptors. Back in 2010, an Italian team published a study in Molecular Nutrition & Food Research examining the possible link between the brain's marijuana-like neurotransmitter system and coffee's addictive properties. That study found that "chronic caffeine consumption enhances the sensitivity of striatal GABAergic synapses to the stimulation of cannabinoid CB1 receptors." I am almost certain that means that a lot of coffee enhances your cannabis experience.

But this new study adds this surprising fact: a little coffee may just help you take a break from good 'ol green.

My advice: Throw caution to the wind by eliminating the need for two separate delivery sources with The Weed Eater's perfectly calibrated recipe for Cannabis-Infused Bulletproof Coffee.