The experience of time distortion, often described as time slowing down or “time dragging,” is a commonly reported effect following cannabis consumption. While objective time remains constant, the subjective perception of elapsed time can be significantly altered. This phenomenon is technically known as temporal overestimation, where a short period is judged to be longer than its actual duration. Understanding why this happens requires exploring the complex neural mechanisms the brain uses to process time.
How the Brain Normally Measures Time
The brain does not possess a single, centralized “master clock.” Instead, the perception of duration is a distributed function, relying on a network of brain regions working in concert. For estimating intervals in the range of seconds to minutes, interval timing is used, which involves circuits connecting the basal ganglia, the prefrontal cortex, and the cerebellum.
The basal ganglia, particularly the striatum, is thought to use the synchronization of neural oscillations to measure and mark the passage of time. The prefrontal cortex acts as a cognitive control center, integrating this temporal information with attention and memory to form a conscious judgment of duration. The cerebellum handles the automatic, millisecond-level timing necessary for coordinated movement and rapid motor responses. The brain often judges an interval’s length based on the density or amount of information processed and encoded during that period.
The Endocannabinoid System and Temporal Processing
The chemical trigger for this temporal distortion lies in the interaction between delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and the brain’s endogenous cannabinoid system (ECS). THC acts as a partial agonist, activating the ECS’s main receptor, the Cannabinoid Receptor Type 1 (CB1). These CB1 receptors are the most abundant receptors in the central nervous system, and they are densely concentrated in brain areas associated with timing, including the hippocampus, cerebellum, and prefrontal cortex.
The receptors are primarily located on the presynaptic terminals of neurons, where their activation serves to inhibit the release of various neurotransmitters. THC binding to these CB1 receptors consequently suppresses the release of both inhibitory neurotransmitters, such as Gamma-Aminobutyric acid (GABA), and excitatory neurotransmitters, such as glutamate. This modulation disrupts the finely tuned balance of neural activity necessary for accurate timekeeping.
Why Time Distorts: Attention, Memory, and Dopamine
The chemical disruption caused by THC translates into the subjective experience of time slowing down through changes in cognitive processing. The feeling of time dragging is a result of temporal overestimation, where the internal mechanism tracking time appears to be running faster than clock time. This overestimation is strongly linked to how the brain encodes information and the rate at which it processes sensory input.
Cannabis significantly increases the brain’s attention to sensory details, leading to a higher density of information being encoded into memory during a given interval. Because the brain estimates duration based on the number of encoded events, this over-encoding causes a short period to feel much longer, as if more happened. The internal pacemaker, which governs the rate of time accumulation, is also significantly affected by dopamine.
Increased dopaminergic activity accelerates the internal pacemaker, leading to the temporal overestimation observed with cannabis use. The inhibition of GABA release by THC, particularly in the reward pathways, causes a disinhibition of dopamine neurons, resulting in an increased release of dopamine. This heightened dopamine signaling is hypothesized to speed up the internal clock, creating the perception that external time is moving slowly relative to the brain’s accelerated processing speed.