The placebo effect has been part of medical conversation since the late 1700s, when an English physician named Dr. Alexander Sutherland coined the term to describe a doctor with an especially reassuring bedside manner. Where Cannabis Comes InWe've long known that the body's own endorphin system—the same one responsible for a "runner's high"—plays a role in placebo pain relief. But a Swiss study looking at what happens in the brain during placebo pain relief found something else: the endocannabinoid system, or ECS, was involved too (5). Remarkably, many still experienced effects similar to genuine THC intoxication—the first study to show that people's expectations alone could produce a placebo "high" (6). Watching patients respond to different cannabinoids—the well-known ones like THC and CBD, and lesser-known ones too—I began to wonder: could the ECS also be involved in the placebo effect itself, beyond just pain relief?