Why Does Music Sound Better When You're High?
- BUZZ LA
- Jan 11, 2023
- 3 min read
Let us paint a picture for you: It's Friday night, and you get home from work ready to listen to your favorite artist's new album. Of course, you deserve a little pampering and self-care, so you set the tone by rolling up a spliff and pressing play on your favorite streaming platform – an experience so simplistic yet incredibly euphoric.
There's no doubt that music and marijuana go together like peanut butter and jelly, a famous combination that we almost don't think too deeply about it. Cannabis has had an extensive and close relationship with music for quite some time now – whether it be for the people composing the melodies or the consumers tuning in.
But why could music's sweet sound be much more enjoyable when high? Well, let's explore some of the possible reasons.
Well, for starters, if you've ever thought that time seemed to move slower when under the influence of marijuana, you were right. Oddly enough, a study was conducted at Anglia Ruskin University in the United Kingdom where Dr. Jörg Fachner, a professor of music, health, and the brain, exhibited that a 15-second time interval increases to an average of 16.7 seconds while high on the effects of marijuana. Considering the basis of sound vibrating bodies, and music is all time-based, the auditory system that processes music has to be extremely good at deciphering time. So, your theory is backed by research.
This could possibly explain why you're able to notice intricate details in the production you may not notice when sober. It's as if you have more time to pay attention to each element contributing to your favorite tracks.
Hold tight; this isn't the only way marijuana finds a way to affect our minds. In Dr. Fachner's study with an EEG, an electroencephalogram machine that tracks electrical brain activity, there are modifications in the occipital area, which processes the visual component, the temporal area, which processes the auditory and then in the parietal. These three connections seem to benefit the music consumer throughout their listening experience.
When we look at the fact that cannabis actively alters our perception and heightens our experience in all aspects, the altered state of our mind allows us to hear the music more intensely, providing a more pleasurable listening experience.
Tying into this, music is a natural dopamine booster. It enhances the nervous system's reward center, much like what happens when puffing on your favorite strain. If you're unfamiliar with dopamine, it leads to emotion and gratification in humans. Pair music and weed together, and we can thank the mesmerizing characters of our brains for supporting this theory.
So, what's really happening to the stoner's brain when listening to music? Dr. Jörg Fachner has said, "Marijuana works like a psycho-acoustic enhancer. That means you can absorb, focus on something and have a bit of a broader spectrum. It doesn't change the music; it doesn't change the ear's functioning. Obviously, it changes the way we perceive ear space in music."
We still have an abundance of knowledge to take in when understanding why and how marijuana affects how we perceive music and sounds in general. From clouds of familiar smoke rising through the crowd at concerts or the simplistic pleasure of lighting one up at home and putting your headphones on, maybe we're the best judge as to why it sounds so much better to us.
