NOVA

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Narrator

Despite CBD's availability today, it took a group of determined parents to bring it to market. One quest began in Palo Alto, California where Stanford neuroscientist, Catherine Jacobson, set out to treat her son Ben's epilepsy. (solemn music) -

Catherine

Watching your child have a seizure is really, really scary. It's awful, right? It's awful, because you know that brain damage is happening. The kids get scared, they get confused. And with uncontrolled epilepsy, we all live with this fear that they're gonna die. (ragged breathing) -

Narrator

About a third of epilepsy patients don't respond to medications. Catherine knew the longer Ben's seizures continued the less likely they'd be controlled. Did you just give him the medicine? -

Ben's Dad

Mm-hm. -

Narrator

And she was not alone. In Berkeley, California, her friends Fred Vogelstein and Evelyn Nussenbaum also felt powerless to control their son Sam's epilepsy. (tense music) -

Fred

I mean, the thing about seizures that most people don't realize is, is that there are dozens of different kinds. So, the kind of seizure that most people know about are the grand mal seizures where you just lie on the ground and like, start flopping. The other seizure that a lot of people know about are staring spells. Sam had a version of those seizures because he would go unconscious for like, 15 seconds. -

Evelyn

When anyone has a seizure, you could compare it to an electrical storm or an overtaxed electrical grid. We all have electricity in our brains. And when someone has a seizure, the electricity becomes irregular. -

Fred

Every single drug we tried didn't control his seizures, and some of them had pretty nasty side effects. -

Evelyn

One time, he had hallucinations and thought he had holes in his skin and there were bugs crawling out of them. I felt we were gonna have to take him to the psych ward. -

Fred

And then there were all the medicines that made him a zombie. -

Narrator

Then, they stumbled across research suggesting cannabis might quell seizures. -

Catherine

I knew nothing about cannabis, but I did some research, and I found out that obviously there are many different chemicals in cannabis. The two most prominent are CBD and THC. We know that THC makes people high. CBD doesn't do that. And so my preference was, of course, to try CBD first. -

Narrator

CBD, doesn't bind to cannabinoid receptors directly, but its presence seems to reduce the impact of THC. It also increases levels of anandamide, our bliss molecule. (mysterious music) It interacts with receptors like serotonin, which affect our mood. Yet, in 2011, it was hard to find extracts high in CBD. -

Catherine

And, so, we would get these vials and sometimes they would work a little bit. And then the next vial wouldn't work. So, after probably six to eight months of doing this and seeing no benefit to Ben, I just said, look, I'm going to make my own. (motivational music) -

Evelyn

When Sam first took Catherine Jacobson's CBD tincture, it was clear as day. His seizures were going down immediately. Unfortunately, Catherine only had enough for five days. And, so, we had this incredible five day stretch. And then we ran out. -

Narrator

CBD also helped Catherine's son Ben, but her next batch of tinctures or too weak to use. (chimes ringing) Drug companies get a lot of abuse for their marketing tactics, but the one thing that they do really, really well is they make every hill exactly the same. It's sanitized, it's quality-controlled. And I wanted that for my son. (emotional music) -

Narrator

Then, they heard about an English company called GW Pharmaceuticals with greenhouses full of cannabis, and labs that could make chemically-pure drugs. Since CBD was illegal in the U.S., Sam's family flew to London for treatment while Ben's family waited. (airplane engine roars) After four days of taking GW CBD, Sam seizures dropped from 68 to six per day. On the eighth day of treatment, he only had three. -

Evelyn

It worked and it worked fast. But the other thing about him improving was that I saw this child that I hadn't seen since he was four years old and started having seizures, except now he was 11, and he was clever and funny, and wanted to ride a zip-line over London. (bright upbeat music) -

Narrator

Sam is now seizure-free. His story led to clinical trials, and in 2018, FDA approval of the first CBD drug called Epidiolex. Certain types of epilepsy, it can reduce seizures by some 40%. Sam is now in college. But since seizures cause brain damage, (Ben groans) - Is that a seizure? -

Narrator

for Ben, help came too late. (Ben blows raspberries) - Okay. Okay, hey. I have no idea whether Epidiolex, given at six months would have changed the course of his disease. I feel like it has reduced the severity of the most severe kinds of seizures he has. So, I feel like it helps. But Epidiolex is not a miracle drug. It's a tool in the toolbox, just like every other anti-seizure drug. You try it. If it doesn't work, you stop it. If it works, then, you know, it changes your life. One of the things that's like super important about a drug like Epidiolex is that for the first time you've got a drug that's derived from cannabis that is completely legitimate for mainstream medicine to study. And we're only beginning to see where that can lead. (anticipatory music)