Is Cannabis Addictive?

SteveGrenard

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http://www.medpagetoday.com/2005MeetingCoverage/2005APAMeeting/tb/3404


TORONTO, May 26 — The so-called "cannabis withdrawal syndrome" is real and should be added to diagnostic manuals.

So asserted Deborah Hasin, Ph.D., of Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health at the American Psychiatric Association meeting here.

Dr. Hasin based her conclusion on data gleaned from the landmark National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC), a national longitudinal study of more than 43,000 Americans with respect to their alcohol and drug use, conducted in 2001 and 2002.

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More of debate at above URL
 
Let's hear the other side as well:

Dr. Hasin said the epidemiological approach allowed the researchers to overcome problems that had dogged earlier studies of the issue, including such things as small numbers, unrepresentative samples, and confounding by other drug use.

But that may not be enough to claim that the symptoms seen are true withdrawal, said Nicholas Seivewright, M.D., a consultant psychiatrist with the Community Health Sheffield NHS Trust in Great Britain and author of Community Treatment of Drug Misuse.

Citing the case of benzodiazepines, Dr. Seivewright noted that the central argument for a withdrawal syndrome with those drugs was the emergence of novel symptoms that patients had not previously had but incurred after stopping. In the case of marijuana, he said, "I'm a bit concerned about how you can call these withdrawal symptoms" without knowing that they aren't a rebound effect or part of a pre-existing condition.

Dr. Hasin may be "jumping the gun" in labeling her symptom clusters cannabis withdrawal, he said in an interview.
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on an anecdotal level yes.....i've found it addictive - but whether that addiction is;

1) purely psycholgial

2) due to the THC

3) due to the nicotine in the tobacco

I couldn't say.

edit. apologies. this is the lamest post i've ever made......must be the weed :)
 
That's the dali lama? I thought it was andyandy.

No, don't tell me andyandy is really the dali lama....
 
SteveGrenard said:
That's the dali lama? I thought it was andyandy.

No, don't tell me andyandy is really the dali lama....
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Yes, it's the Dalai Lama, one of the most recognizable faces in the world. Certainly more recognizable than the current Pope.
 
The evidences are inconclusive, probably because cannabis is a banned substance in many countries. This is anecdotal but, many people I know who smoke pure weed or hash in a pipe, and never smoke tobacco, do say that they experience withdrawal symptoms when their stash has run out.

All I can say conclusively is that cannabis isn't as harmless as its proponents claim; it can mess people up badly. Trust me, I've watched it happen.

Physical or psychological addiction? Nobody really knows.
 
asthmatic camel said:
All I can say conclusively is that cannabis isn't as harmless as its proponents claim; it can mess people up badly. Trust me, I've watched it happen.
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I'd be interested how you know this. What was the control group?

Thank you

zoo
 
zooloo said:
I'd be interested how you know this. What was the control group?

Thank you

zoo
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As I stated, this is anecdotal. I know many people who use cannabis recreationally with no ill effects. I also know several people, probably already mentally ill, who have taken the drug and ended up in hospital as a result.

One of them was my ex-fiance, once a charming, beautiful little creature, now a bit of a cabbage.
 
zooloo said:
I'd be interested how you know this. What was the control group?

Thank you

zoo
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the link between canabis and mental health problems is pretty well documented. THC seems to act as a "tipping" mechanisism for people who may have some psychotic tendencies, but who, without THC would not go on to develop mental health problems....

The drug induced psychosis seen when Cannabis is the main substance being abused is distinct phenomenologically from other psychosis.

It is unusual for such a psychosis to occur without other drugs being involved to some extent and so it is difficult to tease out the differences between the effects of Cannabis and other drugs.

However it is misleading and dangerous, to our youth in particular, to label Cannabis as “soft”. In fact the serious adverse effects of Cannabis have been known for some time now and Hall and Solowij in the British Journal of Psychiatry sounded warnings in 1997 about such issues as dependence on Cannabis, adolescent developmental problems, permanent cognitive impairment as well as involvement in and the development of psychosis.[1]

There are suggestions that in a small number of cases Cannabis is capable of precipitating psychosis, going on to the chronic picture described below, in people who have had no family and personal history of psychiatric illness.There have been suggestions that such people may be the ones who have started Cannabis in their teens and caused disturbance to neural connectivity. However, it seems Cannabis can precipitate or exacerbate a schizophrenic tendency in a characteristic manner.[2]
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http://www.priory.com/psych/cannabis.htm
 
andyandy said:
the link between canabis and mental health problems is pretty well documented. THC seems to act as a "tipping" mechanisism for people who may have some psychotic tendencies, but who, without THC would not go on to develop mental health problems....
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Or to be more precise, without THC might not go on to develop mental health problems. The trouble with these studies is that there is no possible way of controlling them, since we cannot (yet) identify a group of people who should develop a mental health problem under any particular circumstances.

It is entirely possible that cannabis use is a symptom of these people's mental health problems, rather than a cause or catalyst.
 
A large minority of people use cannabis. If it produced such effects then we would see an explosion of mental illness, like we have of lung cancer in the 20th century. But we do not. Then the percentage of people who get sick because of cannabis must be very low.

It may not be the cannabis that wrecks the addicts lives. It could be the criminal nature of the drug.
 
SteveGrenard said:
http://www.medpagetoday.com/2005MeetingCoverage/2005APAMeeting/tb/3404



More of debate at above URL
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A great debate question, if one solely defines addiction by requiring physical withdrawl, then no marijuana is very unlikely to meet the criteria, and remember for years how cocaine was not 'physicaly addictive'.


The main problem with requiring physical withdrawl is that it ignores the other cluster of things required for addiction,

some but not all should be present

-stated desire to quit but unable to do so
-multiple efforts to quit or limit use
-overuse , in that more is ingested than desired many times
-tolerance
-preoccupation of time spent aquiring, using or recovering from use
-*** use is detrimental to work and social relationships***
-***use continues despite major negative consequences to use***
-***substance becomes the dominant relationship in person's life***


These are the criteria I usualy use to determine if a person appears to have a dependancy issue on a substance, there are others in the DSM-IV, but the last three are the key, and I have met people who claim to be addicted to marijuana.
 
zooloo said:
I'd be interested how you know this. What was the control group?

Thank you

zoo
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It is like any mood altering behavior, there are people who can do such things without any negative consequence to thier lives, and then there are those who loose jobs and relationships , and form a primary relationship with the mood altering behavior.

Addictions takes many forms, and varies from person to person, I have met about five people who claim they are addicted to marijuana, which is a lot less than the people I have met who claim to be addicted to cocaine , methamphetamine or alocohol, they number in the hundreds.
 
asthmatic camel said:
As I stated, this is anecdotal. I know many people who use cannabis recreationally with no ill effects. I also know several people, probably already mentally ill, who have taken the drug and ended up in hospital as a result.

One of them was my ex-fiance, once a charming, beautiful little creature, now a bit of a cabbage.
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Dope doesn't make you crazy it just widens the cracks.

And it is very common for people to self medicate, marijuana is often used by people with anxiety disorders, which is a real problem as it can cause panic attacks and paranoia.

Alcohol however is a much worse drug to self medicate with.

I do not advocate any self medication.
 
politas said:
Or to be more precise, without THC might not go on to develop mental health problems. The trouble with these studies is that there is no possible way of controlling them, since we cannot (yet) identify a group of people who should develop a mental health problem under any particular circumstances.

It is entirely possible that cannabis use is a symptom of these people's mental health problems, rather than a cause or catalyst.
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BINGO!

However it can make symptoms much worse for many individuals.

The only ones that might induce mental illness are the stimulants, which is impossible to prove, but it seems that using methamphetamine for two years causes some people some major symptoms, even after they have been in remission for a year or more, but with out double blinded control studies the world will never know.
 
rjh01 said:
A large minority of people use cannabis. If it produced such effects then we would see an explosion of mental illness, like we have of lung cancer in the 20th century. But we do not. Then the percentage of people who get sick because of cannabis must be very low.

It may not be the cannabis that wrecks the addicts lives. It could be the criminal nature of the drug.
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When any mood altering behavior causes people to miss work or screw up thier relationships, it is possibly addictive.

The criminal behavior is a component of drug use, however alocohol is very legal, it is not the DUI aspects that wrecks people lives, it is the overuse of the drug.

What wrecks people's lives is the decrease in role functioning and the drug becoming the dominant relationship in thier lives.
 
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