Marijuana.com

Buzzby

Marijuana Withdrawal Reported By Teens Seeking Treatment
Jennifer Nachbur | Medical News Today | 05/10/2005

Often considered a relic of the 1970's culture, marijuana is no longer a baby boom generation issue. Today, nearly 50 percent of U.S. teenagers try marijuana before they graduate high school, and by 12th grade, about 21 percent are regular users. Consequently, treatment for marijuana dependence is on the rise, but, researchers have discovered, there's a catch - withdrawal symptoms, much like those experienced by people quitting cigarettes, cocaine or other drugs, may make abstinence more difficult to achieve. A new study in today's edition of the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence shows that teens that use marijuana frequently also may face the same withdrawal symptoms that have been found to challenge adult marijuana users trying to quit.

Ryan Vandrey, a graduate student in psychology, and Alan Budney, Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Vermont, studied 72 adolescent marijuana users seeking outpatient treatment for substance abuse. Participants in the study were heavy marijuana users ages 14 to 19, who were primarily male Caucasians, and who completed study questionnaires. Nearly two-thirds of the participants reported experiencing four or more symptoms of marijuana withdrawal, including anxiety, aggression, and irritability. More than one-third of participants reported four or more symptoms that occurred at a moderate or greater severity level.

"In the adolescents who provided information, we observed a lot of variability regarding the presence and severity of withdrawal symptoms, which is consistent with what we have seen in several studies of adults who use marijuana frequently," said Vandrey. "Overall, our research indicates that the majority of people who abruptly stop daily or near daily marijuana use experience some withdrawal symptoms. Though there is anecdotal evidence that withdrawal makes it more difficult to quit using marijuana and that people use marijuana to suppress withdrawal effects, we still need to more carefully investigate how withdrawal impacts the quitting process."

Budney's future research aims to address this and other questions related to the clinical importance of marijuana withdrawal and more generally to develop and test more effective methods for helping those who seek to stop using marijuana.

In addition to Vandrey and Budney, University of Vermont co-authors on the study include Catherine Stanger, Ph.D., research associate professor of psychiatry, and Jody Kamon, Ph.D., post-doctoral fellow in psychiatry.

__________________

 

MoSnazzy

How can one deffinitively say that those symptoms didn't occur naturally in the subjects before the marijuana, and that the marijuana actually helped them to get along better with people because it suppressed those character traits??

TNTMagicHerb

Wow this is news to me. I have been a heavy smoker for over 10 years now and I cant believe a doctor is claiming this. I have quit for months a time several times in my past and not once have experienced withdrawl symptoms from quitting. The closest thing to withdrawl I could attribute is that I tend to drink a couple more beers after work than normally would if I was smokin. They should do some testing of the patients brains before they consider everyone to be as weak willed as these people were. Anything can be mentally addicting if you let it interfere with your everyday life. As soon as you smoke everyday at a certain time or after something it tends to set a appointment in your brain and this triggers you to have the need to smoke. Chemical withdrawl is something totally different where your body physically needs that chemical to go about its normal routine and will become dependant on that chemical with prolonged use. The reason we cannont become dependant on MJ is that fact that our bodies naturally produce THC and have THC receptors. To this I believe that we were intended to smoke marijuana.

reggie_the_dog

I used to smoke every day, now i smoke 6 days a week to give my lungs a break.

On Tuesday I didn't smoke, as for withdrawl I had none at all. Find me a heavy tobacco smoker who can go a day without smoking and not have any physical withdrawl.

Find me a heroin user who can go a day without using without getting "dope sick".


I mean, when you quit smoking cannabis, what do you get, you sorta wish you could smoke a bowl, like you sort of wish you could go bike riding in the winter but there is too much snow on the ground......

SkyTripper

Yeah....I get irritable too if I go long without ANYTHING in this life that takes my mind temporarily off of ALL the BULLSH*IT going on here in America!

As for marijuana withdrawl......little or none...EVER! Except for a few minor cases of insomnia. But I really get edgy if I can't have a cigarette!

ANYTHING....to make marijuana look worse than it actually is......that's what these people WANT to hear!

95% of these cases of supposed marijuana "addiction" wouldn't even exist if it weren't for the fact that the majority of these cases were FORCED upon these people by the COURTS because of getting busted for possession and as an easy way to please the judges and probation officers.....and HOPEFULLY.....by compliance....have the charges erased upon successful completion of what the court ordered the defendant.

It's ALL a JOKE!

__________________
SkyTripper

 

Higher Logic

Exactly. Someone gets arrested for marijuana and they go to court. Let's say they are a first-time offender. The court makes them pay a hefty fine, take TASK (random drug-testing, probation) and some of them go to rehab. But why? Well, if I had the choice of jail or some nonsense probation I would take the probation any day of the week. So these kids take that route out of FEAR of jail, and then it's really easy to lie about your "withdrawl" to the POs. I know because my friend was given the same option, and he would always lie to them and the counselers. He got a DUI recently too (he has horrible luck) and he lies to them about his use and everything. It's nothing new, and what these people do is use false speculation on statistics that they know will prove THEIR point. They don't actually study it. Then you have these doctor's claiming that they understand withdrawl when 99% of them have never even touched a joint in their life, how would they know? Then you hear the common response: smokers always try to justify their use by saying they aren't addicted, so when you tell someone you aren't addicted, they tell you it's a natural response for someone who is. It's a lose-lose situation.

__________________
Crucial Web Hosting · Garden's Cure · Marijuana Recipes · Drug Testing Facts

Dilution · Substitution · Urine Testing · Hair Testing · Drug Testing FAQ

headsi6

me i stop only if i run out of stock.. what i feel is craving for the spice,insomia,restlessness,depression,....i can handle all that... but if i run out of cigarretes grrrrr!!!!!!!!! that made me realize that the post i read here about hard drugs and soft drugs is right! the spice is definitely a soft drug and tobacco is a hard drug

headsi6

hey higher logic... i think it is just that the spice is not yet fully accepted by society.. hmmm or maybe they ( who? hehehe) just dont want to commercialize the spice may be the tobacco and alcohol industry ? what do u tink?

vladimir

stopped smoking a week ago, not in any legal trouble.
definately more irritable. and having some trouble eating right. plus i can dream again, which was scary at first as i kept having nightmares (more related to personal stuff than anything to do with weed).
compared to what i watch what my friends go through when they try to quit cigarettes, or even remember what withdrawal symptoms i had from mild addiction to other drugs, id have to say this is very weak.
but there are some noticeable effects from quitting, so withdrawal would have to be the right term for it. i just wish they would point out that the mj withdrawal is nowhere near as powerful as withdrawal from most other drugs, legal and prescriptions included.


also notice how the teens are always 'seeking' treatment, even though most of them were forced into it. if they changed the headlines from 'more teens seeking treatment for marijuana addiction' to (what it really should be) 'more teens forced to go to rehab for pot', the issue would look much different.

__________________
If a drug (or technique or process) were ever to be discovered which would consistently produce a plus four experience in all human beings, it is conceivable that it would signal the ultimate evolution, and perhaps the end of, the human experiment.

Higher Logic

See but I know a lot of people who don't experience withdrawal symptons. Some do, like in your case, but I've never had those feelings. I've never had a problem with eating again, never had a problem falling asleep, never had a problem with being irritable; anyone who is a cigarette smoker though can attest to the withdrawal symptons, it's not like one smoker experiences it and another doesn't. I think it also depends on your habits before you decide to take a break. If you are a really heavy smoker then yes, you will probably experience withdrawal, but if you are just a light smoker, it's highly unlikely. I'm a light smoker now, I used to be a heavy smoker and really the only things I noticed with that were appetite and sleep, but it lasted maybe a week at the most. It takes probably a good 6 months to get over cigarettes, the longest I've gone is 1 week only because I was sick and I started right back up. Perhaps it's just a person-to-person basis, but I can safely say that cannabis' withdrawal symptons are slim-to-none compared to things like caffeine, tobacco, and alcohol.