Pompo

Study aims to clear haze surrounding pot addiction
3/14/08|San Diego Union Tribune| by Terri Somers - Unoin-Tribune Staff Writer

Atrophy of the brain and cirrhosis of the liver are long-term side effects of heavy alcohol dependence. And withdrawal for alcoholics can bring sometimes fatal delirium tremors and convulsions.

Those facts are well known.

But much less is known about marijuana, the nation's most widely used and socially accepted illicit drug. Our knowledge of marijuana is often based on personal experience, observation or anecdotes, despite a growing collection of scientific studies on the topic.

Scripps Research Institute addiction expert Barbara Mason hopes to change that, and to help find novel treatments for addiction to marijuana, with some solid scientific data.

Mason is leading the first-ever comprehensive study on the neurobiological effects of cannabis addiction, funded with a $4 million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

The four-year project will involve animal and human studies that look at what happens in the body during cannabis addiction. That data will then be compared to what happens in the body during withdrawal and afterward.

The four scientific labs involved, including one at UCSD, will then submit their findings to the drug abuse institute to help researchers develop new medications that can help prevent relapse.

Not that Mason wants to be a buzz kill.
“I'm not a stand-on-the-soapbox kind of person,” Mason said. “I just feel like there's a real gap in our knowledge and understanding of cannabis that I want to fill in.”

She has spent two decades researching addiction, withdrawal and treatment. She is the director of Scripp's Laboratory of Clinical Psychopharmacology. And she has won national honors for her groundbreaking work on the combination of alcohol and depression, as well as her research into medical therapies to treat withdrawal from alcohol dependence.

Dr. Mark Gold, chairman of the psychology department at the University of Florida, said Mason is a world class investigator and the study is significant.

“Cannabis addiction is a common patient complaint,” he said. “While treatments have been developed for addictions from alcohol to nicotine and narcotics, none exists for the cannabis dependent. This research will help the field define what cannabis is and is not, and how to treat it.”

Studies at the University of Michigan in 1994 and 2004 show that one in every nine or 10 people who tries marijuana becomes dependent.

In the commonly used medical reference manual for psychiatric disorders, there is precise information about intoxication, dependence and withdrawal from substances ranging from alcohol to nicotine to heroin. But there is no information on cannabis.

And if it isn't listed in the manual, it doesn't exist in the treatment world and, perhaps more importantly, in the eyes of health insurance companies, said Dr. Ivan Montoya, who is with the NIDA's division of pharmacotherapies and medical consequences of drug abuse.

Mason said there is proof in animal and human studies of a withdrawal syndrome for cannabis. Like with nicotine, relapsing with marijuana gets rid of the symptoms, she said.

Two of the most frequent, long-lasting symptoms seen in people trying to stop smoking marijuana are sleep disturbances, such as vivid bad dreams, and negative behavioral affects, such as anxiety, anger and irritability, she said.

The symptoms are more subtle than withdrawal from other substances, such as alcohol. But alcohol clears from the system in a couple of days, she said.

Part of the problem with marijuana is its long half-life. Because it can be detected in a person's body 30 days after the last use, withdrawal symptoms can last at least that long, Mason said.

And other addiction treatment specialists point out that marijuana lingers indefinitely in some human tissue. So how long does the drug affect someone's physical functions and thought process?

An objective of Mason's work will be to study all the manifestations of the withdrawal, including stress hormones that are released, subjective effects reported by the patients and the effect on sleep and mood.

The study will research the effect marijuana has at different stages on development, comparing teens between the ages of 15 through 18, whose brains are still developing, and young adults ages 21 through 30.

The research will investigate how cannabis affects the capacity for learning, as well as the ability to make judgments and control impulses, which are cognitive processes that are needed for treatment, she said.

The study will involve neurophysiological testing and functional imaging of the brain, to determine how long the effects last, Mason said.

The project will also be able to take advantage of what Montoya said have been tremendous advances in the science of marijuana in recent years, including the presence of receptors in the brain that react to it.

“The thing that troubles a lot of us is that (marijuana) has such an appeal to younger people, and in recent time we have learned that the adolescent brain is so different in many ways that the final adult version,” said Dr. Reese Jones, a psychiatry professor at the University of San Francisco. “There is a lot of reason to think that all these issues may be a bigger deal in younger people.”

Recruitment for the study will be conducted through advertising and a Web site. Mason does not expect difficulty finding participants.

She is currently running a separate, more narrow study on treatment for cannabis addiction. When preparing to recruit participants for it, Mason said she worried she was “throwing a party that no one wanted to attend.”

The response surprised her.

“I've been doing alcohol research for a long time, and I got more people seeking treatment for cannabis than I did for alcohol,” she said.

About one-third of those don't use anything but cannabis, she said. And there were two predominant age groups, college-aged and people in their mid-50s, she said.

Southern California is a great location for the study, because there is confusion about the drug, she said. Medical marijuana, though illegal under federal law, is legal in the state.

“I think, in part, that's because policy has been made based on personal biases, rumor and innuendo, instead of science,” she said.

Buzzby

Let's hear from one of NIDA's pre-programmed "scientists":

Why bother doing the study? We already know how it will turn out. It'll say whatever NIDA wants it to say. On the off chance that Dr. Mason tells the truth, they'll just suppress it.

I'm sure cannabis dependence is a fairly common patient complaint. One-in-ten cannabis consumers become dependent. It's like complaining that you're overweight because you eat too much. "Doctor, I just don't understand it. I keep eating all of these donuts and I can't seem to lose any weight." The author doesn't bother to differentiate between dependence and addiction because addiction is pretty rare.

Is a week "long-lasting"? That's the longest I've ever heard of a person suffering these symptoms.

No shit. They're so subtle that most people don't notice them. When you stop drinking caffeinated beverages, the symptoms are much worse. Why aren't they doing a study on coffee addiction?

Marijuana doesn't have a long half-life. THC doesn't have a long half-life. It's gone within a few hours of when you consume it. Inert, non-psychoactive THC metabolites have a long half life.

What utter nonsense! Why would having inert chemicals in your fat cells and in your blood have any effect on this supposed addiction? The relationship of THC to THC metabolites is like the relationship between a log and it's ashes after it's burned. They don't behave at all the same.

And marijuana has to be kept illegal so white women won't sleep with jazz musicians. Marijuana doesn't linger in the human body because, unless you eat it, it never gets into your body. When you eat it, it's gone at the rate of the normal digestive process. THC is gone in a couple of hours. The amount of THC metabolites that remain after a month or so is at an extremely low level and just keeps getting lower.

Intense effects: 2.5 hours. Subtle effects: a couple of days. Can I have my $4 million now?

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Pompo

Have you filed the proper paperwork

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disheartenedwamerica

LOL I absolutely love reading these articles. Well not really the article, mainly just Buzzby tearin' em a new one. It's really amusing to see how much disinformation is continually portrayed as facts. <3 America....

Freedom_User

They can use me for there studies. I smoked weed for 6-7 years, 3-4 times a week. I haven't smoked in almost 3 months.

GRRRR I AM SO ANGRY!!! THE SIDE EFFECTS ARE KICKING IN GUYS!

Victor_vicious

I agree with all of you. A couple of things I would point out. Dr. Tashkin had the same type of negative impression regarding smoked Marijuna, saying it must be as bad or worse than cigarettes. So one of the alphabets hired him to conduct a study. He found out cannibus had a 'negative affect' for cancer and published the imformation.
John P. Morgan, co-author I believe of Mairjuana Myths, Marijuna Facts: A review of the Sceintific Evidence started his investigation because he was going to teach a course about the evils of marijuana.
We should welcome and closely monitor a real "Sceintific Study". We should be writing letters expressing our interest in her research, commending her for taking on the 'establishment', and using 'their money' to do it, brilliant.
This lady has established her cred's as a researcher, why should we think she won't report her findings honestly? VV

Buzzby

Because of where the funding for the study is coming from. The NIDA doesn't fund studies that look for the positive effects of marijuana. Researchers whose results stray far from the party line will have the results suppressed and will never see any more government grant money in their lifetimes.

Victor_vicious

Gee Tashkin did his report anyway. VV

Buzzby

I didn't see where it was NIDA sponsored. Did you? If it was, then it has been suppressed, as I suggested. It certainly hasn't appeared in any of their anti-weed literature.

Victor_vicious

Study Finds No Cancer-Marijuana Connection - washingtonpost.com Then I think you need to do some research on the subject. VV