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Pot-withdrawal symptoms mirror nicotine’s, study finds
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The symptoms include irritability, anger and trouble sleeping, researchers at Hopkins’ School of Medicine found.
The study belies the commonly held belief that pot is a safer, less-addictive substance than tobacco or alcohol.
“These results indicate that some marijuana users experience withdrawal effects when they try to quit and that these effects should be considered by clinicians treating people with problems related to heavy marijuana use,” said Ryan Vandrey, the lead researcher for the study, published in the January edition of the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence.
Vandrey defined heavy use as smoking marijuana 25 or more days a month and 10 tobacco cigarettes a day.
The study followed a dozen patients from the University of Vermont in Burlington and Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C.
Marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug in the United States. More than 94 million Americans ages 12 and older have tried marijuana, the federal government says.
Treatment admissions related mainly to marijuana use have more than doubled since the early 1990s, now ranking on par with cocaine and heroin nationwide, experts say.
“Its always been the unspoken rule that nobody really wants to admit how serious and dangerous of a drug marijuana is,” said Michael Gimbel, addictions educator at Sheppard Pratt Health System. “All the baby boomers and current users of pot think it’s safe and it ‘cures cancer.’ ”
A lack of data on the drug’s effects may have resulted in cannabis withdrawal symptoms not being characterized or included in medical reference literature, Vandrey suggested.
khille@baltimoreexaminer.com
Comments from Examiner Readers
9:25 PM MST on Thu., May. 8, 2008 re: "Unique packaging of marijuana draws attention from DEA"
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Jodie Emery said:
This is very odd. I swear I saw a URL before, one that led to the DEA's own website press release about these "new" seed packages, with the photos and everything... but now I can't find the URL anywhere, nor the press release itself. Only the Examiner article comes up when I search "DEA seed packaging" or anything else to find that DEA website press release... Can anyone else find the DEA webpage I'm seeking?
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Examiner Reader said:
LOL! It always tickles me to hear from the anti-weed bigots and hypocrites. Most of them have such repulsive or violent personal habits, you wouldn't want them in your church or as a friend....most of them have done something worthy of jail time themselves.
1 agree | 1 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
I love all the idiots that think pot is so good. I hope their kids don't get hold of this new and improved pot. Its the #1 drug sending kids to drug treatment, BUT THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH POT. Oh yea, tell the victims of the Amtrack Train that wrecked in Chased Md too. get a life its not 1969
0 agree | 6 disagree
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Bruce Codere said:
Regarding the story "Unique packaging of marijuana draws attention from DEA" I offer this: Did you mean instead feminized Hashplant, a variety of Cannabis bread to produce 100% female seeds. Male plants produce no psychoactive compounds at all. Hash is made from the resin the female plant produces as it ripens. Think of it as the difference between a bottle of beer and a bottle of wine. Bubble hash is the purest extraction. It uses ice water to break off the trichomes containing the active ingredients, and mesh screens to filter them out. I think it's fantastic that this information is freely available on the Web, and the more we grow, the sooner we overgrow the government.
1 agree | 2 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
First, make the lost drug war illegal. Make it illegal to declare war on the underclass. (Wars end.) Then make it illegal to NOT enforce laws meant to protect people. And make it illegal to write off Third World countries east and west of downtown's glitz and tourists.
6 agree | 2 disagree
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Disband the DEA!! said:
If being able to buy marijuana seeds off the net is "scary and should be illegal" so too should being able to buy wine off the net. Marijuana is far safer than alcohol, regardless of what the DEA and ONDCP have to say. What is scary and should be illegal is having these organizations tell our legislators that legalizing marijuana will lead to the downfall of civilization. The DEA is a violent enforcer of the prohibition and the ONDCP is legally mandated to oppose all attempts to legalize marijuana, neither organization has the skills, intelligence, or empathy to be able to set social policy of this sort. Particularly when the prohibition policy that they champion is responsible for the arrest of 2,000 people every single day!
7 agree | 1 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
why exactly is this scary?
10 agree | 2 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
They are full of bull I have quit both. Pot was much easier to stop smoking, no withdraw no cravings you just stop toking and that's about. Cigaretts on the other hand were a real mother to quit. It took me three attempts before I finally quit. It's been almost three years and I sometimes still crave a cig.
49 agree | 19 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
To me it is not about whether or not marijuana is addictive, it is that a drug that with far fewer dangerous side affects than alcohal fills up our prisons with non-violent offenders costing us taxpayers tons of money that could be spent on education, a much better way to create responsible citizens that won't be overcome with any type of addiction!!!
37 agree | 15 disagree
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Legion said:
“All the baby boomers and current users of pot think it’s safe and it ‘cures cancer.’ ” All of them? Really? Everyone single one. You must have done some very extensive research.
41 agree | 14 disagree
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yickity said:
The withdrawl symptons it states are trouble sleeping, irritability, and anger. I used to smoke about 8-10 times a day and when i quit I had trouble sleeping and was very irritable. It doesnt have the headaches and such that cigarettes have when you quit but study doesnt say that. I says some symptons mirror that of cigarettes. when I smoked and couldnt find any weed you bet I was irritable and angry. pot is addicting and it feels good to not have my life consumed by the drug any longer.
48 agree | 17 disagree
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Your mom. said:
Crawling on the floor looking for pot?! Are you serious?! I think your problems run a bit deeper than weed.......this article is nothing more than something to add to the ridiculous propaganda that exists in regards to marijuana including the legendary 'Reefer Madness'(pot causing murderous feelings and rape, give me a break!). As a regular user, I have quit several times and experienced absolutely no withdrawal symptoms....EVER. But then again I have never HAD to hit the pipe every 3 or 4 hours to keep from losing my mind, so I am not sure what type of addictive personality that would entail referencing the first comment....but I suspect that that person would feel the same withdrawal symptoms with any substance(ie coffee, etc). Speaking of which, ANYTHING that becomes a habit can be a bit of a challenge to 'quit' which can include supposed withdrawal symptoms. Take sunday football away from the average male and they can get pretty moody as well.....
46 agree | 46 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
i havent even read this article and i can tell u just from lookin at the headline that its 10000000% correct. i was an immensely heavy marijuana user that had to hit his pipe 3 or 4 times every 3 or 4 hours or else id lose my mind... i quit smokin cigarettes years ago, and to be honest the withdrawal from cigarettes was a joke for me compared to what pot did to me. There's been times I'd be crawling on the floor looking for pot the withdrawal from it was so bad for me... I'm not joking.
38 agree | 38 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
The only people who will believe this are people who have never used marijuana. I can tell you from personal experience that this study is just propaganda. I have used marijuana heavily (smoking several times a day) off and on over the past couple of years and I can tell you that I have NEVER experienced withdrawal symptoms. And I know what withdrawal symptoms feel like. Try being on the max dosage of an SSRI (Wellbutrin in my case) and then immediately stopping. THAT is withdrawal my friends! I've gone from smoking a couple of grams of high quality marijuana one day to going cold turkey for weeks and there is no physical withdrawal symptoms. Marijuana has the same potential for addiction as common foods that we eat. It's like saying people who love to play baseball everyday are somehow addicted to it. People who ACTUALLY smoke marijuana know that this claim of marijuana being just as addictive as nicotine is completely false.
57 agree | 20 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
I don't believe this for a minute! Giving up marijuana is on par with giving up sex, it makes you a bit grumpy and you tend to think about it a lot. It is nothing like giving up tobacco which is *physically* addictive! Either this article is a hoax or this "research" will be disproved. There's only one reason treatment admissions for marijuana are going up and that's because courts now offer treatment as an option instead of incarceration. Of course users are accepting it! There is NOT an unspoken rule that smokers don't want to know marijuana’s true risks. Smokers are very interested in all the research going on concerning marijuana, however overwhelmingly the findings support the conclusions of DEA Administrative Law Judge Francis Young in that "marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man". Recent research *is* finding that marijuana fights cancer and "significantly reduces the ability of cancer to spread". Legalize!
56 agree | 46 disagree
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