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Marijuana Addiction Information
Marijuana Addiction
Marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug in the United States.
Marijuana is addictive. While not everyone who uses marijuana becomes
addicted, when a user begins to seek out and take the drug compulsively,
that person is said to be dependent on the drug or addicted to it. In
2002, over 280,000 people entering drug treatment programs reported
marijuana as their primary drug of abuse, showing they needed help to
stop using. According to one study, marijuana use by teenagers who have
prior serious antisocial problems can quickly lead to dependence on the
drug. That study also found that, for troubled teenagers using tobacco,
alcohol, and marijuana, progression from their first use of marijuana to
regular use was about as rapid as their progression to regular tobacco
use, and more rapid than the progression to regular use of alcohol.
In 2003, over 14 million Americans age 12 and older used marijuana at
least once in the month prior to being surveyed, and 12.2 percent of
past year marijuana users used marijuana on 300 or more days in the past
12 months. This translates into 3.1 million people using marijuana on a
daily or almost daily basis over a 12-month period. In 2003, marijuana
was the third most commonly abused drug mentioned in drug-related
hospital emergency department visits in the United States.
A dry, shredded green/brown mix of flowers, stems, seeds, and leaves of
the hemp plant, cannabis sativa. It usually is smoked as a cigarette or
in a pipe. It also is smoked in blunts, which are cigars that have been
emptied of tobacco and refilled with marijuana, often in combination
with another drug. Use also might include mixing marijuana in food or
brewing it as a tea. As a more concentrated, resinous form it is called
hashish and, as a sticky black liquid and hash oil. Marijuana smoke has
a pungent and distinctive, usually sweet-and-sour odor. There are
countless street terms for marijuana including pot, herb, weed, grass,
widow, ganja, and hash. The main active chemical in marijuana is THC,
tetrahydrocannabinol. The membranes of certain nerve cells in the brain
contain protein receptors that bind to THC. Once securely in place, THC
kicks off a series of cellular reactions that ultimately lead to the
high that users experience when they smoke marijuana. Long-term
marijuana use leads to an addiction. They end up using the drug
compulsively even though it interferes with family, school, work, and
recreational activities. Drug craving and withdrawal symptoms can make
it hard for long-term marijuana smokers to stop using the drug.
The short-term effects of marijuana addiction can include problems with
memory and learning; distorted perception; difficulty in thinking and
problem solving; loss of coordination; and increased heart rate.
Research findings for long-term marijuana use indicate some changes in
the brain similar to those seen after long-term use of other major drugs
of abuse. One study has indicated that a user's risk of heart attack
more than quadruples in the first hour after smoking marijuana. The
researchers suggest that such an effect might occur from marijuana's
effects on blood pressure and heart rate and reduced oxygen-carrying
capacity of the blood. Smoking marijuana increases the likelihood of
developing cancer of the head or neck, and the more marijuana smoked the
greater the increase. A study comparing 173 cancer patients and 176
healthy individuals produced strong evidence that marijuana smoking
doubled or tripled the risk of these cancers. Marijuana use also has the
potential to promote cancer of the lungs and other parts of the
respiratory tract because it contains irritants and carcinogens. In
fact, marijuana smoke contains 50 to 70 percent more carcinogenic
hydrocarbons than does tobacco smoke. It also produces high levels of an
enzyme that converts certain hydrocarbons into their carcinogenic form
levels that may accelerate the changes that ultimately produce malignant
cells. Marijuana users usually inhale more deeply and hold their breath
longer than tobacco smokers do, which increases the lungs' exposure to
carcinogenic smoke.
Depression, anxiety, and personality disturbances have been associated
with marijuana addiction. Research clearly demonstrates that marijuana
has potential to cause problems in daily life or make a person's
existing problems worse. Because marijuana compromises the ability to
learn and remember information, the more a person uses marijuana the
more he or she is likely to fall behind in accumulating intellectual,
job, or social skills. Moreover, research has shown that marijuana's
adverse impact on memory and learning can last for days or weeks after
the acute effects of the drug wear off. Students who smoke marijuana get
lower grades and are less likely to graduate from high school, compared
with their non-smoking peers. A study of 129 college students found
that, for heavy users of marijuana (those who smoked the drug at least
27 of the preceding 30 days), critical skills related to attention,
memory, and learning were significantly impaired even after they had not
used the drug for at least 24 hours. The heavy marijuana users in the
study had more trouble sustaining and shifting their attention and in
registering, organizing, and using information than did the study
participants who had used marijuana no more than 3 of the previous 30
days. As a result, someone who has a marijuana addiction may be
functioning at a reduced intellectual level all of the time. More
recently, the same researchers showed that the ability of a group of
long-term heavy marijuana users to recall words from a list remained
impaired for a week after quitting, but returned to normal within 4
weeks. Several studies associate workers' marijuana smoking with
increased absences, tardiness, accidents, workers' compensation claims,
and job turnover. A study of municipal workers found that those who used
marijuana on or off the job reported more withdrawal behaviors such as
leaving work without permission, daydreaming, spending work time on
personal matters, and shirking tasks that adversely affect productivity
and morale. In another study, marijuana users reported that use of the
drug impaired several important measures of life achievement including
cognitive abilities, career status, social life, and physical and mental
health.
Some frequent, long-term marijuana users show signs of a lack of
motivation (a motivational syndrome). Their problems include not caring
about what happens in their lives, no desire to work regularly, fatigue,
and a lack of concern about how they look. As a result of these
symptoms, some users tend to perform poorly in school or at work.
Scientists are still studying these problems.
--
Jesper
The saw is family!