Marijuana Addiction

Here's the bottom line:  Marijuana is addictive for about 9% of adults who become regular smokers and goes up to 16% if you smoke regularly as a teenager.

I have spoken to 1000’s of people over the last couple of years about their marijuana use.  I’ve emailed experts in drug addiction, counseling and psychology.  I’ve talked to full-time stoners and self-professed addicts.  I’ve read as many studies as I can.

After all of my research, I can definitively say, Marijuana is very addictive and destructive for some of us.

The old-school view of addiction is that addiction is a physical thing.   The body needs it.   Marijuana does have a physically addictive component.   The physical withdrawal symptoms are somewhat similar to a person who is quitting cigarettes.  However  Weed can be incredibly psychologically addictive (for some of us).

I was one of those people.   I wanted to quit for years, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it.   I remember that every bag was going to be the last bag, and once I got it, I would smoke it as quickly as I could so that I wouldn’t buy another.    I would not socialize, leave events early, or only hang out with people who smoked so that I could too.

Marijuana addiction isn’t black and white.   I’ve talked to countless people who start smoking weed occasionally for fun, then very slowly and gradually, their smoking habits interfere with their daily life until they look back and find that they smoke daily and have done so for years.    The point of it going from a recreational activity to a necessity isn’t ever clear cut, it just seems to happen to some of us.

I was stuck for a long time, and I know what that is like. It can be really hard to get out of that cycle of being stoned all of the time, because weed kind of makes you comfortably numb with where you are…and as long as there is more, the cycle continues.

• About 1 in 9 Daily smokers will become addicted to weed
• For young adults, that number rises to 1/6 daily smokers
• Smoking weed has side effects
• Withdrawal is significant enough to keep people from quitting
• More people, using stronger weed, more often means more weed addiction
• Only about 5% of people who try Marijuana Anonymous are successful in quitting

Just like there is a lot of bad information out there on addiction, there is a lot about the effects of marijuana, particularly the long term effects, because there isn’t a lot of science out there.   I have written about these effects from my personal views, and gathered as much science as I can.      I can tell you that marijuana is really bad for your bank account!  I know I spent over to $20,000! I doubt it causes cancer, I do know it can mess with your hormone levels.   It can make impair your short-term memory, which then never gets into your long term memory.      When I was getting ready to quit, I wrote down a manifesto of sorts:  Why I Quit Smoking Pot    For those of you looking to learn about long term use, you may find the interesting.   If you are looking to quit smoking weed, you probably already know!