Have you ever asked yourself “is marijuana addicting?” Perhaps you have in the past been looking for help on how to quit smoking marijuana or information on marijuana withdrawal symptoms? You are in luck as there are marijuana addiction treatment options available. If you are looking for help contact the providers of a marijuana addiction program

A 3 year study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology followed 4,045 psychosis free people. Interestingly, It came to the conclusion that marijuana smokers are three times more likely to develop psychotic symptoms and helps provide valuable insight as to whether marijuana withdrawal symptoms are real.

According to the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, every year approximately 6,000 Americans use marijuana for the first time. Not usually synonymous with addiction marijuana withdrawal symptoms have historically been debated and hard to define.

According to information provided by the drugabuse.gov website, 30 percent of Americans arrested for marijuana violations were under the age of 19. This may come as no surprise to many who regard marijuana as a gateway drug. Also, craving is the most common among marijuana withdrawal symptoms reported by former marijuana users in the early days of abstinence.

Statistics show that approximately half of all people who try to quit smoking marijuana report withdrawal symptoms including but not limited to mood swings, irritability or anxiety. Others have often reported aggression, nervousness, restlessness and a loss of concentration.

Compared to withdrawal symptoms associated with quitting alcohol or other drugs, marijuana withdrawal symptoms are relatively mild, but they are uncomfortable enough to cause many who try to quit to relapse to relieve those symptoms.
In other words, the marijuana withdrawal symptoms are not life threatening, their main danger is causing someone who really wants or needs to quit smoking weed to fail.

Significance of Marijuana Withdrawal

To this day, marijuana withdrawal is not listed as a condition in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV), mainly due to doubts in 1994 about its clinical significance. Still however, research conducted since the DSM IV was published repeatedly shows that marijuana withdrawal symptoms should be a target of clinical treatment because such symptoms have a strong influence in leading users to relapse.

Just as alcoholics who are trying to quit drinking may pick up a drink to relieve the sometimes life threatening symptoms of alcohol withdrawal,studies have concluded that marijuana smokers may light up a joint to relieve the discomfort they often will experience when they try to stop smoking. This can be felt to be a serious problem for smokers who need to quit to keep their source of income streaming, or who have been court ordered into treatment and wish to avoid punitive legal consequences.

One study found that 70.4 percent of users trying to quit smoking marijuana relapsed to relieve the withdrawal symptoms, an unusually high number regardless of the drug examined. Furthermore , marijuana withdrawal symptoms are found to be common. To illustrate this point, a Duke University study of 496 adult marijuana smokers who tried to quit found that 95.5 percent of them experienced at least one withdrawal symptom while 43.1 percent experienced more than one symptom. The number of symptoms the participants experienced was significantly linked to how often and how much the subjects smoked prior to trying to quit.