Cannabis Addiction: Is There a Cause for Concern?
Is cannabis addiction a cause for concern for most people? We look at several studies that show addiction to cannabis is rare, and explore traits that may lead to addiction.
A lot of people will smoke marijuana and will continue to smoke it, for medicinal or recreational purposes, without an addiction forming. Organic marijuana is the optimal choice as no other additives will be present, lowering the risk of cannabis addiction.
Many users state that they’ve smoked every other day for long periods of time and stopped without experiencing any withdrawal effects in the process.
Millions of people fall into this category. For all intents-and-purposes, cannabis isn’t addictive for most smokers. But, there are rare cases where a select few people do become addicted to cannabis. This is a rare issue, but a person doesn’t know if they’ll become addicted until they’ve already smoked marijuana.
According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse, about 9 in 100 people will abuse marijuana. These are people that you’ll find smoking ritually and more often than the average recreational user.
Dependency numbers are also misleading. A study shows that as many as 20% of all marijuana users become dependent. This figure equates to 4.5 million users in the United States. Dependency doesn’t mean that these individuals will undergo withdrawal systems. Instead, they may be dependent on cannabis to lessen pain or other health-related issues.
The same study indicated that only 7% of alcohol users form a dependency, yet only a tiny fraction of marijuana users, just 340,000, were admitted to clinics because of marijuana abuse.
Why Addictions Occur
Reading weed reviews, many people assume that addiction only occurs because the cannabis was laced with another drug or substance. However, this isn’t always the case. Addiction is often gene-related.
A study looked at twins raised in different families.
The study showed that fraternal twins that were raised together had a higher risk of co-addiction than twins raised apart. This would indicate that there are environmental factors that can also lead to addiction.
Social networks of people and responsibilities also have a major role in addiction.
People that are integrated into society and have a strong social network are less likely to become addicts than people that don’t have jobs and families to support.
For most people that smoke marijuana, they do so because it is reliable and pleasurable. People that live in environments where their home structure may be chaotic, they are abused or are simply not doing well in life, these individuals may become addicted to marijuana.
Mental illnesses can further lead to addiction.
While most people will not become addicted to marijuana in the sense that they’ll suffer withdrawal symptoms and side effects, there is always a chance of addiction occurring – albeit a much smaller chance versus other drugs.
