Well, I was asked yesterday about the "addiction" that I have with Marijuana. My Mom (*who is married to a war vet and member of the United Nations' Canadian Peacekeeper Veterans of Northern British Columbia) questioned me on my well known medicinal use of the evil weed. I stated (as do many pot smokers I know) "I will never give this habit up" and added a few of the facts I have learned about the product. They then asked me about the addiction. "How long can you go without it?" they asked, no doubt picturing poor little me writhing in agony and beating my cats when I am out of product. I explained that weed is not a pharmaceutical.
Pharmaceutical addictions to Opiates and man made illegally used prescriptions can be very painfull as the body desires the feel good effects that they bring. Your body can be a cruel master, creating pseudo-pain in the joints, forcing you to seek the pills or substances that stop the very physical pain that withdrawal brings and trades it for feelings of pleasure. The pain is very real. Another factor is the fear of overdosing as the body builds tolerances to the product and "dosages" have to be larger to achieve the desired effect. Alcohol and tobacco are in the same class as that, as is coffee. With Pot, the withdrawals are real in the mind of the toker (in some of us anyway) but many psychiatrists have determined that the feelings are "symptomatic" and can be relieved by using distraction and exercise rather than psychotropic drugs and institutionalization.
In all my years of smoking pot, I have never come across a toker who truly suffered physically from 'Marijuana withdrawal"... I spent a good portion of my time as a teenager as a "stonner" and quit it during my 20's with none of those addiction problems I doubted the "Refer Madness" mentality that my preceding generation believed which tells people that Marijuana brings horrible withdrawal symptoms. Since taking it back up in my early 30's after my diagnoses of Multiple Sclerosis there has been rumors that Weed today is way more powerful then the weed we smoked in the 1970's and 80's.
I have not seen that in any weed i have smoked since taking it back up. None has made me hallucinate like the Thai Stick I smoked back in 79. *sigh* I suppose that was likely dipped in opium so that accounts for the hallucination effect. According to the Wikipedia page I linked to Thai Stick was replaced by more potent weed that was pure and organic with no addiction factor... I likely smoked some of that stuff back in the day too; The BC town I grew up in was a provincial storehouse for the distribution of many drugs and Pot was the commodity which was used as currency to purchase the other drugs that flooded the town. Even pets were affected.
Pharmaceutical addictions to Opiates and man made illegally used prescriptions can be very painfull as the body desires the feel good effects that they bring. Your body can be a cruel master, creating pseudo-pain in the joints, forcing you to seek the pills or substances that stop the very physical pain that withdrawal brings and trades it for feelings of pleasure. The pain is very real. Another factor is the fear of overdosing as the body builds tolerances to the product and "dosages" have to be larger to achieve the desired effect. Alcohol and tobacco are in the same class as that, as is coffee. With Pot, the withdrawals are real in the mind of the toker (in some of us anyway) but many psychiatrists have determined that the feelings are "symptomatic" and can be relieved by using distraction and exercise rather than psychotropic drugs and institutionalization.
In all my years of smoking pot, I have never come across a toker who truly suffered physically from 'Marijuana withdrawal"... I spent a good portion of my time as a teenager as a "stonner" and quit it during my 20's with none of those addiction problems I doubted the "Refer Madness" mentality that my preceding generation believed which tells people that Marijuana brings horrible withdrawal symptoms. Since taking it back up in my early 30's after my diagnoses of Multiple Sclerosis there has been rumors that Weed today is way more powerful then the weed we smoked in the 1970's and 80's.
I have not seen that in any weed i have smoked since taking it back up. None has made me hallucinate like the Thai Stick I smoked back in 79. *sigh* I suppose that was likely dipped in opium so that accounts for the hallucination effect. According to the Wikipedia page I linked to Thai Stick was replaced by more potent weed that was pure and organic with no addiction factor... I likely smoked some of that stuff back in the day too; The BC town I grew up in was a provincial storehouse for the distribution of many drugs and Pot was the commodity which was used as currency to purchase the other drugs that flooded the town. Even pets were affected.
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