The popular\u00a0discourse surrounding cannabis has devolved to the point that people now anticipate the responses they\u2019ll get whenever they say anything remotely \u201cnegative\u201d about weed.<\/p>\n
Last week, cannabis-business veteran Kristen Yoder, a self-described \u201cBS detector\u201d known for ridiculing myths, platitudes and bad corporate behavior in the cannabis industry, posted a story on LinkedIn about dealing with cannabis withdrawal. \u201cBefore you leave a comment, let me get them for you,\u201d she wrote, heading off the responses she was sure would follow, including: \u201cIt\u2019s not like withdrawing from heroin or pharmaceuticals!\u201d and \u201cNot everyone goes through that, I never did!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cYeah, I get it,\u201d she wrote. \u201cYou\u2019re lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n At this point, enough people have related their experiences withdrawing from weed that it\u2019s clearly an issue for some substantial number of cannabis users. But the True Believers are going to stick to scripture, and even Yoder\u2019s pre-emptive maneuver didn\u2019t stop them from throwing in their two cents. \u201cI’ve never heard of cannabis withdrawal, not sure I believe in it either,\u201d wrote Bradley McLaughlin, CEO of BudTrader.com, a medical-pot marketing platform.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s not a matter of \u201cbelief,\u201d however, as there is science backing up the claim.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Yoder, for instance, responded to her doubters with a link to a study published by the journal Substance Abuse and Rehabilitation<\/i> finding that pot withdrawals are indeed very real. Other researchers have reached similar conclusions.<\/span><\/p>\n As real as they are, the symptoms are generally not debilitating, and certainly are not anything like the withdrawal symptoms associated with kicking heroin or OxyContin. Severe alcoholics have a much harder time giving up booze than any pot smoker might have giving up weed.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Researchers have found that \u201clong term and regular use\u201d of pot can lead to \u201clight to moderate\u201d symptoms including cravings, insomnia, stomach pain, nausea, irritability, fatigue and headaches. The symptoms generally last a few weeks to a couple of months.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The question of whether cannabis is \u201caddictive\u201d gets thorny because of the associations with that word. Having a headache and not being able to sleep isn\u2019t exactly the stuff of the movie Panic in Needle Park<\/i>. But you wouldn\u2019t necessarily know that if you listened only to prohibitionists.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Kevin Sabet, a former government drug warrior and now the president of Smart Approaches To Marijuana advocates prohibition. He and his organization say pot is addictive, often flatly averring that it\u2019s \u201cas addictive as alcohol.\u201d He cites the fact that more regular users report being \u201caddicted\u201d to cannabis than regular users of alcohol report being \u201caddicted\u201d to hooch. He didn\u2019t mention anything about any pot-smokers experiencing delirium or going into seizures, which can happen when severe alcoholics try to quit drinking.<\/span><\/p>\n A couple of years ago, Sabet tweeted that \u201cMarijuana is addictive, and is not an offramp from opioid addiction.\u201d That would come as a big surprise to the thousands of people who say pot saved them from various drug addictions.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Alex Berenson does much the same thing, on social media and in his rather amusingly titled book Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence<\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Once, the perpetually enraged Fox Business reporter Charles Gasparino declared on Twitter that he \u201cgrew up [with] guys who were addicted [to] heroin. The pot today is in that general area.\u201d Berenson played right along, citing the higher THC levels of today\u2019s weed and asserting that \u201cpeople have told me\u201d that they\u2019ve had a harder time kicking cannabis than stopping opioid use.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n One might be on safer ground to use the word \u201cdependency,\u201d when it comes to weed, but it\u2019s probably best to avoid such terms and note that you are experiencing withdrawal symptoms.<\/span><\/p>\n And how to deal with those symptoms? The short answer might be: simply endure because in a few weeks you should be fine. And if you take up cannabis again, maybe use it less often to avoid having to go through the annoyances of withdrawal. Nobody has any definitive treatments, but some people say they\u2019ve had luck taking CBD, drinking lots of fluids, taking pain relievers and exercising.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Yoder is still very much pro-cannabis, despite her recent decision to lay off. Her experience with quitting: \u201cThe first week I couldn\u2019t eat and lost six pounds….I cried daily, had headaches and insomnia, crazy dreams. Cravings died down around week three. Day 30, though… I felt AMAZING!\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The popular\u00a0discourse surrounding cannabis has devolved to the point that people now anticipate the responses they\u2019ll get whenever they say anything remotely \u201cnegative\u201d about weed. Last week, cannabis-business veteran Kristen Yoder, a self-described \u201cBS detector\u201d known for ridiculing myths, platitudes and bad corporate behavior in the cannabis industry, posted a story on LinkedIn about dealing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11415,"featured_media":20125932,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_expiration-date-status":"","_expiration-date":0,"_expiration-date-type":"","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[]},"categories":[1469],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n