Cannabis can very well lead to dependency, I struggled with it for the majority of my adult life. I totally agree that illegalising it is laughable and it's by no means as dangerous or easy to get addicted to it as is the case with benzodiazepines, but it is also no joke. Of course I am talking about "recreational" use, not medical.I really dislike the handwaving nature with which the very real and especially psychologically quite harmful side-effects of Cannabis are discussed for the most part. Mind you, I believed it to be harmless for the longest time, too.
mandmandam|3 years ago
My eyes near roll through my head when I hear people say this.
Anything can lead to dependency. ANYTHING. Sex, judo, farting for attention. Scratching your sack. Making shitty tik-toks.
The withdrawal symptoms for cannabis are so, so, so so far from that of opiates or nicotine; or benzos, as you mention, that yeah, you can basically say there are no withdrawal symptoms.
Some people are prone to dependence on things, due to their physiology or psychological make-up. Those people are far, far, far better off using cannabis than benzos or opiates. Look at how much deaths from overdoses go down in legalized areas. That applies in both medicinal and recreational contexts.
> ...very real and especially psychologically quite harmful side-effects of Cannabis
Wut. Quite harmful compared to what - water? Water kills more people than cannabis does.
On balance, far more people find psychological benefit than harm from cannabis. Same with physical health. Handwave that away.
Compare the side-effects from cannabis to ibuprofen. Come on man, let's keep some perspective here.
sph|3 years ago
So, who cares, right? Withdrawal symptoms of sugar are nothing compared to opiates, yet it's a bigger epidemic than opiate addiction. But since it doesn't make your skin crawl and hallucinate, it doesn't matter?
Cannabis is quite benign in the grand scheme of things, but let's stop saying it's the cure to all problems and that it has no downsides. Like GP I have been through the marijuana addiction phase and it wasn't fun. I'm prone to get addicted to stuff, so that's on me, my quitting my 5 joints a day was almost as hard as quitting my pack a day smoking habit. The difference is that smoking didn't turn me into an idiot pot-head that burned away a big part of his teenage years, of which I can't remember much. Certainly nicotine didn't trigger my anxiety which almost turned into psychosis like THC did. Talking just about dependency and the physical withdrawal means ignoring a big part of what marijuana smoking actually does, something stoners really do not want to talk about.