14 DAY TRIAL // Any marijuana smoker will tell you that he/she is in total control and can quit easily, only that they smoke just like that, for fun. Really? A new research published in the journal "Drug and Alcohol Dependence" shows that the effects of withdrawal from marijuana smoking can be as bad as those experienced when quitting tobacco smoking, meaning irritability, anger and impaired sleeping.
"These results indicate that some marijuana users experience withdrawal effects when they try to quit, and that these effects should be considered by clinicians treating people with problems related to heavy marijuana use," said lead researcher Ryan Vandrey, of the department of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
The research was made on 6 men and 6 women (the average age of the subjects was 28.2) who smoked marijuana at least 25 days monthly and at least 10 tobacco cigarettes daily. During the first week of the trial, they continued the normal pattern of smoking behavior of both drugs.
For the rest of 5 weeks of the study, subjects were randomly chosen to quit either cigarettes, marijuana or both substances for five-day periods, intercalated with nine-day periods of normal use. Urine testing checked the abstinence.
The subjects self-reported levels of withdrawal symptoms like aggression, anger, appetite change, depressed mood, irritability, anxiety/nervousness/restlessness, sleep difficulty, strange dreams and others. They also rated the discomfort they felt during each abstinence period. The results showed that withdrawal severity connected to marijuana alone and tobacco alone matched in frequency and intensity.
Details differed: Marijuana abstinence provoked a more severe sleep impairment, while mood disturbances (like anxiety and anger) were stronger in the cases of tobacco abstinence.
"This was a small study, but the findings are consistent with previous research indicating that marijuana withdrawal effects are clinically important," said Vandrey.