Does Binge Weed Smoking Lead to Addiction?
Question by Shadoninja: Does binge weed smoking lead to addiction?
My friend is currently using weed to cope with her overwhelming emotional stress right now and it is scaring me a lot because of my experience with lost friends over weed.
She has only smoked weed 4 times in her entire life before this week and now she is planning on smoking non stop for 7 days. Should I be worried that this may be habit-forming?
Best answer:
Answer by Johnny J
I smoke weed every day………………i dont think its habit forming
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
Plain talk about drug addiction
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Ive smoked weed almost every single day for about 6 months.. and i’m fine. not saying its a good thing but its just like smoking (exept alot healthier), in the beginning it gets you high, after a few days of non-stop smoking – you dont even get really stoned. so i’m sure your friend will be fine. weed isnt physically addictive, it can be addictive if your mind is set on thinking you cant live without it.
While weed isn’t physically addicting, it is mentally and emotionally addicting. The fact that you need to binge smoke (which is stupid because there is a threshold you reach where you cannot get any higher), it shows you have an addictive personality. You are more likely to abuse things than other people and more likely to get addicted to things.
‘binge’ anything can become addiction.
i’ve had awful problems with a lot of drugs but weed actually turned out to be one of the worst.
why keep smoking something that only makes you dumber, anyway?
When you say you lost friends to weed, what do you mean? Do you mean they started hanging with a different weed-smoking crowd, or you started shunning them because of their smoking?
I have a friend who was going off the other day about how she lost friends to weed, but what happened was that she shunned them out of her life because she didn’t agree with the lifestyle. She’s also quite uneducated about the plant, and classes it with cocaine and meth. Fact is, smoking weed is actually much safer than alcohol, and she goes out binge drinking every other week. Alcohol is actually more harmful to your health and society than weed ever has been and ever will be. Really, she lost those friends due to her own ignorance.
If, however, they just started hanging with a different crowd, it more than likely isn’t just because of weed itself. They themselves might have been going through personal changes, and they might have felt like they simply wanted to go to a different crowd for whatever reason. Senior year in high school, I started moving away from my friends and started hanging with the stoners – not because I smoked weed (I never once smoked it in high school), but because I felt like I didn’t belong with my old friends anymore – we didn’t have much in common anymore, and I felt the stoners were more down-to-earth and I felt more at home with them. I still loved my old friends – after all, we had been through a lot together – but I needed change.
I have personally done a ton of research on weed (watched a ton of documentaries, read countless articles and studies) and I’ve written a major essay on it.
Anything and everything can be addicting, depending on the individual and if they have the addiction gene/addictive personality.
There are two types of addiction. Physical and psychological.
Physical addictions include alcohol, meth, heroin, tobacco, caffeine, etc. These drugs make your body physically dependent on them. For instance, if you drink a lot of caffeine, you might start getting headaches if you don’t drink a coffee when you first wake up. If you go without meth or heroin, you can get terrible, violent withdrawals.
Here are some common withdrawal symptoms for heroin:
“nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, chills, a runny nose, goosebumps, sweating, tears, insomnia, aches and pains in the muscles and joints, extreme restlessness, yawning, abdominal cramps, and dilated pupils. Many patients also experience psychological symptoms including anxiety and depression, with severe cravings for the drug. They can also develop muscle spasms in the legs which cause them to kick.” (http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-the-most-common-heroin-withdrawal-symptoms.htm)
Weed addiction isn’t physical, it is classed as psychological. Your body doesn’t need it, you think you need it.
Psychological addictions include:
Weed, shoplifting, shopping, gaming, gambling, internet, in some casing even things like plastic surgery.
All psychological addictions can actually bring on withdrawal symptoms, like anxiety, depression, restlessness, etc.
Weed can become habit forming and psychologically addicting. The thing is, only a very small percentage of users actually develop a dependency to it. Weed is actually a pretty safe substance, as long as it isn’t abused and is used responsibly.
Thing is, it’s kind of stupid if she’s planning on binge smoking it for a week, because all that’s going to do is not make her high anymore when she smokes it, because her body will quickly become tolerant to it. Smoking the occasional herb is far from bad (It, contrary to popular belief, doesn’t kill brain cells. A study done by the University of Saskatchewan suggested it might actually stimulate the growth of new ones. It is physically impossible to OD on it, there is not a single case of weed overdose known to man. It doesn’t cause cancer – it’s actually been shown to kill off cancer cells and shrink tumor sizes, a study showed that weed smokers were less likely to develop several cancers (brain, neck, prostate, etc))
However, too much of anything, good or bad, isn’t good for you.
It could become habit forming for her, or she might just get bored of it. Whether or not she becomes dependent on it depends on her tendencies.
I, at the moment, would be more worried about what’s going on with her and her life than weed becoming habit forming. You should talk to her about it and ask what’s going on. Although I believe that people should smoke weed if they choose and it actually aids their depression, and I think people should have the right to smoke an occasional joint to relax after a stressful day, to suddenly plan out a weed binge smoking week without already smoking it regularly sounds a little off. But yeah, although it doesn’t happen to everyone and many people are able to quit cold-turkey with no problem, long term heavy smoking can cause some withdrawal symptoms after a while and it can become habit forming.
yes, most definitely !
weed wont lead to a real addiction.
Anyone who says that weed is not addictive doesn’t know anything. It’s not physically addicting, but it is mentally and emotionally. And it takes a long time for the addiction to become strong, but the possibility is there, and it is a concern. Because of the misconceptions about these things, though, people just smoke weed all day every day, or at least once a day for years and then they find they have a problem.
My mom smoked weed every day from the time she was 16, and now she’s 40. She is addicted. She tried to quit once, because she had to because she was charged with possession and needed to do regular drug tests, and I could not even manage living with her for a week into it. It was terrible. Awful. That’s when I first realized she was addicted. She still won’t admit to it. But after that, I realized that the reason why were so poor is because she spend all of her money on weed. As well as alcohol. Because of her charge of possession (from getting pulled over and getting a DUI), her license was taken away as well. If she hadn’t of had weed on her, she wouldn’t have gotten a DUI because her alcohol level was literally .09 over the limit or something. She lost her job because she couldn’t get there. We were almost homeless. Our power was turned off multiple times.
This kind of stuff happened all throughout my childhood and teen years. And she never did any other drugs. Literally. Just smoked weed and drank. It CAN ruin your life if you don’t use it responsibly.
Marijuana is the most frequently used illegal drug in the United States and here are some staggering statistics about marijuana and addiction.
Nearly 69 million Americans over the age of 12 have tried marijuana at least once.
One survey showed that among teens between the ages of 12 and 17, the average age of first experimenting with marijuana was 14 years old.
About 4% of American adults smoke pot at least once a year.
Roughly 1% of adults abuse pot.
One in 300 adults have a marijuana addiction.
As many as 30% of today’s teenagers smoke marijuana.
According to United Nations statistics, 141 million people around the world take marijuana in some form or another.
Normal coordination reflexes are lessened 41% after having smoked just 1 joint and 63% after having smoked 2 joints.
Marijuana use interferes with brain functions, and it has been linked to other mental health problems in young people, such as depression, anxiety and conduct disorders.
Recent research suggests possible associations between marijuana use and schizophrenia, along with other psychotic disorders.
In 2007, approximately 5 percent of high school seniors used marijuana on a daily basis.
When comparing marijuana and alcohol use, marijuana is more strongly associated with juvenile crime.
From 1992 to 2006, the potency of marijuana increased by 175 percent.
If you think that your friend is abusing marijuana please contact a local or school counselor for treatment. Best of luck.