I know people that have kicked opiates and tobacco cold turkey - but who could not give up using cannabis if their lives depended on it. This is a legitimate concern in the current tide of de-criminalization / legalization.
That's more than a little bit anecdotal, physical and psychological dependence on cannabis ranks well below opiates, tobacco, even alcohol. Not to mention the fact that people's lives literally do depend on quitting opiates and tobacco, while cannabis not at all.
Totally anecdotal. My point is that I think that addiction in general runs deeper than we currently understand and that we shouldn't underestimate the potential for people to become dependent on something newly available just because it is broadly conceived as harmless.
I don't think addiction or overuse is a problem for regular CBD users. I think this article is referring to addiction to the pyschological effects of THC.
Great point and I concur: The people I know who struggle with this are not CBD users - so yes let's keep those two things separate in this discussion for sure.
People will struggle with addiction for literally anything you can be addicted to, substances or not. Can be generally positive things like exercise, more neutral things, or negative things like very-damaging drugs (alcohol is here certainly).
Where does weed fall on that line? I don't really know. But saying we should ban something because it's possible to be addicted to it is fairly silly.
All it took was an increased copay when I switched healthcare providers for me to stop taking ADHD pills. Really wasn't a big deal. I'm allegedly slightly more irritable.
Agreed. Myself, I've been on pills and quit without issue. I can smoke tobacco(cigs, pipes, nicotine gum, etc) for weeks or months and just put it down. Quitting weed was rough. No sleep. No appetite. Depression. Aggression. Then all that went away and I felt like my mind was razor sharp. I could finally start to get things done and negotiate my way through life.
It is difficult but not impossible to overdose on caffeine and die. I'm not sure if this is the toxicity that the previous poster meant, but it could be. It appears that 30 cups of coffee is about the threshold where you get to serious danger, but that sounds insane... I've got terrible nausea after four or five cups of light roast (which has more caffeine).
Caffeine pills & powder are far more dangerous. It is very easy to overdose on them, and death is not out of the question. It still isn't common.
With marijuana, it is virtually impossible to have an overdose that kills you (It's very difficult to find sources on CBD/THC overdose):
> An overdose on marijuana is dissimilar to overdoses on other drugs because marijuana consumption, in and of itself, is not life-threatening. But using too much of the drug can have hazardous results, which may increase the risk of death.
> For instance, someone who consumed a lot of marijuana may be unaware of their environment, which can lead to accidents or falls. Furthermore, marijuana intoxication has been linked, in some studies, with psychosis,3 a condition in which the individual is disconnected with reality, typically resulting in hallucinations, delusions, or extreme paranoia. A person who is having a psychotic episode may put him or herself in dangerous situations due to confusion or detachment. [0]
> Caffeine pills & powder are far more dangerous. It is very easy to overdose on them, and death is not out of the question. It still isn't common.
Caffeine pills usually come in 200mg. Caffeine has an LD50 of about 200mg/kg of body mass. In US units a 150lb person would have to consume 68 caffeine pills to reach LD50 levels.
> For THC, there are varying figures, ranging from 1,260 milligrams of THC per kilogram of body weight down to 666 mg/kg. Even going with the lowest figure, a 175-pound man would have to consume more than 53 whole grams of pure THC all at once. [...] Need more perspective? Caffeine has an LD50 of 192 mg/kg, and nicotine is around 60 mg/kg.
The word "toxic" is overloaded and there are at least two main types of "toxicity" - acute and chronic. Caffeine is indeed more acutely toxic than cannabis in the sense that one could die from taking waay too much caffeine at once, but no deaths from THC overdose have ever been observed. Caffeine however seems to be almost entirely non-toxic chronically. Aside from addiction, regular caffeine intake doesn't seem to harm one's body or mental functioning in any way. Frequent habitual cannabis use has more negative effects, such as impaired memory.
