Drug Education Articles

DRUG EDUCATION ARTICLES


  1. Getting off the Weed, Withdrawal
  2. Is Medical Marijuana Beneficial for Cancer Patients?
  3. What is the Drug "Lean"
  4. What is Ear Wax aka Hashish
  5. Dangerous Drugs Marketed As Bath Salts
  6. Salvia a Dangerous Hallucinogen
  7. Spice and K2

Getting Off the Weed, the Withdrawal Period

Giving up the partying and the lost weekends, resisting the urge to "Mow the Grass", or "split a spliff", whatever you call it, sooner or later, almost every druggie decides it's time to hang up their bong and get straight.

That's usually when they find out that what they thought was a harmless pastime was actually a real addiction. Most of them will fail over and over to quit; even when facing legal problems surrounding their drug use, they often still can't stop toking.

In the end, many dope smokers will face major penalties because of their inability to once and for all, give up the "Gentle Herb".

The good news is, there are things you can do to improve your chances of successfully quitting. We'll talk about some of those later in this series of articles. But first we should know what is likely to happen when you first try to get straight.

1.In the short term

Getting straight from weed is much less painful than some of the other addictive drugs of abuse. The withdrawal won't have you doubled over, shaking and vomiting like heroin withdrawal. You won't go into spasms or violent shuddering like getting off addiction to some of the "anti-anxiety" medications. And I've never heard of delusions or psychoses like alcohol withdrawal can cause.

But make no mistake, withdrawal from ganja has real symptoms, physical symptoms as well as psychological.

Commonly reported symptoms of initial withdrawal for heavy users include anxiety, cravings, irritability, headaches, boredom, and insomnia. These can last from a few days to a couple weeks. This is the body trying to adjust to the sudden loss of not just THC, the main drug in weed, but several other toxins in marijuana smoke. It (the body) has been working overtime to rid itself of these pollutants, most likely for years. Suddenly changing all that is quite a shock to the system.

Chemical alterations in the brain and the rest of the nervous system caused by months and years of smoking marijuana must somehow re-balance now. This is made more difficult because of the emotional challenges the former user is going through, discovering how much time and opportunity he or she wasted while stoned, trying to recover relationships with family and friends who were probably alienated by the drugs. Often there are legal problems that have to be faced and other responsibilities to be confronted as well.

In other words, life isn't going to give you a couple of months off to recover. Stress during recovery aggravates the withdrawal symptoms and drives one out of every three users to relapse back to smoking weed during their first few days. You need to hit the ground running and confront what you were avoiding while you were stoned.

This period will pass eventually. How long it lasts depends on too many factors to list here, but the good news is you can speed this process up.

Withdrawal and the first few days and weeks are obviously tough, but before long you will be through the initial reactions to quitting and then you can get back to the business of actually living your life.

In the next article of this series, we'll look at the broader changes you're facing. The life-style changes.