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Comment by bcook | Hacker News Reader

Generic classes/treatments/therapy on addiction already exist. Marijuana has not been proven to be physically addictive like alcohol & heroin. Psychological addiction can happen with anything, so that is why I mention generic addiction treatment.

I think your point is valid though. We can always learn more, especially if it can help.

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I so dislike the word "addiction" because it puts every type of cyclical behavior in one bucket.

Even worse is the word "addict", which is dirty and degrading and helpless.

Just like the word "drugs" or "criminal". There are so many shades to it that one word just doesn't cut it.

The word we use to state the issue gives us the frame of where to look for solutions, hence a bad statement can lead to bad solutions.

For example, instead of "addiction to marijuana" try using the expression "relationship with the marijuana plant".

This subtile change in statement shifts the domain of the issue and lets us look for a solution in new places. Now we're dealing with a relationship (with a plant) - might it be a replacement for a relationship with a human (current or previous) ? Who is it replacing in my life ?

And so on, you get the point ...

Reframing my "addiction to tobacco" to "relationship with the tobacco plant" has helped me quit smoking for good, because I was not thinking of it as a mechanistic dependency on a substance (nicotine), but as a case of relationship with a plant.

She was my closest friend, my protector, my thinking partner, but she was taking a toll on my health, hence we had to part ways. Peacefully and respectfully, we separated and I've been free ever since.

The point I'm trying to make is that we're still far from a clear understanding of what "addiction" is and how to approach it at the root and that's were green pastures for research and businesses exist.

If you replace a word with another fairly quickly the positive and negative connotations follow it. Ex: African Americans and Black are much closer together than they used to be.

I usually hear the term "addiction" used more for the physical cases such as alcohol or narcotics, and "dependency" more in the psychological sense.

To qualify as addition it must not be only habitual but also harmful.

citation?

The dictionary, for starters. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/addiction

As someone who has been through many treatments, meetings, clinics, etc, regarding addiction, you are focusing on the wrong thing. Who cares what it is called... go get help first, any help, then worry about arguing about semantics later.

Culture is an interesting issue. At uni everyone smoked, which annoyed me because I got headaches from it. Decades later grown up in the burbs, the idea that I'd pound on a random neighbors door and smoke up is simply absurd.

For at least some addicts, they need a complete cultural transplanting, age change, or even social class change.

For an analogy think of alcohol pretty much owning 22 year olds at college bars as a cultural issue... short of going hermit mode or being really poor (that was me) or moving to a different non-western culture, there's no avoiding it, which is rough on people with susceptibility to alcohol addiction. Send them to rehab all you want, but until you remove them from the culture they're just gonna drink again.

>Decades later grown up in the burbs, the idea that I'd pound on a random neighbors door and smoke up is simply absurd.

Im sorry to hear that

I've never been sure what the difference between physical and psychological addiction is supposed to mean anyway. What we call psychology is a complex of physiological processes. What matters is that marijuana accounts for 17% of rehab admission, more than any other drug with the exception of alcohol. Cute sophistries that we're also addicted to coffee or air will not change the fact that this "psychological" marijuana addiction is a serious threat to quality of life.

Judge asks "jail or rehab?"

"Jail, your honor", said no one ever.

>Rehab stats for weed have nothing to do with addiction. Primary marijuana admissions were less likely than all admissions combined to be self- or individually referred to treatment (18 vs. 37 percent). Primary marijuana admissions were most likely to be referred by a criminal justice source (52 percent) [Table 2.6].

page 21

http://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/2003_2013_TED...

Anecdotal, but I do know one person who chose jail when given the choice between successfully completing rehab and staying clean for a year, or 90 days in jail immediately. She knew that rehab probably wouldn't work and she'd end up in jail anyway (with a longer sentence) so she just got it over with.

The difference between physical and psychological addiction is that things that cause physical addiction are actually addictive themselves — that is, using them tends to create dependency as a matter of course — whereas psychological addiction depends on the user's state of mind, and people without that state of mind can use them safely. You can be psychologically addicted to virtually anything.

When people point out that marijuana isn't physically addictive, the point isn't that people's psychological addictions aren't serious. The point is that they don't appear to reflect a danger posed by marijuana.

There are definitely physical dependencies that develop with THC, perhaps not "addiction" but the body does get used to it to the point that withdrawal is a real and physical problem if you've been using it a lot and at strong doses.

I'm not so sure if we can actually draw lines between physical and psychological since brain can control your needs and wants. People can get addicted to anything and withdrawals suck.

There are some things are genuinely physical. Here is an example: Marijuana is known to constrict the vessels of the brain. Over the long term, the brain compensates for this to return the vessels to a normal state. When you suddenly stop smoking cannabis routinely, the vessels expand because the THC is not maintaining their restriction. Expanded vessels in the brain are a common suspected cause of migraines, and severe headaches are a top reported symptom of cannabis withdrawal. Interestingly, this effect of cannabis on the brain's vascular system also makes it a highly-researched drug for migraine treatment. It would be like taking migraine medication every day for a long time, then suddenly stopping and getting a flood of headaches as the brain re-adjusts.

Now, I don't think this is "psychological."

That's not what physical dependence is.

Note that cannabis is not listed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_dependence#Drugs_that...

I don't know the right term, but there are very real physical withdrawal symptoms that are due to the body no longer getting a chemical it was previously getting routinely. To me that seems like "dependence" but perhaps there is more academically correct term.

Ah, fair enough.

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