Author: Gary Jackson

Know the Negative Effects and Risks of Marijuana Use

However, how a person engages with marijuana is an important factor as well. For instance, one study found that “solitary use,” or using the drug by yourself, was a strong sign that dependence would form in the future. Experts are finding a link between the age you begin using cannabis and the likelihood that you’ll develop a dependence on it. One study found that people who used cannabis starting at age 14 to 15 had a higher probability of developing dependence.

How Pot Affects Your Mind and Body

More than 1 in 10 drinkers say they have used marijuana in the past year. Combining alcohol and marijuana at the same time roughly doubled the odds of drunk driving or legal, professional, or personal problems, compared to drinking alone. Many people who use marijuana regularly notice that it boosts their appetite. They call this “the munchies.” Some research suggests that might help people with AIDS, cancer, or other illnesses regain weight.

  1. “There are people who have a glass or two of wine a day,” said Hart.
  2. But family ties may also help some people avoid progressing to a state of addiction.
  3. Like other medicinal treatments for medical conditions, medicinal marijuana can have negative effects even though it is used to treat medical conditions.
  4. If you think you or someone you care about may have a problem with marijuana, contact one of our Admissions Navigators today for more information about finding treatment options for marijuana addiction.
  5. The negative effects of marijuana are not limited to recreational marijuana.

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On the other hand, for those who started using cannabis after age 15, the risk of developing a dependence drastically decreased. For instance, marijuana confiscated by law enforcement today contains an average of 15% THC compared to less than 4% in marijuana confiscated in the 1990s. Researchers are investigating if higher potency is the reason for an increase in emergency department visits by people testing positive for marijuana. Even if not physically or chemically dependent on marijuana, some people will develop a psychological dependence upon the drug. This often persists despite a person knowing they have a dependence or wanting to quit. In addition, it has been found that marijuana dependence may affect your ability to respond to the neurotransmitter dopamine, which allows us to feel pleasure.

Effects of Marijuana Addiction

They don’t get caught with marijuana and never enter the legal system. Instead of marijuana’s sedating effects, a person might get insomnia. And instead of marijuana’s characteristic dream suppression, someone in marijuana withdrawal might have intense, vivid dreams when asleep. “A person is not dependent on a drug unless they experience some kind of negative outcome upon stopping their use,” said Reiman. Over time, users may graduate from smoking marijuana to using it in high-dosage edible forms or propane-extracted concentrates called dabs. The brain may become resistant to the effects of the drug in an effort to protect itself, so that next time the person uses the drug, it doesn’t have as strong an effect.

Help for Cannabis Use Disorder

Lack of regulation means you can’t always know exactly what you’re buying. Studies note that early marijuana use can interrupt normal development of gray matter, a type of brain tissue that helps control mental functions, increasing schizophrenia risks. Early exposure to marijuana is also linked to changes in areas of the brain that are often connected with psychosis. If you use these drugs more, you’re at risk for opioid use disorder.

By the eighth day, the monkey vanished, and I haven’t seen him since,” Welch wrote. In an attempt to return to baseline, it will compensate for the difference, raising a function that the drug lowered, like heart rate, or reducing a function that the drug boosted, like mood. “The problem isn’t that they are releasing less dopamine, but that the dopamine stimulation in the brain is having a very attenuated effect,” Volkow said. “I’ve always found quitting marijuana to be easy when I needed to because of travel reasons or personal reasons, or professional, or what have you,” he told Healthline.

Finally, one of the most consistent neuroimaging findings in addiction is that of dysregulation of frontal cortical regions involved with executive function including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the ACC and the inferior frontal cortex. In addition to its role in HPA axis dysfunction and reward processing, the hyperactivation of the eCS may also play a role in the executive dysfunction sometimes observed in cannabis use. The eCS is highly active in adolescent brain development, particularly in the PFC, a region that exercises executive function (Dow-Edwards and Silva 2017). Activation of presynaptic CB1 receptors inhibits glutamate transmission onto GABAergic cells in the PFC, reducing the function of inhibitory prefrontal circuits. Therefore, hyperactivation by exogenous cannabinoids during development could disrupt the maturation of GABAergic interneurons in the PFC and desynchronize PFC circuits (Caballero and Tseng 2012).

A pathway to abuse

Here we summarize findings about the effects of chronic cannabis use on these circuits. Now, new research finds that higher concentrations of THC lead to higher rates of addiction and mental health problems. The data come from a new meta-analysis published in the journal Lancet Psychiatry that included 20 studies comparing the effects of higher and lower potencies of marijuana. At the same time, the cannabis available today is more potent than ever before. A systematic review published in Addiction found that levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)—the active ingredient in marijuana—has been increasing for decades. The review found that, in a gram of herbal cannabis, the part typically smoked, THC concentrations have increased by approximately 2.9 milligrams each year since the 1970s.

After examining the acute and long-term effects of cannabis, CUD appears to conform to the general patterns of changes described in the Koob and Volkow model of addiction. Cognitive dysfunction, specifically impairments in executive domains, after chronic cannabis use is a key feature of the neurobiological model of addiction (Koob and Volkow 2016). Deficits in executive function after chronic cannabis use have been shown in both preclinical and clinical studies. In one preclinical study, chronically administering a synthetic cannabinoid agonist to adolescent rats impaired short-term working memory in adulthood (Renard et al. 2016). Specifically, this chronic cannabinoid exposure altered PFC structure and impaired cortical synaptic plasticity from reduced long-term potentiation (LTP) in the hippocampus-PFC circuit.