I AM SOMEWHAT CONCERNED I MAY ACTUALLY BE ADDICTED TO MARIJUANA

I put this in Welp, Welp! over General Discussion but only barely. I'm not joking around here, I'm serious about this, it's just not the most serious thing to be serious about, if that makes sense, so I decided not to take it overly seriously and welp it.

I realize that the indie gamedev corner of the "nerd community" shares the "greater nerd community's" tendency towards not drinking or doing drugs. That's fine, your choices are valid, all I ask is that you not judge/get judgy. I cannot stand judgmental people.

A few things that anyone at all connected with cannabis culture in North America knows already:

1) Literally no one has ever died of a marijuana overdose, ever. There seems to BE no LD50 for humans.
2) Marijuana is not at all physically addictive.
3) Marijuana has lots of legitimate medical uses, and even when used purely for recreational purposes, is far healthier than other recreational drugs like alcohol.
4) In spite of all of the above, cannabis is still a Schedule 1 drug in the US, the same as HEROIN, because the US is fucking retarded.

Of those points, it's only the one I've put in my bold that I have any doubts about. Those doubts started nearly a year ago when I learned an acquaintance was in Marijuana Anonymous. I had no idea such an organization existed. Still, I rationalized myself, that only means it's habit forming: addictive is different.

I smoke because I have an incurable autoimmune disorder and marijuana is the only truly helpful short term medicine for it, because of its powerful anti-inflammatory properties. I find THC (not CBD, THC) to be the best short acting anti-inflammatory drug and beat out only by prednisone over all, and believe you me, prednisone while perfectly legal and not at all a "fun" drug comes with its own basket of issues.

I also have a bevy of mental issues, some of which I have been told are endemic to the "millennial" generation, which I've always felt slightly too old to belong to: PTSD, Clinical Anxiety Disorder, Clinical Depression with Suicidal Ideation, Bi-Polar Disorder. (Pretty much everything but ADD and frankly I should have just played along with that too for the adderall.)

I am less confident that marijuana consistently helps with any of these conditions than I am that it retards my immune system's aggressive destruction of my body. There are many reasons for this, some of them Catch-22s. If I smoke (or otherwise ingest) enough cannabis to overcome my social anxiety, for instance, I am now so stoned that it's a bad idea for me to be socializing with people. Marijuana has never particularly helped with my depression, and has mainly just transmuted depression from a feeling of malaise and lack of motivation to do anything to feelings of "fuck it" and "I'm going to sleep" which is at best a lateral move. Marijuana helps with PTSD and other more day-to-day stressors, but again, in a way that favors escapism over actually dealing with things (this isn't a problem in and of itself: see videogames). At best, applying marijuana to a negative headspace is very imprecise, like whacking my brain's crazy center with a bludgeon. It might snap me out of it, it might make it much worse, it might have no effect at all, or most commonly it might have a lateral effect: I feel different, but not better.

I have a medical marijuana card in the state I live in now and I purchase my legal, medical cannabis legally for prices so low that they would have seemed literally miraculous back when I was using the drug illegally in my home state. Marijuana is a heavy part of my creative cycle and has been since 2008.

Most marijuana users know there is something called a "t-break" (t standing for tolerance and/or THC) where basically, you stop using the drug for somewhere between a week and a month and it knocks your tolerance down a lot, so you get high more easily and with less product. I have attempted this time and time again this year but not managed to go more than 3-5 days w/o using.

Even just going off of marijuana for a short time, like three days, can be helpful in this respect. It's not long enough to impact your tolerance but it is long enough for the thc to leave your body, meaning that you can at least fully sober up, and thus the next time you do get high, you'll be much more likely to appreciate it. But even going three days without using is a real challenge for me. I can count the number of mini-breaks I've taken this year on both hands. I've lost count of the number of times I've intended to do

Yesterday I was contemplating a t-break as I so often am. Then I had the thought that Halloween is coming up Thursday, and I'm definitely going to want to get my debauch on Thursday, so this isn't a good week for it, I'll push it back another week, so I smoked last night (I won't say how much I smoked, this is not in the spirit of dudebro braggadocio just that the amount of cannabis I need to effect me is pretty gross). Today I woke up and thought...Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday...perfect for three days to totally sober up and get the THC out of my system before whatever debauchery All Hallows' Eve should bring. And, I thought, I'm very low on flower, so if I smoke up everything I have, then I'll be out, so there will be no temptation to smoke.

And now I am having just-sub-panic levels of anxiety over not having any marijuana* in the house, and seriously considering going to a dispensary tomorrow to get some flower. The idea of having no smokable pot in the house is actually frightening me. I feel like Homer Simpson screaming even louder when the billboard is revealed to say "DIET" and not "DIE".

My forebrain--watchamacallit, ego?--keeps making decisions to stop using, at least temporarily, which are undermined very quickly by my id/subconscious/whatever you want to call it.

That doesn't mean it's addictive, part of my brain shouts, just that it's very, very habit forming and you've formed one hell of a habit. And I have. There are all kinds of activities (like watching anime) that I have done while smoking so many times that it feels weird to do them when not smoking, like I'm missing out on something. Likewise, even if I can't afford to go out on Friday and Saturday nights, part of me still insists that I am young enough that I am still obligated to "party" on those nights, so I wind up staying in and getting wasted. Finally, I seem to have a problem with being sober and lucid in general. On the days when I manage not to smoke pot, my alcohol consumption increases correspondingly so I don't have to face reality. And as alluded to, alcomohol is worse for me on pretty much every level than marijuana which I guess I'm admitting here isn't that great for me either. Marijuana fuels other habits that are bad for me too. Oversleeping and a pattern of extreme binge-eating later night (after unintentionally fasting all day) are the biggest ones.

So if I decide with my conscious mind not to put a chemical in my blood for three measly days and my subconscious mind and body insist that I'm doing it anyway and can't go three lousy days without it, if that is not addiction...then what's the difference?

w/o any moralizing, plz, how concerned about this do you, as internet strangers (and in some cases internet buddies)think should I be? And...advise, if you like?

Um, everyone is allowed to have an opinion but like...if you are a heavy pot smoker or were a heavy pot smoker and cut down, you're more likely to have an informed opinion (duh?).

* I do have concentrates and edibles but neither of those is something you use when you just want to smoke a joint or a bowl, and for me they tend to both fall victim to my high tolerance and contribute substantially to racking up my tolerance.

author=Illy
I'm not sure what advice you're seeking here.Are you just wanting advice to try to see if you can cut down on how much you use? I can see how it would 'seem' addicting with the way it's become habitual, but you never know with science.

If you are looking for suggestions on how to 'curb your need' for the drug, I'd suggest baby steps. Take it like you would exercise. A little at a time, over a period of time, before escalating to the next step. Take one day off a week. A few weeks down, increase it to two a week. Stagger them apart, don't go back to back. Eventually add more and more time off and see if you start to feel less stressful about not being on the drug?

Actually, Illy, (emphasis mine) all of that advice is in line with what I'm seeking here. As is "you can do it" type encouragement (prior to my failing to do it) and (after the first few times I fail to do it) "well, okay, you screwed up this time but that doesn't mean you can't try again" type encouragement. I find that if I am accountable to someone, even if it's a website and a website that's being very nice, that generally helps me control my behavior better than when I'm accountable solely to myself.

"Do it" here means cut down on my weed consumption in a meaningful and lasting way, tbc.

Besides that kind of general advice, the only input I'm really looking for here is whether anyone reading this would personally classify this as an addiction, or would refrain from using that word and label it a lesser form of dependence.

author=LockeZ
Sounds like your life is supremely fucked up

Oh, definitely, 100%, good "guess". You are 1000% right. (It can be hard to tell over the internet, but I am not being sarcastic. My life IS supremely fucked up.

author=LockeZ
you should probably figure out what you're running from so hard.

...and I know what it is, but it's none of your goddamn business.

(One thing that it totally isn't, but which really doesn't help, is living in a country where the president is a racist rapist traitor who thinks that the subset of "neonazis" can somehow exist within the set of "very fine people".

The ambient psychic energy in the US right now is very, very toxic.)

I don't think this kind of lifestyle is something that's gonna end well as the years roll on, autoimmune disorder or no.

Emphasis mine. I'm not sure you really understand the kind of disease I'm talking about. We're talking about something in the general category of Lupus, Crohn's Disease, or MS. Forget my lifestyle, my very life is not going to end well because the disease itself statistically is much more likely than not to kill me in the next 15 years (and frighteningly likely to kill me in the next 5 years). Considering that's what I'm facing, I ask you (rhetorically) why not be high all the time?

Also, I know of aging and aged and just plain old cannabis users that seem quite happy with their use of the drug at an advanced age, whether they were prescribed it for cancer/cancer treatment side effects or are just an aging hippy, like "The Dude" from The Big Lebowski 30 years later. Not sure if you were trying to imply that being a stoner is a phase in life one outgrows, I kind of got that vibe, if not, nvm this part.

author=Kylaila
one billion words

Thank you for your insights, I don't have the time right now to give your post the time it deserves, so I will make a mental note to do so later.

Edit:

For those of you who have mentioned therapy, I see a therapist as often as I am able to afford, which is not very (I'm mad poor yo). I am also on the following (prescribed) psychiatric medications in the following dosages:

• Quetiapine (generic for Seroquel), mood stabilizer, 100mg at night, 50mg in the morning.
• Escitalopram (generic for Lexapro), antidepressant, 20mg per day.
• Buproprion XL (generic for Wellbutrin XL), antidepressant, 300mg per day.
• Clonazepam (generic for Klonopin), benzodiazipine, anti-anxiety, mild tranquilizer, 1mg tablet 3/day as needed for anxiety/stress.

With all that in my bloodstream idk how lucid I am at the best of times. But on the flip side of that coin, anyone would be right to point out that even with all of that crap in my bloodstream, I still seek further escape from reality with other drugs/alcohol.

I wish to eradicate the stigma surrounding mental illness in this country: I figure that step one is refusing to feel at all ashamed of my own.