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Comment by zubsorg | Hacker News Reader

conversely, people still don’t talk about what can happen if one continues to chronically smoke modern, high thc marijuana. Cannaboid Hyperemesis Syndrome (CHS) is a very real thing, it causes incredible stomach pain (ER trip type) and constant GI issues amongst heavy smokers. Loss of appetite, daily nausea and side affects associated with an unhealthy GI are all caused by how THC mixes with other hormones in the gut. Weed has become this untouchable, solve all problems type of drug and no one wants to hear this now.

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It will reach balance. We went from all bad to all good, which was necessary to reintroduce the drug into a society that irrationally rejected all aspects of it. Once it has settled, we will be able to talk about its problems again.

My personal pet peeve is hearing there is no addiction. I sold pot for years and some of my clients were definitely showing all the signs of addiction. My guess is that as humans, we can get addicted to pretty much anything as long as we can use it to cope with the hard parts of life.

I think many folks tend to mean "highly addictive" and "everything else" when actually saying "addictive" and "not." Stuff in the latter category can, indeed, be addictive to a baseline level or thereabouts (likely to small numbers of people; it would be interesting to see if "addicts" blur the categories more).

In response to your last sentence - I completely agree. If you ever notice that there’s some behavior that you often perform in response to some difficult thought or physical pain - carefully consider whether that habit is helping you or hurting you.

It's tough to notice those, and when you are engaged in a positive feedback loop, you are already very deep in.

> My personnal pet peeve is hearing there is no addiction. I sold pot for years and some of my clients were definitly showing all the signs of addiction.

Yep, I've had two friends who were heavy smokers and would become horrible fiends if their supply was interrupted. Whereas the rest of my heavy-smoker friends would be annoyed but wouldn't go crazy.

It seems to be like alcoholism, it only affects a percentage of users.

I do notice that as well. Quantity is not even the factor, as I do have friends smoking joints several times a day, every day, but cut their supply and they are still charming.

On the other hand, cut sugar from me and I'm an asshole during the first 3 days.

Literally anything can be mentally addicting.

I think people are referring to the idea that pot is not physically addicting, meaning that your body won't experience withdrawal symptoms when you come down.

Tons of people are habitual smokers though bordering on mental addiction.

Years of meditation lead me to believe than the line between mind and body is not clear at all. E.G: every time you are angry, you clench some part of your body. Well, if you observe yourself when you feel depressed, or stressed, you'll notice your body is full of very unpleasant sensations. They are not illusions, your body is litterally reacting to your toughs all the time, in many subtle and diverse ways.

I now deeply believe (I'll admit I have no more evidence than my subjective experience) that many of our abusive substance intakes, be it cigarettes, alcohol, weed or even coffee or sugar, are in part to cope with those unpleasant physical sensations, not just the mental burden. Slowly, you build a physical intolerance to them because you are used to be liberated from them using whatever is substance you abuse.

And hence I do think there is a physical addiction as well.

E.G: if you can't cope with stress without getting some THC, I don't classify that as only mental, as stress is not a phenomenon that is only in the mind, but affect the entire nervous and hormonal system.

Totally agree.

I think there's another class of substances though where withdrawal results in symptoms like fever, vomiting, etc. that are consistent across users regardless of their mental state.

I have heard of CHS but also know multiple chronic ultra heavy multi decade marijuana smokers and they smoke multiple times each and every singe day. And they have never had any issues. So I think this is like any other drug, a certain percentage of the population just reacts weird. The way you made it sound was as if everyone gets this condition with chronic use. I can assure you this is not the case. I am from British Columbia so we have a reputation for marijuana and a long history of its use. CHS seems like another one of the scare tactics they use.

Similarly psychosis is strongly linked with marijuana usage. In a certain portion this becomes chronic. It depends on genetic predisposition to developing it, but for those with certain genetics (and you can't know until it happens to you) you can develop it and in a certain number of cases it's a debilitating life long condition that will ruin your entire life.

The AKT1 gene variant, but there's a caveat.[1]

genotype T/T: roughly equal risk of psychosis (1.0/1.0/1.0) regardless of marijuana use.

genotype C/T: roughly 0.8 risk with no marijuana use, 1.0 risk with occasional use, and 0.9 risk with daily marijuana use

genotype C/C: roughly 0.5 risk with no marijuana use, 1.0 risk with occasional use, and 7.0* risk with daily use.

It's the daily-use C/C case that is emphasized, but note that it requires frequent use; otherwise, the risk is roughly on par or better than other genotypes.

Note: numbers and relative risks may change with better studies. It's unclear if the type/severity of psychosis is statistically the same for different genotypes.

So, the conclusion I draw is that only frequent marijuana users should be very concerned. Once a week or less isn't too worrying, but if you absolutely want to take advantage of a half-normal risk of psychosis if you have the C/C variant, consider skipping the marijuana and doing advanced meditation instead?

I wonder how difficult it would be (and how much it would cost) to have a portable AKT1 genotype assay available in marijuana dispensaries.

That and several other genetic variations, and their implications for marijuana users, are described at http://profofpot.com/genetics-thc-psychosis/

[1] https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/mari...

If abusing a drug causes extreme physical pain before causing permanent physical harm, that strikes me as being more of a feature than a bug.

To the extent that caffeine is safer than cocaine even though they're almost pharmacologically identical then that's the only reason, in terms of caffeine quickly becoming unpleasant after a certain dose.

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