Speaking as an addict, yes most regular users are. It's not the same kind of addiction (emotional, not physical) but it's still addictive. If you smoke weed every day for a year, and stop, for the first year you stop, your suicide rate is doubled.
I’ve had a complex relationship with cannabis over the years, and one of the things that I didn’t understand before getting stuck in a daily habit of heavy use for a period of time is how hard it can be on your body to just stop.
I had major upset stomach and food aversion for a few weeks to the point that I lost 10 pounds, major sleep issues, a major spike in depressive symptoms (not just baseline depression, because I eventually got back to baseline), etc.
These symptoms are well known among the cannabis community, and there is increasing awareness in the medical community [0] especially for people who experience the most extreme forms like CHS [1], which has become increasingly common with more people using extremely high % THC products.
If you're curious about this subject, I'd highly recommend reading the thousands of 1st hand accounts of the quitting process on a subreddit like /r/petioles or /r/leaves.
It's extremely common for people to be skeptical of cannabis addiction/withdrawal [2], and I'm pretty certain this is an overcorrection after the decades of demonization and straight-up lies about cannabis. This is understandable, but the pendulum is gradually swinging back as more people experience difficulties quitting.
I'm still in favor of legal cannabis, but the addiction potential is very real and worth highlighting. Part of the issue currently is that research is decades behind at this point due to the federal scheduling of the drug, and much of the research we do have was conducted with old low-THC strains. Hopefully we'll get better studies that highlight the things many heavy users already know 1st hand.
- [0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9110555/
- [1] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21665-cannabi...
- [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/07/31/marijuana-a...
”Carolla co-hosted the syndicated radio call-in program Loveline with Drew Pinsky from 1995 to 2005 as well as the show's television incarnation on MTV from 1996 to 2000.”
Pinsky is seemingly a medical doctor specializing in addiction treatment. Just saying that he has a financial incentive to present hyperbole, not to mention a dramatic one (anything for more content in his rehab TV shows)