Can You Get Addicted to Marijuana?

As far as real drug addictions go, does marijuana really qualify as being a true addiction? Some people debate the idea that it could be a real addiction because there are generally no physical consequences when stopping the use of the drug. But on the other hand, a lot of people seem to depend heavily on smoking weed every single day of their lives and in this respect it seems like the drug might very well be more addictive then we once thought.

So what is the real truth here? Is it addictive? Or do people just fall into the patterns and the lifestyle naturally and want to keep getting high? Where do we draw the line and say that this behavior is real addiction?

Let's think for a second about what real addiction is. We can look at the medical definition, the definition in the dictionary, what behaviorists believe addiction is, and so on. For the purposes of our discussion, we are going to define addiction as this: when someone has lost the power of choice regarding their behavior. That is real addiction and almost no one would argue that someone in this state of being is not addicted. If they have truly lost the power to decide whether to take or leave a drug, then that is real addiction.

Does this happen with marijuana use? Yes it does. Most people who try marijuana get high a few times and then move on with their lives. The same would go for thousands of young people who try alcohol or other drugs for the first time in their life. It is just another experience for them and they move on and don't really think much of it.

But for a small percentage of people out there, they try a drug such as marijuana and they are hooked. They are off to the races. The drug lights up their life and they get excited and passionate about it. They obsess over it and want to do it all the time. This is addiction. What typically happens next is that the person will start to slowly restructure their life so that they are living a lifestyle that involves heavy smoking of marijuana. In other words, they drift away from friends who do not smoke weed and start making new friends who do use marijuana all the time. They start to focus and plan their activities around smoking weed and planning and scheming for ways to buy and get more of it. This is the obsessive element that accompanies any addiction. It happens with marijuana and this is just more evidence that it is an addictive drug.

Now of course, there are some who content that weed is not really addictive because there are almost no physical side effects when you stop using it suddenly. This is actually not true in heavy smokers and some people do experience signs of a withdrawal that include sluggishness and fatigue. But also, it is obvious to me that smoking weed is very addictive mentally and many people use it on a daily basis in order to escape their reality. Another way to say it is if you are relying on marijuana use on a regular basis in order to make it through your day, then that is basically using the chemical instead of coping with real life. This is an immature way to live and if you cannot walk away from such a pattern very easily then you are probably addicted to the drug.