Marijuana May Help Treat Addiction To Painkillers And Heroin

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If I may ask, why do you smoke it?

It's relaxing after a stressful day, it stimulates creativity, and it's the best hangover cure. Also vaping is the thing now, not so much smoking. And it's legal here. I was fascinated by it before I even knew what it was. As a kid I even tried smoking lawn grass! In hindsight, I used it to cope with autism. It turns out psychological pain is neurologically similar to physical pain. The good thing is weed isn't addictive.

That being said, I recently experienced severe alcohol withdrawal, and weed didn't help.

Thank you. I agree with your position on this subject. The misuse of drugs can be a deadly road to travel.

I have a close family member that is basically lost to drug addiction. I no longer matter to him because I will not fund his drug addiction. He started on marijuana as a teenager and then went to Oxycontin pills and then got into meth. His brain is no longer sharp as it once was due to the drug use. He was in rehab and doing well resisting temptation until he injured his leg last year. Unfortunately, his medical doctor prescribed him a bunch of Oxycontin, which he took and relapsed back. Drug addiction is a real disease that really is a life long fight to control.

To add to the problem, my relative lives in a state that legalized small amounts of marijuana and he has started using that again. Gee, according to the article that started this topic, he should now be able to ween himself off of the Oxycontin right? That is not what is happening in his case. He is taking both drugs to get as high as he can each time he uses. What makes matters worse is that he is now actively growing more of it in his house than is allowed in that state. He and his wife are also using said drugs around their two small kids. It is only a matter of time before the feds step in and take them.

I realize that marijuana does have medicinal properties in certain situations. Like any drug, it can also cause damage when misused. It is not as harmless as some would like to make it seem.

This thread reminds me of the early days of alcohol treatment in the "modern" age. LSD was considered as it gave the "patient" a spiritual experience.
Niacin was also looked at by the same person that suggested the above.
Opioid addiction ain't pretty. It's an equal opportunity destroyer.
Early recovery for folks that get and stay clean isn't either. (Pretty that is)
Medication aided withdrawal and early recovery has it's place, say some. In my experience seeing others go through the process, marijuana as a cure or marijuana maintenance is not an answer.

Do you have any evidence to back that up?

Methadone is involved in 1 out of 3 accidental overdose opiate deaths per year in the US, despite only representing 2% of opiate prescriptions written.
And, to be clear: methadone is very much not just prescribed for opiate dependence. In the last 25 years, methadone became commonly prescribed as a painkiller - especially to Medicaid patients - because it was cheap. At one point, methadone was on the Medicaid "preferred drug" list for more than half the states in the US *as a long-acting painkiller*...
And that - despite the CDC, FDA, and DEA all having issued public statements/warnings on the dangers of methadone and recommending it not be prescribed as a painkiller (reserving it solely for severe, life-threatening opiate dependence).

One major problem with methadone is that its painkilling effects only last up to 8 hours, but its respiratory depressant effects last for over 48 hours.
West Virginia removed methadone from its preferred drug list, and instituted a "pre-authorization" policy requiring review of prescriptions... one case caught by the reviewing body was a prescription of 60/mg a day - twice the recommended starting dose - to an opiate-naive patient. A member of the body had to call the physician to educate them that could have been a fatal dose.
Washington state saw a reduction in opiate overdoses after providing specific education on the long-acting effects of methadone to the top 20 prescribers of methadone in the state.

Methadone is involved in 5,000 accidental OD deaths in the US per year.
[http://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/methadoneoverdoses/]
Alcohol is involved in 2,200 OD deaths per year...
but excessive alcohol consumption is involved in 88,000 US deaths per year (1 in 10 deaths ages 20-64).
[http://www.cdc.gov/features/alcohol-deaths/]

I have only been able to find evidence of marijuana involvement in one death:
A 23-year-old marijuana-naive non-medical-patient in Colorado took one serving [10mg THC] of marijuana out of a 65mg edible. An hour later, he consumed the remainder of the edible. 2.5 hours later, he jumped off a four story building and died.
He did exhibit slurred speech and other signs of intoxication.
He was also instructed by the budtender to take one serving at a time (unclear if a time frame was specified).

And there won't be any overdoses on marijuana. It would be physically impossible to smoke that much... and attempting to ingest sufficient THC to lead to death from CNS/respiratory depression would totally work - but the ethanol solvent you'd need to use to extract the THC from the plant matter so the volume of it could possibly fit in your stomach would kill you first. Methanol is more efficient but more toxic to humans, and using a fat (like butter) would require a volume that the human stomach simply doesn't stretch to hold.

Good for you that you stopped drinking.

But your bad experience with an intoxicating substance with no medical value doesn't apply to others' medicine.
Medical marijuana is available in 24 states now - and considering only 38 states are needed to ratify the federal constitution, it will be nationally legal soon.

If you aren't familiar with Charlotte Figi's story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte ... annabis%29
and CBD [non-psychoactive component in marijuana] is showing promise for management of autistic presentation (like in severe cases where stimming is regularly self-injury).

LSD has shown to be effective as a cure for alcoholism. It's just that research into this area is highly restricted.

Marijuana isn't poisonous and its not nearly as habit forming as heroin....even if it's as simple as a heroin addict switches to marijuana and stays away from the heroin they will be better off than being on heroin and their body may be able to recover.

Also that is the most irrational thing to do...Humanity is not going to ever entirely stop using any intoxicants, so that would be a waste of time. Also, expensive because having people arrested, imprisoned and such for taking drugs costs a lot of money.

Real marijuana that is not missing things like CBD, is actually more effective for nausea and pain. Also the FDA is BS, I cannot believe people actually trust them as the best source for what you should or should not ingest.

I don't think anyone here is really advocating the 'misuse' of marijuana, of course it can be misused and that can create problems. Even so marijuana is one of the most non-toxic drugs there is so mis-use of it probably isn't as dangerous to your health as say heroin or meth or even alcohol. If you get carried away and are lazing around smoking weed more than you do anything else that is not healthy...not everyone who smokes weed does that though.

Also I imagine its not meant to work like the opiate addict simply starts smoking weed and it will wean them off the addiction...they would need some medical/mental health support or whatever to help keep them away from the problem drug whilst attempting treatment using cannabis. It wouldn't be a good treatment for every opiate addict some probably need to stay away from all drugs for successful treatment..but particularly in cases where the person is self medicating and needs 'something' it could make them feel better, and reduce cravings for worse drugs.

IMHO - substance abuse is an effect of folks sometimes using it as a solution. If you take away their substance, they still need to figure out ways to deal with problems.
Changing substances, someone said was like changing deck chairs on the Titanic. The boat is still going down.

Cannabis and Heavy Cannabidiol (CBD) Therapy does help wean people off of painkillers and onto JUST natural cannabis therapy. In fact I know from experience that it is proven. I used to serve (I am a Lead Budtender) a man who's entire body was so badly "burned" he wasn't "human looking" anymore.

One day I asked him " Does this manage your pain completely and better than narcotics?"
(I was curious because of how bad he was injured, missing fingers and "burnt" from head to toe.... BUT he was one of the happiest customers I had)

He seemed happy I asked and then told me he moved to Colorado because his Doctors in Virginia had put him on over 9 different painkillers telling him they would cross the bridge of "addiction" when they got there :')
Immediately he chose to move to Colorado and treat his pain ONLY with Cannabis therapy.

I eventually found that his injuries were sustained in the Middle East as a U.S. Soldier. His entire team died, he survived.


The people who come on here to express their close minded, ill experienced and uneducated views of Cannabis should be ashamed of themselves. People who speak without knowledge, experience, research, etc. Harm the world and the people in it often because they are usually the loudest.

Why else would Cannabis Prohibition have lasted so long if it weren't for our portion of sheeple who cannot think and research for THEMSELVES?

I work with people daily who would be dead or brain dead from grand mal seizures if not for Cannabis. It's disturbing for me that there are still many people who refuse to educate themselves on Cannabis


CANNABIS SAVES. This is almost common knowledge. One Day soon

Am I abusing substances because I take psych meds that I rely on to stay mentally healthy and functional?

I think there is a distinction to be made between medicinal use and substance abuse. Why is it so hard for some to believe that cannabis could have beneficial properties for some people when used properly as prescribed by a knowledgeable doctor as so much research supports? There has been oodles of research done about cannabis, about the different cannabinoids found in different strains and the various different medicinal properties they have (like anti-inflammatory, cancer-fighting, and appetite stimulating effects, for example). And these effects are often found in the cannabinoids like cannabidiol (CBD) that don't cause that feeling of "euphoria" and "high" that drug-seekers are looking for (which comes from THC--and there are many medical strains that have high levels of CBD and low levels of THC and don't produce a "high"--but do produce real medical benefit like reduced inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis as another example). There is lots of self-righteousness and judgement being flung around about "substances" that people are sadly under- or misinformed about.

Cannabis is not heroin or cocaine and should not be classified in the same category--it is not nearly as harmful when abused (especially if not actually smoked but ingested in other ways) and has way more medicinal value than cocaine or heroin ever had.

Wilbur
force-

No.

We're going to have to agree to disagree.

If you're still on the sauce and the lawn grass, Mr. AspE, why don't you try getting off of it with me. Today, was 3 wks without the Big A and I feel great! I think you could feel great too!