Treat withdrawal symptoms to help cannabis users quit
Treating cannabis withdrawal symptoms such as nervousness and cravings will help users to quit the habit, a study says.
Researchers at the University of Illinois found that 85 percent of people who met the criteria for a diagnosis of cannabis withdrawal during their intake assessment for treatment lapsed and used cannabis again within about 16 days, while other individuals stayed abstinent about 24 days before using again, said lead author Jordan P. Davis, a doctoral student in the School of Social Work.
Withdrawal symptoms typically begin within one to two days after a heavy user abruptly stops.
A major implication from this study is that reducing the waiting time between users’ initial assessment and the start of treatment could be highly beneficial for cannabis users who are experiencing withdrawal, Davis said. Immediate treatment that helps former users cope with withdrawal symptoms could help extend the period that they stay off marijuana.
“For people to be included in the study sample, they had to be using at least 45 days out of 90 days prior to entering treatment and had to have made an attempt during the preceding week to quit or cut down,” Davis said. “So they are what we would consider a pretty severe population. However, we excluded people who used other illicit drugs or who were binge drinkers, to ensure that any withdrawal symptoms reported by our participants could be attributed to cannabis and not to other substances.”
More than half — 53 percent — of the participants had been diagnosed with lifetime cannabis use disorder, indicating that they had incurred serious social and medical consequences from using the drug, including intense cravings and increased tolerance for it, Smith said.
“Prior studies have found that it’s very rare for marijuana users to have physiological withdrawal symptoms, such as the muscle aches or delirium tremens” that severe alcoholics or heroin users experience when they quit, Davis said. “With cannabis, we know that the symptoms are mainly psychological and very short-lived, typically lasting from two to seven days.”
“Marijuana is tricky because it stays in your body so long,” Smith said. “Highly addictive substances such as heroin have short half-lives and leave the body quickly, whereas marijuana is stored in the fat cells and can be excreted in a person’s urine for up to a month — or even longer if you’re a heavy user.”
Marijuana’s long half-life and users’ reports of primarily psychological withdrawal symptoms have fueled the longstanding controversy among clinicians and researchers about whether physiological dependency and withdrawal symptoms actually occur.
“This study shows that people who met the new criteria for marijuana withdrawal in the DSM-5 had a harder time initiating abstinence, so we do need to be concerned about people who are telling us they have these withdrawal symptoms when they first try to quit,” Smith said.
Most of the cannabis users in the study were being treated as outpatients. Heavy users of the drug often have familial histories of substance abuse, which may increase their difficulty of staying abstinent, the researchers said.
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