this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
370 points (97.7% liked)

News

23296 readers
3394 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Ranvier@sopuli.xyz 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Be careful with your concept of physically versus psychologically addicted, it's not really a 100% seperatable dichotomy like that. Your brain is your brain after all, whether you decide to call something physical or psychological it's all happening inside the brain. I think because cannabis doesn't tend to have severe withdrawal effects (like alcohol withdrawal, which can kill you) people assume that means they're not dependent or that it doesn't have direct effects on the reward processing centers in the brain to reinforce its use again in the future. That's what distinguishes addictive drugs from things that are just generally pleasant so we want to do them again, they have a direct chemical interaction with the neural circuits that are supposed to be helping decide if a behavior should be done again or not. Kind of tipping the scales in their favor, making you want to do something again more so than just the pleasentness of the past experience alone would otherwise do. You're going to have an easier time quitting carrots than you will cannabis, even if you find them both equally pleasant in the moment.

Don't get me wrong though, cannabis is waaaay less addictive than things like nicotine or alcohol, and has far less harmful effects than those. I think there is a tendency (especially with things like DARE lying about drug dangers when people were younger) to over correct and say things like it's a miracle drug that's non addicting and can never harm you and can fix everything wrong in your life! I'm for recreational cannabis legalization, but people should understand it's actual risks, even though they are much less than other recreational drugs.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3069146/

The cumulative probability estimate of transition to dependence was 67.5% for nicotine users, 22.7% for alcohol users, 20.9% for cocaine users, and 8.9% for cannabis users. Half of the cases of dependence on nicotine, alcohol, cannabis and cocaine were observed approximately 27, 13, 5 and 4 years after use onset, respectively.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7605022/#ref4

Cannabis-derived psychoactive compounds such as Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol and synthetic cannabinoids directly interact with the reward system and thereby have addictive properties. Cannabinoids induce their reinforcing properties by an increase in tonic dopamine levels through a cannabinoid type 1 (CB1) receptor–dependent mechanism within the ventral tegmental area. Cues that are conditioned to cannabis smoking can induce drug-seeking responses (ie, craving) by eliciting phasic dopamine events.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You’re going to have an easier time quitting carrots than you will cannabis, even if you find them both equally pleasant in the moment.

I would suggest that isn't true for the woman in the link I posted, which was sort of my point about the addictive nature of cannabis. And I would say that physical addiction is not only in the brain because it isn't your brain that kills you when you go through alcohol or opioid withdrawal.

But sure, you can become heavily dependent on cannabis. I'm just arguing that it's a totally different sort of dependency and should be classified as such.

[–] Ranvier@sopuli.xyz 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Yes but saying it's psychological dependence only is is kind of misleading here. To most reading that would imply that's just addicting because they like doing it. A carrot does not contain a chemical that directly interacts with the learning and reinforcing centers of the brain, while cannabis does. Cannabis is directly addicting, carrots are not. I don't think it's a fair comparison.

Also it is your brain that kills you when you have alcohol withdrawal, it's why alcohol withdrawal is treated with central nervous system depressants. Opiod withdrawal generally won't be able to kill you but you certainly will feel like you want to die.