[nullymcnull]

I don't know why you're so angry at r0s; the potential felony really is the thing most likely to fuck up your life with respect to weed.

A half-ounce a week is a pretty hefty habit. I can barely imagine the constant cognitive impairment, paranoia, and anxiety that are likely to come with that on a daily schedule. You aren't using the drug, you're abusing it.

> My body desperately wants pot right now

No, it doesn't. Your mind does. Your situation is not even remotely comparable to an opiate addict going cold turkey.

> Every drug taken to extreme can seriously hurt your life.

The drug isn't seriously hurting your life. You are. The psychological addiction you are experiencing is yours to walk away from - or get medication for, since there are probably serious compulsive or depressive problems in the mix if the hold is that strong. I wish you the best in conquering it and feeling 1000% better - and you surely will - but I really don't see what you're trying to say here, or what everybody else in the thread supposedly has got wrong. Weed is a remarkably benign drug by any measure, and the author of this piece is far too naive of his subject matter for anyone to be thinking too hard on anything he has to say.

[pekk]

What is the difference between a pharmacologically mediated 'psychological' addiction and a pharmacologically mediated 'physical' addiction? It is all physical. Of course marijuana is not identical to heroin, e.g. in withdrawal symptoms. But withdrawal is not the only way that habits are sustained and this does fail to demonstrate that every addiction to a drug other than heroin is simply 'yours to walk away from' or (as other posts have suggested) equivalent to any repeated benign behavior. Even if a drug like alcohol or cannabis is generally benign and can be used in a disciplined way, that doesn't mean every problem involving a substance other than heroin is trivial.

[nullymcnull]

> What is the difference between a pharmacologically mediated 'psychological' addiction and a pharmacologically mediated 'physical' addiction? It is all physical.

That's basically nonsense. A heavy weed smoker can stop smoking immediately, and while he will certainly be in anguish, bored and anxious and miserable without it, there remains no true physical component to his 'withdrawal', if that term could even be credibly used in the context of marijuana.

The heavy opiate user has developed a full-blown physical dependence on the drug, and their body will go into excruciating revolt upon it's sudden absence. Most ex-addicts spend years tapering off on suboxone, methadone, etc for a reason.

The point is, hard drug dependence vs soft drug 'addiction' is utterly apples and oranges, comparing them is meaningless. I am not sure why people insist on blurring the lines between these two very different conditions. Like it or not, Bagdar has far more in common with the guy upthread who was talking about cold sweats from ceasing his overeating, than he does a Subutex fiend in Georgia.

[DanBC]

> The heavy opiate user has developed a full-blown physical dependence on the drug, and their body will go into excruciating revolt upon it's sudden absence.

Yes. Sudden withdrawal from some substances (alcohol, barbiturates) can cause death because physical addiction is so destructive.

[girvo]

Physical dependence is not caused by cannabis. This is a well known and scientifically studied (well studied, I might add) fact.