America’s Invisible Pot Addicts

More and more Americans are reporting near-constant cannabis use, as legalization forges ahead.

The proliferation of retail boutiques in California did not really bother him, Evan told me, but the billboards did. Advertisements for delivery, advertisements promoting the substance for relaxation, for fun, for health. “Shop. It’s legal.” “Hello marijuana, goodbye hangover.” “It’s not a trigger,” he told me. “But it is in your face.”

When we spoke, he had been sober for a hard-fought seven weeks: seven weeks of sleepless nights, intermittent nausea, irritability, trouble focusing, and psychological turmoil.......

Public-health experts worry about the increasingly potent options available, and the striking number of constant users. “Cannabis is potentially a real public-health problem,” said Mark A. R. Kleiman, a professor of public policy at New York University. ......

For Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, the most compelling evidence of the deleterious effects comes from users themselves. “In large national surveys, about one in 10 people who smoke it say they have a lot of problems. They say things like, ‘I have trouble quitting. I think a lot about quitting and I can’t do it. I smoked more than I intended to. I neglect responsibilities.’ There are plenty of people who have problems with it, in terms of things like concentration, short-term memory, and motivation,” he said. “People will say, ‘Oh, that’s just you fuddy-duddy doctors.’ Actually, no. It’s millions of people who use the drug who say that it causes problems.”

Users or former users I spoke with described lost jobs, lost marriages, lost houses, lost money, lost time. Foreclosures and divorces. .....

Some people say that they “experimented” with pot in high school or college. I didn’t experiment. One might say I had a fully funded research project going!

What I found was that I had little get-up-and-go to begin with, I mean I was LAZY! The pot contributed to it. Made it worse. I even dropped out of high school my junior year and got a job. Eventually I realized that without a diploma, my options in the future were very limited, so I gave up pot and drinking and went back to high school for my senior year, and I just barely graduated with 3 years (I had to take junior and senior English at the same time, and I missed out on a lot of math, which HAS hurt over the years.)

Anyway, I found, on my own, that pot sucks what little drive I had out of me. My brother, who never gave it up, is OK with driving Uber, and just making enough to get by. He still gets stoned several times a week, and he’s in his mid-50s. I’m a year older, and I’m in IT security with an international company.

I won’t blame pot for his situation, but had I kept using it (or drinking heavily,) I wouldn’t be where I am today.

Mark

You made the right choice. If I had known three years ago what I know now, I would have chosen a different anxiety med.

Not only does Xanax dependency take hold quickly, it is one of the hardest, most dangerous drugs to quit. To be honest, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to quit.

The irony is that Xanax doesn’t even get you high. I don’t know why so many people abuse it. It does help my anxiety and stops my panic attacks. It is also good for sleeping.

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