Need to get off opiates? Well, there’s medication-assisted treatment, Narcotics Anonymous or you can just smoke weed instead. Cannibis Now recently reported that people coming off painkillers and other opiods can soften the blow of withdrawal with marijuana. What’s that saying? I believe it’s, “No shit, Sherlock?”
Stop Getting High by Getting High
Cannibis Now wasn;t just blowing smoke. The marijuana lovin’ mag was relaying the latest findings of a research team at Columbia University. They released a study in the Drug and Alcohol Dependence journal and the results further support previous findings that opiate withdrawal symptoms can be soothed with pot. And that’s not all. According to the story, which followed a group of subjects currently undergoing both outpatient and residential rehab, “Patients who smoked pot throughout their outpatient recovery reported less restlessness, got more sleep and were more likely to complete their respective program.”
Do you think that’s perhaps because they’re high and they know there’s more where that came from as soon as they bust out of rehab?
I’m not trying to sound insensitive or judgmental—I get that the whole concept of detox is to safely and (hopefully) less painfully, wean off opiates. But it seems like the drugs involved shouldn’t be something people can easily pluck off the street the minute they leave treatment. They’d probably be better off hitting the methadone clinic or getting Suboxone strips because at least no one will be doing those drugs publicly in the living room of their next dinner party.
Marijuana advocates can peace and love it all day long, but if someone’s a tried and true addict, they should probably stay away from weed. However, for someone who developed a substance abuse problem with pain killers and wasn’t a chronic substance abuser prior, this is slightly more plausible. That is, if they can safely taper off the pot smoking after detox. Or if they find their life is manageable again with pot not painkillers, have at it, by all means.
Better Than Overdose?
Cannibis Now does make the valid point that medical marijuana can help reduce the amount of opiate overdose deaths, which are a serious problem in this country. They even cite a study that overdose deaths are 25% lower in states with less restrictive marijuana laws. And as most people know by now, marijuana, although the most commonly used illegal (in some states) drug in the United States, is not known for causing death by overdose, unless it’s mixed with hallucinogens or more toxic drugs. So is the green preferable to say, heroin? Yes, probably.
But for anyone prone to addiction, regularly using one drug (even if it’s allegedly non-addictive, some say marijuana definitely is—others say it’s not nearly as bad as heroin or even cigarettes) to replace another will most likely eventually lead them back to the original drug. Like many an alcoholic, I’ve fantasized about smoking weed, justifying it with the delusion that since it was never my poison of choice, I couldn’t possibly suffer severe consequences—I’d never want to abuse it! That may be so, but it would probably lead me back to alcohol.
I don’t wish the brutal pain of withdrawal upon anyone genuinely trying to get sober from heroin, Oxy or whatever opiate. However, I can’t say that I advocate using weed to help them along. If getting clean from narcotics was that easy, everyone would do it.
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