SENSATIONS - REALITIES OF BREAKING A MARIJUANA HABIT

Within 24 hours of quitting, the subjects reported symptoms: irritability,
anxiety, and physical tension, to say nothing of other changes in mood and
appetite.

Had they given up cigarettes? Caffeine? Alcohol? Try marijuana, instead.

It was all part of a study organized by researchers at McLean Hospital, a
Harvard affiliate near Boston, to see how dependent chronic marijuana
smokers become on the drug.

Writing in this month's Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, the
researchers said the findings undercut the notion that marijuana is benign.
The researchers used newspaper ads to recruit 30 men and women, ages 30 to
55, who were heavy marijuana users. They then had them stop smoking the
drug for 28 days, during which time the subjects were asked to record their
feelings in a diary and were examined in person.

To make sure that the subjects had really stopped using the drug, the
researchers required daily urine samples.

The study found withdrawal symptoms were significant in 60 percent of the
people studied. They were strongest for the first 10 days, and then tapered
off.

But because irritability and physical tension were reported throughout the
study, the researchers said it was possible those symptoms were not the
symptoms of withdrawal but the users' personalities.