REEFER MADNESS

It's Not Using It But Losing It That Makes Dopeheads Angry

HEAVY users of marijuana who suddenly go cold turkey have aggressive
impulses as powerful as those felt by people taking anabolic steroids.

The reaction is far less intense than the withdrawal symptoms of
alcoholics or people addicted to cocaine or heroin, and may reflect a
psychological dependence on the drug, rather than a genuine
physiological addiction. But it still might be enough to keep some
marijuana users from kicking their habit, says Elena Kouri, a
psychologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

Kouri and her colleagues recruited 17 volunteers who had smoked
marijuana on at least snoo occasions, and who continued to be heavy
users of the drug. They also studied 20 people who either took
marijuana occasionally, or who had already given it up. None of the
volunteers had a history of violence or any other psychiatric
disturbance.

The researchers used a computer game to measure the volunteers'
aggressive behaviour during a 28-day period of abstinence from
marijuana, which was monitored by daily, supervised urine tests.

The volunteers sat alone at a computer screen with two
buttons.

The first added money to an account in their name, but they were told
that a second would subtract money from the account of their opponent,
sitting at a similar screen in the next room. On the day they gave up
marijuana, and one, three, seven and 28 days later, the two players
were given 20 minutes to take it in turns to push one or other button,
after which they could keep the money left in their account.

In reality, there was no opponent.

The researchers had instead arranged for the computer to provoke the
volunteers by frequently subtracting money from their account.

When tested on the third and seventh days of abstinence, this ersatz
"nasty opponent" managed to get the heavy users noticeably hot under
the collar.

Says Kouri: "Subjects that on day zero
hadn't cared at all that they were losing points started swearing and
punching the keyboard, yelling 'I'm going to get you back!'"

The heavy users hit the "punishment button" more than twice as often
as the control group on days three and seven--- an increase in
aggression that compares roughly with that produced by a threeweek
course of testosterone supplements in another study by Kouri. The
increased aggression had subsided completely by the time the
volunteers were tested again at the end of the abstinence period,
however (Psychopharmacology, vol 143, p 302).

The study is the first to measure aggression during withdrawal from a
long period of heavy marijuana use. But Margaret Haney, a psychologist
at Columbia University in New York, says that people who show
aggressive tendencies in the laboratory do not necessarily become
violent in the real world. "I would hesitate to say that it would
translate to physical violence," she says.