Is weed physically addicitve, or is it a psychological habit? How do you like the anachronym in my title?
From my experience, no, it’s not physically addictive. Also, I remember once seeing a list of the most addictive substances. It was done by conducting surveys of past drug users, ranking how hard it was to quit a particular drug. The results were put on a scale of 1 to 100, 100 being the hardest to quit. Nicotine was 100, and, IIRC, pot was somewhere around 30. For comparison, I believe cocaine and alcohol were somewhere around 80. This is all from memory, however.
Addictive Mary Jane is, but not very. Nicotine of course is hardest, and see can I how alchohol is 80.
Experience here supports previous assertions. Very heavy smoker before and during college, down to nothing today, three and a half years after graduation. Even been offered hookups and have turned them down.
Beer, on the other hand, is a wonderful friend and I’m always glad of its company. 
I think anything that we enjoy doing can become a habit, to the point where we might feel like we have to have it. I don’t think it’s always clear where psychological habituation ends and physical addition begins. I have known
of people with bipolar or ADHD who used pot as a means of
self medication. In one ADHD case, (this was a defendant whose case came up while I was sitting in a courtroom on another matter), the person claimed that without cannabis,
he couldn’t help becoming combative and disruptive. If you look at it one way, it’s like Reefer Madness addiction all over again; but in another light it’s like therapeutically prescribed Ritalin, Lithium, or whatever.
As for me, I smoked pretty frequently in college and have hardly touched it since, though I recently did take advantage of an opportunity to do so.
Actually, to the best of my knowledge, the distinction is quite clear. Physically addictive drugs produce physical symptoms upon withdrawl. If I quit smoking cigarettes, I’d get headaches. Same with caffeine. If I got hooked on heroin and quit, my legs would involuntarily start kicking. These are all physical reactions to cessation of certain drugs.
If, however, I quit smoking pot, I might develop some mild cravings. No physical symptoms at all. Therefore, pot is not physically addictive.
Physical addiction makes itself known loud and clear, all through your body. Nicotine is one of the most common physically addictive drugs that people experience. Anyone who has quit or is quitting can tell you how the absence of nicotine, especially the first few days, can hurt.
Mary Jane OTOH causes no pain when you don’t have any. You might wish you could just go and partake, but if you don’t - no physical discomfort happens.
According to the Merck Manual, http://www.merck.com/pubs/mmanual_home/sec7/92.htm marijuana can be psychologically addictive and is “possibly” physically addictive. If you scroll way down the link page, you will read that physical addiction hasn’t been conclusively demonstrated and that, if it does exist, it is attenuated by the fact that marijuana is only slowly eliminated from your body so withdrawal, if it occurs, isn’t abrupt.
Sua
“Physical dependence, which is what most people mean by addiction, has been scientifically demonstrated. The abstinence syndrome, (the indicator of physical dependence) can occur when a state of marijuana intoxication is maintained over a prolonged period of time and then abruptly discontinued. Anorexia, anxiety, agitation, depression, restlessness, irritability, tremors, severe insomnia, sweating, exaggerated deep tendon reflexes, tremulousness of the tongue and extremities, and dysphoria have all been observed when marijuana use is rapidly withdrawn. It is important to note that these effects occur after only a few weeks of constant use and at dosages that would be common among street users.”
Okay, that comes from one of your disgusting anti-drug propaganda screeds, but the science is out there, and it has been accepted for some time now. The physical end of the addiction may or may not play a key role in the habits of your average stoner. Some would argue that it doesn’t matter.
Cocaine was long thought to not be physically addictive as well, and therefore somewhat more tolerable than the opiates. High Times even went so far as to endorse it along with their other favorites–then retracted that endorsement in the early 80’s. And maybe it isn’t physically addictive–those same PRIDE info-sheets are careful not to use the term “physical”, but try telling that to the crackhead on the street corner. Since the advent of crack, we’ve redefined addiction in recognition of the effects, rather than doting on whether or not we can find the causes.
Bottom line: be careful out there.
Sofa King, I’m sorry, but I’ll take the Merck Manual (see the link in my prior post) over PRIDE or the former director of NIDA any day. Unlike PRIDE or NIDA, Merck, which is (or at least advertised as)“the world’s most commonly used medical text”, has no political agenda when it comes to the issue of drug use.
The science that marijuana is physically addictive is indeed out there, but it has not been accepted by the medical community at large, as you claim. Some studies show a physical addiction, but many do not.
I had a bit of a raging debate in this forum about this issue a ways back, http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=37180 and I don’t think rehashing it would do much good, except to confirm the belief of some that I’m a druggie ;). IMHO, it is likely that marijuana is technically physically addictive, but because THC is fat-soluble and is only slowly eliminated from the body, pot-smokers don’t (or extremely few do) suffer from withdrawal because they still have pot in their system for a long time after their last puff.
Sua