Addicts, Alcoholics Overwhelm Prison System

1 out of 100 Americans now in jail.

For the first time in American history, according to a study released by the Pew Center on the States, more than one in every 99.1 adult men and women are now in prison or in jail. States spent a total of $49 billion on prisons in 2007, compared to $11 billion 20 years ago. The United States incarcerates a larger percentage of its population than any other country. China ranks second.

“For all the money spent on corrections today, there hasn’t been a clear and convincing return for public safety,” according to Adam Gelb, director of the Pew Center’s Public Safety Performance Project. The report says that higher incarcerations rates have not been caused by increased crime or a corresponding surge in population numbers. Rather, stricter sentencing policies, such as “three-strikes” laws, as well as longer sentences, are behind the surge. A PDF version of the full report is available here.

A Newsweek article by Claudia Kalb notes that the number of drug offenders in the federal prison system leaped by 26 per cent between 2000 and 2006. In addition, more than one out of every three women in prison are serving time for drug-related crimes.

In 2000, fed-up California voters passed Proposition 36, designed to steer nonviolent drug offenders into treatment and job training programs--but funding has been precarious. Other states, including Texas, have resorted to specialized drug courts and greater drug treatment efforts to cope with the overflow of drug addicts in the legal system. As John Whitmire, a Texas State Senator, told the New York Times (Reg. required), “we weren’t smart about nonviolent offenders. The [Texas] Legislature finally caught up with the public.”

The Pew study reveals that addiction is as firmly criminalized as ever. The compressed essence of the war on drugs is simply to put as many people in jail as possible. Obviously, long prison terms will not cure addicts of their condition, any more than long prison terms for diabetics would cure that condition.

As a forced cold turkey treatment for addiction, perhaps some would view prison as harsh but necessary. Yet drugs are known to be widely available within the nation’s federal prison system. As an inmate in an Oklahoma federal prison wrote in a letter to Time magazine: “If the Government cannot stop people from using drugs in a few fenced-off acres over which it has total control, why should Americans forfeit any of their traditional civil rights in the hope of reducing the drug problem?”

The Sentencing Project, a Washington-based group that promotes alternatives to jail time, said recently that as of 2002, 45 per cent of all drug arrests were for marijuana. Simple possession is the rule--only one-sixth of the imprisonments involved charges of marijuana trafficking.

According to Reuters, the latest drug czar, George W. Bush’s man John Walters, alluded to new research showing that “marijuana use, particularly during the teen years, can lead to depression, thoughts of suicide and schizophrenia.” Even assuming this dubious statement to be true, it would seem to argue against prison and in favor of treatment.

The American criminal justice system cannot support the burden of a continual flood of minor drug possession cases. Plea-bargaining—the accommodation that keeps the legal edifice afloat—becomes the rule of the day. The legal system would break down in gridlock if every drug defendant insisted on his constitutional right to a jury trial. Prison sentences are bartered and sold like pork futures, and the jury trial has become an unaffordable luxury. For those accused of drug possession, pleading innocent sometimes looks like a risk they cannot afford to take.

Drug prohibition itself is a major part of the reason why the more potent and problematic refinements of plant drugs keep taking center stage. Since crack cocaine is more potent, more profitable, and more difficult to detect in transit, it replaces powdered cocaine, which, in its turn, replaced the chewing of cocoa leaves. Just as bootleggers switched from beer to hard liquor, so international drug dealers switch from cannabis to cocaine whenever the U.S. enforcement engine lumbers off in the direction of marijuana interdiction and eradication.

If addicted crack dealers sometimes receive stiffer sentences than wanton murderers (and they do), then it is a double irony, since people convicted of drug offenses are often good candidates for rehabilitation. However, public treatment programs are overbooked, and private programs are out of reach for those with little or no health insurance.

Photo Credit: California Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation

Marijuana Fact and Fiction

Why cannabis research is a good idea.

There is little doubt among responsible researchers that marijuana--although it is addictive for some people--is sometimes a clinically useful drug. However, there is little incentive for commercial pharmaceutical houses to pursue research on the cannabis plant itself, since they cannot patent it.

The use of marijuana in the treatment of glaucoma is well established. As for the relief of nausea caused by chemotherapy, the precise “antiemetic” mechanism has not yet been identified, but several studies show that marijuana works at least as well as the popular remedy Compazine for controlling nausea. Cancer patients have used marijuana successfully to increase appetite and combat severe weight loss.

Yet another intriguing possibility centers on Huntington’s chorea, the single-gene disease researchers spent years chasing down. Early data from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), reported in Science News, showed a loss of THC receptors in the brains of Huntington’s sufferers.

Queen Elizabeth believed that marijuana tamed her menstrual cramps back in the 16th Century, but there is no clinical and little anecdotal evidence to support this notion. Perhaps the anti-anxiety and mood elevating effects associated with marijuana are useful for menstrual irritation and mood swings, just as they are sometimes perceived to be useful by those suffering from depression.

The typical joint rolled in paper contains roughly 0.5 grams of plant matter, of which anywhere from 1 to 15 per cent is THC. THC content varies widely because some genetic strains of cannabis are more potent than others. This fact has led to intense debate in the United Kingdom over the issue of so-called “Skunk” marijuana. Skunk is not a new, lethally potent form of pot, but rather a shorthand term for describing one of several strains of strong, aromatic female marijuana plants. Most of the potent forms of marijuana for sale are hybrids resulting from cross-pollination of various strains. Of itself, “Skunk” marijuana is no more or less dangerous than other potent and popular varietals, such as “White Widow” or "Hawaiian Haze."

The half-life of marijuana is fairly short—about 50 hours for inexperienced users, and about half that for experienced users. However, THC and its metabolites are fat soluble, and are therefore easily stored in fatty tissue. Other drugs clear the system much more efficiently. The marijuana high may be history, but the metabolites live on--for up to 30 days. Blood tests can confirm THC in the body, but cannot reliably determine how recently the marijuana was smoked. There is no marijuana analysis kit comparable to the Breathalyzer test for alcohol. Drivers under the influence of cannabis may suffer some perceptual impairment. They tend to drive more slowly and take fewer risks, compared to drivers under the influence of alcohol. Possibly, cannabis smokers are hyperaware of the modest motor impairments they exhibit under the influence. Heavy drinkers are often unaware that there is anything wrong with their driving at all, as their sometimes-vociferous arguments with police officers and state troopers can attest.

As with cigarettes, chronic pot smoking can lead to chronic bronchitis. We don’t know for certain whether heavy marijuana use causes lung cancer, but it seems safe to assume that smoking vegetable matter in any form is not compatible with the long-term health of lung tissue. Patients with risk factors for cardiovascular disease are well advised not to smoke anything. Marijuana smoking can raise the resting heart rate as much as 30 per cent in a matter of minutes, and while there is no present evidence of harmful effects from this, we will have to monitor the situation more closely as pot-smoking and former pot-smoking Baby Boomers enter their cardiovascular disease years.

Other patients for whom marijuana is definitely not indicated include those suffering from respiratory disorders--asthma, emphysema, or bronchitis. In addition, schizophrenics or anyone at genetic risk for schizophrenia should shun pot, as it has been known to exacerbate or precipitate schizophrenic episodes—though it does not, as is commonly rumored, cause schizophrenia.

The evidence for significant impairment of cognitive function is equivocal—heavy marijuana use does not, like alcohol, result in gross structural brain damage. Numerous studies have addressed the possibility of subtler impairments in memory, attention, and the retention of new information. The extent to which such alterations are transient as opposed to long term is still under scientific debate.

Cannabis augments the effects of morphine in animal studies, thus allowing for a lower dose of opiates. Pain relief may be a primary attribute of anandamide—the brain’s own THC. Rats given the drug were less sensitive to pain than their non-drugged counterparts, as detailed in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Drug companies may have closed the book on marijuana spin-offs too early. It would not be surprising if pills to selectively increase the amount of anandamide in the brain will one day augment or offer an alternative to existing anti-anxiety medications or pain relievers. On the other hand, a substance that blocks anandamide might find use as an agent to help combat memory loss.

Graphic: http://www.seedsman.com/en/health

For more, see: The Chemical Carousel: What Science Tells Us About Beating Addiction © Dirk Hanson 2008, 2009.

Related Posts: Anandamide: The Brain's Own Marijuana

medical marijuana

100 Million Killed By Tobacco

WHO estimates 1 billion more deaths in 21st century.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 100 million smokers died of tobacco-related causes in the 20th century, making cigarettes the leading preventable cause of death worldwide.

The agency estimates that as many as a billion people will die from tobacco in the 21st century, if present trends continue.

According to the WHO report, “Global Tobacco Epidemic 2008,” almost two-thirds of all smokers live in only ten countries, with China accounting for as much as 30 per cent of the total. Nearly 60 per cent of Chinese men smoke cigarettes, the report claims. The other leading countries, in order of consumption, are India, Indonesia, Russia, the U.S., Japan, Brazil, Bangladesh, Germany, and Turkey.

“The shift of the tobacco epidemic to the developing world will lead to unprecedented levels of disease and early death in countries where population growth and the potential for increased tobacco use are highest and where health care services are least available,” the report concluded. Or, as the Economist puts it, “the tobacco industry is getting the world’s poor hooked before governments can respond.”

The Economist reports that the most powerful prescription for fighting the trend is higher taxes: “Studies show that raising tobacco taxes by a tenth may cause a 4 per cent drop in consumption in rich countries, and an 8 per cent drop in poor ones, with tax revenue rising despite lower sales. The agency wants a 70 per cent increase in the retail price of tobacco, which is says could prevent up to a quarter of all tobacco-related deaths worldwide.”

The eradication of tobacco use will be as difficult as fighting insect-born diseases, WHO officials say. The WHO analysis strongly asserts that “partial bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship do not work.”

In a soon-to-be-published paper by researchers at MIT and the University of California, cited by the Economist, the authors claim that “the monetary value of the health damage from a pack of cigarettes is over $35 for the average smoker, implying both that optimal taxes should be very large and that cigarette taxes are likely progressive.”

In a forward to the report, noting that 5.4 million people a year die from lung cancer and tobacco-related heart diseases, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan wrote that the world has reached “a unique point in public health history as the forces of political will, policies and funding are aligned to create the momentum needed to dramatically reduce tobacco use and save millions of lives by the middle of the century.”

What are cigarette makers doing to combat these grim revelations? According to the Economist, “The tobacco industry is regrouping in order to focus on ‘promising’ markets and escape the pesky lawsuits it is likely to face in rich, litigious countries.”

photo credit: UCR/California Museum of Photography

Soros Funds Addiction Initiative

Urges insurance companies to close “treatment gap.”

In a move designed to jump-start a reluctant insurance industry, philanthropist George Soros is pushing an addiction initiative aimed at the estimated 20 million Americans who cannot afford treatment for substance abuse.

Through his New York-based Open Society Institute (OSI), Soros will award $10 million in grants to study “obstacles associated with addiction treatment.” Victor Capoccia, who previously ran community-based drug and alcohol treatment programs for the Boston Department of Health and Hospitals, will serve as director of OSI’s Initiative to Close the Addiction Treatment Gap. Capoccia also directed the addiction prevention effort at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Any future system of universal health care should provide coverage of addiction as a medical condition, the group believes. “We’re going to look at the role of the public sector, and ask government to pay for people who lack insurance, not as a replacement for what other insurance should be paying for,” Dr. Capoccia told Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Weekly. “We don’t want public funds subsidizing what should be an insurance responsibility for this health issue.”

Among the issues the initiative will explore are the expansion of Medicaid to cover science-based addiction treatment, an emphasis on early intervention and aftercare, and increased funding of treatment programs from a variety of sources. Backers of the Soros initiative maintain that drug addiction is a health issue that should fall within the general financing of existing health care delivery systems.

“People with a health condition ought to have that condition treated,” Capoccia told the Baltimore Sun in an article by Michael Hill. “They should not be jailed or shunned or put aside until their condition is so acute that they are a hopeless case.”

Capoccia described addiction as a chronic disease like diabetes and hypertension. “Using that chronic disease framework,” he told the Sun, “you realize that this is a condition you have to learn to manage. It is not a case of finding a cure, that it’s here today and gone tomorrow. It is a process of mitigation, of reducing the harmful effects, reducing the behaviors associated with those harmful effects.”

Capoccia pointed to Baltimore and San Francisco as communities where local governments have focused effectively on addiction treatment, and have “helped build a sense of collaboration…between health departments and law enforcement in really positive ways."

Addiction, said Capoccia, “has all these impacts, yet we decide to provide the resources so only one in 10 gets help. It’s laughable.”

Grants will be for $600,000. Specific information about the funding program is available at http://www.soros.org/initiatives/treatmentgap/focus_areas/guidelines

Photo Credit: The Washington Note

Fighting Fire with Fire

An introduction to anti-craving drugs

The early neurobehavioral research on addiction has been vindicated by the development of anti-craving drugs and new drugs for depression.

On the other hand, the psychopharmacology of addiction is not much studied in med school, and all but unknown among the general populace. Even the treatments now in existence are woefully underutilized. Moreover, there are good reasons to question whether these drugs are being prescribed with sufficient care and forethought in cases where they are being used. Legitimate, unanswered questions exist about pharmacotherapy for addictive disorders.

The most important effect--the reregulation of brain receptor arrays with time--is little understood. And we cannot say with certainty whether messing with Mother Nature’s receptors, in some cases, might disrupt other finely tuned immunological or neurological systems in the body. Finally, there is the possibility of side effects years down the road, which obviously cannot be predicted based on current studies. What we already know is that the “bodymind,” as Candace Pert refers to it, is a delicate and astonishingly complicated piece of organic machinery.

Researchers are confronted with the perpetual dilemma of designing out, or designing down, the side effects of any new class of drugs. The historical record of drugs like Thorazine, and darker cases like Oraflex and thalidomide, are reminders of the potential pitfalls of development races and corner-cutting practices in the pharmaceutical industry. The pharmacological sciences and the people who work in them are inextricably linked to the drug companies that sell the end products of any neurochemistry that yields marketable new medications. It cannot be otherwise: Market considerations drive much of the research. By 1990, the American pharmaceutical industry had surpassed the federal government’s National Institutes of Health as the world’s principal source of biomedical research and development funding. One of the stiffest challenges facing managed health care in the future will be the matter of evaluating the effectiveness of medications for addiction.

Fighting fire with fire brings scientists face to face with the problems posed by the blood-brain barrier, that superfine mesh of cells that protects the brain from unwelcome molecular intruders. Bacteriologists discovered the barrier more than two centuries ago, when they learned that dyes injected into the body stained all the organs except the brain. Normally, the capillary-rich barrier of cells is so densely packed that the only way to penetrate the tight junctions between them is by means of special transporter molecules. These specialized molecules act as chauffeurs for the amino acids, hormones, and other compounds that must pass regularly and consistently into the brain. These transporter molecules can be fussy about riders, and the only way around that is to use molecules so tiny that they are measured in units of atomic mass called “Daltons.”

Knowing this, biochemists have worked toward discovering extremely small molecules, and this is partly why so few effective psychoactive drugs come along. While scientists have had some luck with small-molecule approaches to treating epilepsy, schizophrenia, and certain mood disorders, there is no reason to assume a small molecule can always be found to fit the bill.

Current work centers on tricking existing transporter molecules into ferrying artificial cargos into the brain. Pills that easily penetrate the blood-brain barrier are rare, special, and capable of causing a host of problematic side effects. If Zyban demonstrated that there were good reasons to be hopeful about future anti-craving drugs, then the diet drugs Redux and “fen-phen” demonstrated to critics of the drug industry what seemed to be a reversion to type—unsafe drugs released to the public without sufficient attention to dangerous side effects. Eli Lilly’s earlier caution about moving forward with serotonin boosting drugs as anti-obesity medications—as anti-craving drugs for food addicts--soon came to look like a wise decision.

--Excerpted from The Chemical Carousel: What Science Tells Us About Beating Addiction © Dirk Hanson 2008, 2009.

Related posts:

Chantix and Suicide
What is Drug Craving?
Naloxone and "Receptorology"
Topamax for Alcoholism: A Closer Look

LSD and Serotonin

Early psychedelic research on alcoholism.

What did LSD do to the brain, exactly, in order to set off the fireworks that so fascinated brain scientists, hippies, and government spies? And why, after years of massive, unauthorized field-testing, so to speak, was there so little evidence implicating LSD as an addictive drug? Powerful as it was, LSD did not show any of the classic attributes of addiction, such as withdrawal or craving, although it was possible to build up a tolerance to its effects with repeated dosings.

Another novel brain chemical, discovered less than a year after Albert Hofmann's discovery of LSD, proved to be a crucial piece of the puzzle.

According to an early theory, the aberrant mental functioning produced by the tiniest dose of LSD was due to interference with normal levels of serotonin in the brain. In 1954, chemists D.W. Woolley and E. Shaw had published an article in Science strongly arguing that serotonin was the likely biochemical basis for major mental disorders. Wooley and Shaw confirmed that the most acutely serotonin-active substance known to man was the ergot derivative known as LSD. LSD’s chemical architecture looked eerily similar to that of serotonin.

While the idea of LSD as a “model” of psychosis did not hold up, the link between serotonin and mental disorders was there all along. The strongly serotonin-mediated mental disorders, researchers ultimately discovered, were depression, drug addiction, and alcoholism.

The psychedelic drugs, new and old, are not only among the most powerful ever discovered, but are also tremendously difficult to study and utilize responsibly. Nonetheless, these drugs have always played an important part of the story, even though they are not addictive. LSD, mescaline, DMT, psilocybin, Ibogaine, ayahuasca—none of these appeal to lab rats as a drug of abuse.

Psychedelics have been exhorted, and occasionally deployed, as specific anti-craving medications for more than 50 years now. The psychedelic experience seems to assist some addicts in their efforts to remain sober and abstinent. However, the risks of casual experimentation with these substances should be obvious. Recent research on Ecstasy only makes this point more emphatically.

In the 1950s, along with Aldous Huxley and others, Al Hubbard came to believe that the more mystical or “transpersonal” experiences LSD sometimes afforded might hold considerable psychotherapeutic potential. With LSD provided by Hubbard, Canadians Abram Hoffer, Ross Mclean, and Humphrey Osmond pursued the idea of LSD as a treatment for alcoholism. In the U.S, Oscar Janiger, Sanford Unger, and others undertook research on LSD and alcoholism on the West Coast.

Throughout this period, there were LSD clinics operating in England and Europe. European LSD therapists tended to use very low doses as an adjunct to traditional psychoanalytic techniques. But North American researchers took a different, bolder approach. When “psychedelic” therapy began to catch on in Canada and the United States, therapists typically gave patients only one or two sessions at very high doses. These early efforts were aimed at producing spontaneous breakthroughs or recoveries in alcoholics through some manner of religious epiphany or inner conversion experience. The only other quasi-medical approach of the day, the Schick Treatment Center’s brand of “aversion therapy,” was not seen to produce very compelling long-term recovery rates, and subsequently fell out of favor.

In this light, the early successes with LSD therapy, sometimes claimed to be in the 50-75 per cent range, looked noteworthy indeed. However, the design and criteria of the LSD/alcoholism studies varied so widely that it has never been possible to draw definitive conclusions about the work that was done, except to say that LSD therapy seemed to be strikingly effective for certain alcoholics. Some patients were claiming that two or three trips on LSD were worth years of conventional psychotherapy—a claim not heard again until the advent of Prozac thirty years later.

“I’ve taken lysergic acid several times, and have collected considerable information about it,” Bill Wilson, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, disclosed in a private letter written in 1958. “At the moment, it can only be used for research purposes. It would certainly be a huge misfortune if it ever got loose in the general public without a careful preparation as to what the drug is and what the meaning of its effects may be.” Like many others, Wilson was excited by LSD’s potential as a treatment for chronic alcoholism. Even Hollywood was hip to the new therapy. Cary Grant, among others, took LSD under psychiatric supervision and pronounced it immensely helpful as a tool for psychological insight. Andre Previn, Jack Nicholson, and James Coburn agreed. (It could be argued that the human potential movement began here).

But the early addiction research was stuck in an impossible situation. Some of the best tools available to scientists for studying the workings of the human brain were the very drugs that were increasingly prohibited under state and federal law--drugs like heroin, cocaine, PCP, LSD, and marijuana.

By the early 1970s, meaningful research involving any of these substances had virtually ground to a halt, and grants for clinical work had dried up completely.

--Excerpted from The Chemical Carousel: What Science Tells Us About Beating Addiction © Dirk Hanson 2008, 2009.


Photo Credit: Albert Hofmann Foundation

Related posts: Ibogaine and Addiction

Serotonin and Dopamine: A Primer




alcoholics anonymous drugs

Marijuana Withdrawal Revisited

Is cannabis addictive?

See also Marijuana Withdrawal


Until recently, there was very little evidence in animal models for marijuana tolerance and withdrawal, the classic symptoms of addiction. For at least four decades, million of Americans have used marijuana without clear evidence of a withdrawal syndrome. Most recreational marijuana users find that too much pot in one day makes them lethargic and uncomfortable. Self-proclaimed marijuana addicts, on the other hand, report that pot energizes them, calms them down when they are nervous, or otherwise allows them to function normally. They feel lethargic and uncomfortable without it. Heavy marijuana users claim that tolerance does build. And when they withdraw from use, they report strong cravings.

While the scientific evidence weighed in against the contention that marijuana is addictive, there were a few researchers who were willing to concede the possibility. “Probably not, for most people,” a researcher at the University of Minnesota’s Chemical Dependency Program told me in the late 1990s. “But there may be some small percentage of people who are on the same wavelength with it chemically, and who end up in some way hooked to it physically. It’s a complicated molecule.”

The difference between animal models and humans may be the difference between pure THC and naturally grown marijuana. Despite the fact that rats and monkeys find whopping doses of synthesized THC aversive in the lab, psychopharmacologist Ronald Siegel, in his book Intoxication, has documented numerous instances of rodents feeding happily on wild marijuana plants in the field. There are apparently other components in the psychoactive mix that makes marijuana what it is. When the lab version of THC is hundreds of times more potent that the genuine article, it is hard to know exactly what the research is telling us.

Some of the mystery of cannabis was resolved after researchers demonstrated that marijuana definitely increased dopamine activity in the ventral tegmental area of the brain. Some of the effects of pot are produced the old-fashioned way—by means of neurotransmitter alterations along the limbic system’s reward pathway.

A report prepared for Australia’s National Task Force on Cannabis put the matter straightforwardly:

There is good experimental evidence that chronic heavy cannabis users can develop tolerance to its subjective and cardiovascular effects, and there is suggestive evidence that some users may experience a withdrawal syndrome on the abrupt cessation of cannabis use. There is clinical and epidemiological evidence that some heavy cannabis users experience problems in controlling their cannabis use, and continue to use the drug despite experiencing adverse personal consequences of use.

The U.S. government’s essentially unchanged opposition to marijuana research has meant that, until quite recently, precious few dollars were available for pot research. This official recalcitrance is one of the reasons for the belated recognition and characterization of marijuana’s distinct withdrawal syndrome.

To pluck one statistic out of many, representing estimates made in the late 1990s, more than 11 million Americans smoked marijuana regularly in the NIDA-sponsored “National Household Survey on Drug Abuse.” What NIDA has learned about cannabis addiction, according to the principal investigator of a recent NIDA study, was that “we had no difficulty recruiting dozens of people between the ages of 30 and 55 who have smoked marijuana at least 5,000 times. A simple ad in the paper generated hundreds of phone calls from such people” (This would be roughly equivalent to 14 years of daily pot smoking).

There now exists a nice body of clinical trials showing that mice and dogs show evidence of cannabis withdrawal. (For THC-addicted dogs, it is the abnormal number of wet-dog shakes that give them away.) Today, scientists have a much better picture of the jobs performed by anandamide, the body’s own form of THC. This knowledge helps explain a wide range of THC withdrawal symptoms. Among the endogenous tasks performed by anandamide are pain control, memory blocking, appetite enhancement, the suckling reflex, lowering of blood pressure during shock, and the regulation of certain immune responses.

These functions shed light on common hallmarks of cannabis withdrawal, such as anxiety, chills, sweats, flu-like physical symptoms, and decreased appetite. At Columbia University’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, where a great deal of NIDA-funded research takes place, researchers have found that abrupt marijuana withdrawal leads to symptoms similar to depression and nicotine withdrawal.

In a 2003 research report entitled “Nefazodone Decreases Anxiety During Marijuana Withdrawal in Humans,” published in Psychopharmacology, researchers at the New York State Psychiatric Institute used Serzone (nefazodone) to decrease some symptoms of marijuana withdrawal in human subjects who had been regularly smoking six joints of pot per day. Anxiety and muscular discomfort were reduced, but Serzone had no effect on other symptoms, like irritability and sleep problems. The drug did not alter the perceived effects of marijuana intoxication (the SSRIs didn’t, either). Serzone is another antidepressant, a modest inhibitor of serotonin and norepinephrine, but its mechanism of action is ill defined. It is not in the SSRI or tricyclic families.

To date, there is no effective anti-craving medication approved for use against the marijuana withdrawal syndrome, for addiction-prone individuals unlucky enough to suffer from it.

For more, see earlier posts:

Marijuana Withdrawal

Is Marijuana Addictive?

Photo credit: 2nd International Cannabis and Mental Health Conference Programme