MEDICAL CANNABIS 39
Amanda explained that there are two ways that cannabis can be helpful to the treatment of drug dependence and the first is by helping the immediate withdrawal symptoms one may have. She explained that many drugs, from sugar and caffeine to alcohol and opiates have withdrawal symptoms. Sugar, for example allows the body to feel the effects of the rise in the blood sugar, also known as a “sugar high”, but when that high is over the blood sugar drops off
causing the body to feel tired and unable to think. For caffeine you can feel agitated and experience headaches if your body is dependant on caffeine and you miss a day of your normal pot of coffee. However, with alcohol or opiates the symptoms can be very dangerous. Withdrawal from alcohol dependency causes nausea, vomiting, tremors, aches and pains and loss of appetite. Depending on how long and how much alcohol your body is dependant on, determines how dangerous the withdrawal will be. In the case of opiates, less dangerous than alcohol but still terrible to withdraw from, you could be looking at days if not weeks of nausea, vomiting, tremors, loss of appetite and if you started on opiates to control the pain of an injury or illness, then the withdrawal process just exacerbates that pain. She notes that “cannabis, as a medicine, is used to treat nausea, loss of appetite and aches and pains so the use of cannabis in the process of withdrawal makes it more likely that people dependent on drugs will continue and get through this withdrawal period”.
The second way that cannabis can be helpful, in the treatment of drug dependence, is when the person dependent on drugs moves on to the long term part of the recovery process. Especially when considering opioid dependence, many people have an injury, or illness, that causes them to see a doctor, who prescribes them an opioid for pain. Dependency can happen quickly and so if that pain patient then seeks treatment, to get off of the opioid, based upon traditional addiction treatment they then are asked to commit to not using drugs or alcohol ever again. However, it is absolutely ok, within the traditional treatment program, to consume