The last decade has seen sweeping reform in marijuana law enforcement in the EU. In the USA, which has the reputation as being hardline against drugs, despite years of failed policy in containing drug use, is also being seen moving towards a more "friendly" attitute towards marijuana use.

There, in the US, the debate has been centered around medicinal usage. I find that it's ridiculous to push an anti-medical agenda when the use of marijuana as medication for various diseases and conditions is well established. Luckily, the opposition on those grounds is quite rare. Many people who are against medical marijuana hold such a viewpoint because they believe it to be a smokescreen or at least a round-a-bout path towards relaxed attitudes on recreational usage of the drug.

Ultimately, the concern behind that is that marijuana is bad because it causes problems and that smokers can become addicted to the drug. But is marijuana addiction a real experience for anyone who smokes weed? 

I don't want to speak about myself personally, but let's just say "someone I know" has smoked many a times in their life, and so has many, many of this persons friends, coworkers, and acquitances. No one in any of these cases was dealing with what could be called an addiction, nor were there any signs of marijuana addiction that I could see. Honestly, the use of the drug seemed to in no way correlate with abuse or problems in the persons life.

So is marijuana addiction just a joke or do seem people have this?

I started looking into this idea that you could get hooked on weed and I was shocked at what I found. There are all sorts of marijuana addict support groups online. No one is pushing an agenda here, it's simply people finding one another who all believe they have a problem and are seeking help and support with this problem.

Can you find marijuana addicts in these groups?

I think the answer would have to be...

...yes!

When I read stories about guys and gals who had smoked for years or decades upon decades, suddenly quiting, it sounded on par with an intense drug addiction detox experience. I'm talking shivers, the shakes, anxiety, depression, being cold, then being super hot, being frustrated, being a plain grump to be around. I was shocked to see people writing about such experiences!

And there was no shortage of people willing to share their experiences of detox or withdrawl in this regard. "What the hell!" I thought, "This is crazy."

And so I came to accept that some people can get addicted to marijuana, and that, for sure, they need marijuana addiction help or some kind of drug treatment to get things straightened out in their lives.

However - yes, you knew it was coming, I think this is little cause for alarm. Take anything that any group of people do, and those with addiction prone personalities can abuse it. It's almost if certain peoples brains and bodies are hard wired to be predisposed towards addiction, and are just lying in wait for something to get hooked on; gambling, sex, crack, weed, meth, cigarettes. 

The difference here I think is that marijuana rarely - if ever - puts people in the mindset of doing dangerous activities, spawned on by the drug itself. Now, if a person does stupid and dangerous stuff anyway, they're going to do those stupid things high too. But I don't see any connection between marijuana usage and dangerous behaviors. This is a key difference between marijuana addiction and being addicted to crack, meth, coke, or heroin, where the use of all the drugs is associated with doing dumb, risky stuff.