Professional Documents
Culture Documents
symptom
percent of sample
duration in days
Trouble falling asleep Decrease in appetite Feeling aggressive Feeling sad, depressed Feeling irritable, jumpy Feeling anxious, nervous
they did not undergo the messy and painful scenario often associated with the process. Even the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)-IV does not recognise cannabis withdrawal. However, as our knowledge of drugs and their effects has evolved, we now understand that withdrawal has a wider set of parameters than physical ones. The DSM-V looks likely to include cannabis withdrawal when it is released later this year. So what does cannabis withdrawal look like? In a study published in the American Journal of Addiction in 2004, Levin et al. studied 469 cannabis smokers and asked them if they had experienced withdrawal symptoms. The study shows symptoms were mainly psychological, with only 23 percent reporting headaches, 10 percent physical discomfort, 2.1 percent vomiting, 4.3