Are You Addicted? Find Out With The Criteria Used By Professionals

Marijuana addiction is actually quite sneaky. In fact, of all the addictions I treat, it's probably the hardest one for people to identify. Which is why in this video I want to go over with you what the actual clinical criteria for weed addiction are. Actually, it's not called weed addiction. The official way of saying it is marijuana use disorder. But I also want to talk to you about how these criteria kind of stay hidden. They fly under the radar so that you can learn to recognize them. And after we go through each of the criteria, I'm going to tell you how to score yourself to see whether or not not you have a marijuana addiction. And if you do, how severe that is. And then stay tuned because I'm going to give you some sort of like non official criteria signs, symptoms that you may also want to be on the lookout for. Now the clinical criteria for marijuana use disorder are actually the same for pretty much all of the addictions. It's just that you substitute the different word like alcohol, methamphetamine, marijuana. You can take the different drug in and out and it's still the same criteria. But let's go through them. There are actually 11 of them. And as we go through them, I want you to sort of count up in your head or on your fingers how many of these you think you might have. Or if you're watching this because you're concerned about someone else in your life, you can count up on your fingers how many you think that they might have. Alright, the first criteria is using more than was intended. Basically it's like you promise yourself, I'm only going to use this much or this many days a week, or I'm not going to spend more than X amount of money on it. And you keep breaking your own rules and limits. You only intend to do so much, but you keep going past that. The second criteria is unsuccessful efforts to cut down control or stop using marijuana. Now it could be that you're trying to stop and maybe you do stop for a week or two or three, but then you keep going back, even though it's not your intention to go back. Just because you can stop for a period of time doesn't necessarily mean that you're not addicted. But if what you're trying to do, you don't stick to like if you're trying to stick to a certain limit or you're trying to stay stopped completely and you just keep breaking your own promises to yourself. That is criteria number two. Criteria number three is spending a lot of time in your marijuana use and that can be obtaining the marijuana, using the marijuana, recovering from the marijuana, making phone calls, going to pick it up. All the things. If it seems to take up a large amount of your life, that one counts. And the fourth criteria is cravings. Do you have cravings to use marijuana or Sometimes people don't identify it necessarily as a craving, but it's like a really strong urge or desire. Number five is failure to fulfill major role obligations. Now, major role obligations are things like work, school, home, family obligations, things like that. If you're not living up to your responsibilities or expectations fairly consistently, then there's a likelihood that that could be related to your marijuana use. This is one of those ones that stay hidden. I have a lot of people who actually they've been using for so long that they actually tell themselves, well, I'm just lazy or I'm just irresponsible, because they don't even realize that it is related to the marijuana, that actually they're not a lazy person or an irresponsible person. It's actually the marijuana because underneath that, if you took that problem away, they wouldn't have those characteristics. At number six is continued marijuana use despite the knowledge that it is causing problems. And these could be interpersonal problems, employment problems, legal problems. It's like, you know, the marijuana is causing problems. You're fighting about it, you've lost jobs for it, you can't get certain jobs because of it. Basically, it's interfering in your life in kind of a big way. But you continue to do it despite knowing that. Now, a lot of times the reason why this happens is just because we convince ourselves again that it's not the marijuana. We convince ourselves that it's the employer, that it's the girlfriend, that it's the parent, it's the school. It's all these other issues other than the marijuana causing you to have issues. But if you're really honest with yourself and you look closely, is there a pattern? These problems keep happening over and over. If it's a one off, okay, fine, it's a one off, I'm going to give it to you. But if it's something that keeps happening over and over and over and you're using marijuana, you might want to look to see if there is a connection there. The seventh criteria is giving up hobbies and activities and interest due to marijuana use. Again, another problem with this is a lot of times it's happening and we don't recognize that this is why it's happening. It's not like we tell ourselves, oh, I'M gonna give up baseball because I just want to smoke weed. We don't consciously, necessarily tell ourselves that. But if you look back at your life, if you've been smoking or using, however you use it very regular lately, and you used to be involved in all these other things and used to kind of like other stuff, and now you don't, or you're not interested in them. Maybe you think you grew out of it. Maybe you think, well, you just don't care about that anymore, you got burned out or whatever it was. But again, look for the pattern. If you used to really enj all these other things and now feels like you don't really enjoy anything unless it has marijuana involved or unless you can use marijuana first before or whatever, that is a big sign. You definitely want to count that criteria. Number eight is using in hazardous situations or putting yourself in hazardous situations in order to obtain marijuana. Now, what I mean when I say using in hazardous situations could be like being high, driving a car, being high while at work, being high while you're supposed to be taking care of little kids or babies, things like that, where safety can be an issue. Number nine is the development of tolerance. And I'm not going to talk too much about tolerance because most of us know what that means. Basically, it means you need to use more or use for a longer period of time to get the same effect. Number 10 is withdrawal symptoms. Do you have withdrawal symptoms if you don't use weed? Now, again, this is another one that can be hidden because you might not even recognize that you're having withdrawal symptoms. So let's talk about what those symptoms can look like. It can feel like increased depression, anxiety, maybe you can't eat, maybe you can't sleep, sleep unless you use marijuana first. These are all symptoms of marijuana use. It means that our body has gotten dependent on it and our bodies actually don't even function well without it. If you're having a hard time identifying whether or not you actually have withdrawal symptoms, let me ask you this. Do you feel bad without it? Do you need to use in order to feel better or even feel well enough to function properly? If you can answer yes to those questions, then I want you to count this criteria and criteria. Number 11. How many is that? 11 is you continue to use despite the fact that you know that the weed is causing like a fizz physical or psychological problem, meaning you know it's having a really bad impact on your health, your physical health. Like maybe it's impacting your lungs, you can't breathe, you're foggy all the time. Maybe you know it's making your depression and anxiety worse. It's like, I know that it's causing me these emotional or physical problems, but I keep doing it anyway. These are the 11 criteria for marijuana use disorder. Now, hopefully you've been counting or keeping up with them, but if you had trouble following all that and it's just easier for you to see it all out, like written in a list form, then I'm going to put a link in the description for you to actually download this list. So you can think through it for yourself or think through it with someone that you're concerned about. But let me tell you how to score it. This will also be on the list, but let's go through it here. If you counted between two to three of these symptoms, then you have a mild marijuana use disorder. If you counted between four and five of these symptoms, then you have a moderate marijuana use disorder. If you counted six or more, then you have a severe marijuana use disorder. I know that can be surprising because maybe you were counting along and you're like, oh, I only had six, I only had seven, I didn't have all 11. And you think, oh, I'm good. But actually, if you have six or more, that's a really high number and something that you should pay attention to. Now, as I told you earlier, I said I was going to give you a few sort of unofficial things that you should look for. These are not, like, listed in the big clinical book, the Diagnostic Statistical Manual, but these are in my experience, very common, if not universal to people having a marijuana problem. In my professional experience now, I see people with all kinds of addictions, and in some ways addiction is all the same. And in some ways there's like a little bit of variation based on what kind of addiction you're struggling with. And when it comes to marijuana, I feel like people that have marijuana addiction are among the most depressed and anxious of all the clients that I see. And that may be surprising to you because maybe you're saying, oh, it's not really a heavy drug, it's not that bad. But what happens to you when you have a wee problem is it's like it slowly starts to affect you. I know in the immediate it feels like it's helping your depression and anxiety, but what's actually happening is when you use, yes, you feel a little bit better, but when you're not using, you actually, actually have a deficit of the good brain chemicals. So over the course of time, you're actually worsening like your good brain. Chemical levels like dopamine, serotonin, you're having less and less of them occurring naturally, which is why it feels like the only thing that's helping my anxiety is the weed. But in actuality, it's making it worse. Now, the reason why it's so hard to pick that up is because it does happen kind of slowly when it comes to marijuana use. What I like to explain it is this. When people start using cocaine and they're having a problem with it, they can usually tell pretty dang quickly that cocaine is causing problems because they can see the money problems, they can see the work problems, the relationship problems. They're like, dang, this stuff's messing my life up, right? But with marijuana, it impacts you slowly, and you don't attribute it to the marijuana. In fact, you don't even realize that it's happening to you. The metaphor I like to use is, it's like when you're a kid and you're in the ocean and you're playing and you got your boogie board or whatever, you see your family up there, you wave at them like, hey, mom, watch this. And you're having a good time. And then 20, 30 minutes go by, you've been playing, you look up and you don't see your family anymore. You're like, oh, my God, what happened to them? You think, oh, my gosh, they left me. I can't believe they left me. But really, the tide moved you slowly down the coast, and you didn't even recognize it was happening. That is the way marijuana addiction works. Your motivation slowly starts to wane. You get less and less. You may use. You may have all these brilliant ideas and these brilliant plans, and you may feel motivated for all these things. Is it actually happening? Are you putting action steps in place, or is it just a bunch of fun, interesting ideas to come up with? Ask yourself this. Is my anxiety better or worse? Worse than before I started using. That's another good indicator. You got to sort of step back from this thing and look at the big picture. The before, the during, the after. The other way to really figure this out is actually to stop for a while. And what I mean for a while is, I hate to say it, but this needs to be more than 30 days because it takes a couple of weeks just to start getting your brain chemistry right and another couple weeks to get better balanced. And it's not all the way better till quite a while. But if you really want to see, I want you to stop for at least 30 days. And just see. Do you feel better? Are you more motivated? Motivated? Are your relationships better? Is your mental health better? That is the indicator, I can tell you from watching people overcome weed addiction. It is like they are night and day, different people, and most of the time they couldn't even see it until they got outside of it. And that's just the way that marijuana works. It's sneaky, it's hidden like that. And we didn't even talk about the fact that it's so like culturally accepted and encouraged. We didn't even bring that into the picture. I'm just talking about like the personal internal dialogue when it comes to marijuana use. It is very difficult to pinpoint down. What the issue is. Is. Now one last little tricky thing that I want you to watch out for is with, and this is with any addiction, not just marijuana. But what happens is, is because it's messing up our brain chemicals and a few other brain changes that are happening. I've got that in some other videos if you want to check those out. Check out my playlist on the science of addiction. If you want to get into the nerdy stuff. There's some branch changes that happen, basically, is what I'm saying. And it is going to feel to you like it is the other people or situations in your life that are the problem. This is a universal addiction. Thought I have really not ever treated anybody hardly that had an addiction that didn't tell me it wasn't their wife, their teacher, their husband, their job. It feels like it's these other things and that is because your perception is changed. Because when you're not using, you feel crappy. And then as you're using and things in your life start to kind of go out of hell and people start to get on your case and people are happy with you at work. It feels like it's these other things making you so unhappy. But you really do have to step back and look at what is the big pattern. I'm not saying saying everyone that uses marijuana has an addiction just like any other substance or thing. You know, not everyone that drinks alcohol is an alcoholic, but there are certain few of us that when we use it tends to create a problem. And if you're identifying a lot of these things that we've talked about in this video, that could be you. If you think that you might want to give it a try to go without marijuana, then I want you to watch my playlist on how to conquer an addiction. I'll put it right up here so all you have to do is click on it.