Is marijuana the same thing as cannabis?

People often use the words “cannabis” and “marijuana” interchangeably, but they don’t mean exactly the same thing.

• The word “cannabis” refers to all products derived from the plant Cannabis sativa.
• The cannabis plant contains about 540 chemical substances.
• The word “marijuana” refers to parts of or products from the plant Cannabis sativa that contain substantial amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). THC is the substance that’s primarily responsible for the effects of marijuana on a person’s mental state. Some cannabis plants contain very little THC. Under U.S. law, these plants are considered “industrial hemp” rather than marijuana.

Throughout the rest of this fact sheet, we use the term “cannabis” to refer to the plant Cannabis sativa.

What is Marijuana ?

Marijuana—also called weed, herb, pot, grass, bud, ganja, Mary Jane, and a vast number of other slang terms—is a greenish-gray mixture of the dried flowers of Cannabis sativa. Some people smoke marijuana in hand-rolled cigarettes called joints; in pipes, water pipes (sometimes called bongs), or in blunts (marijuana rolled in cigar wraps).

Marijuana can also be used to brew tea and, particularly when it is sold or consumed for medicinal purposes, is frequently mixed into foods (edibles) such as brownies, cookies, or candies. Vaporizers are also increasingly used to consume marijuana.

Stronger forms of marijuana include sinsemilla (from specially tended female plants) and concentrated resins containing high doses of marijuana’s active ingredients, including honeylike hash oil, waxy budder, and hard amberlike shatter. These resins are increasingly popular among those who use them both recreationally and medically

The anti-drug campaign of the last several decades has emphasized the potential harms of cannabis without acknowledging its medicinal properties. There are indeed genuine side effects and risks of cannabis use, but it’s important to weigh these risks against the verified benefits.

How Pot Affects Your Mind and Body ?

Marijuana has mind-altering compounds that affect both your brain and body. It can be addictive, and it may be harmful to some people’s health. Here’s what can happen when you use marijuana:

You Can Get “High”

It’s why most people try marijuana. The main psychoactive ingredient, THC, stimulates the part of your brain that responds to pleasure, like food and sex. That unleashes a chemical called dopamine, which gives you a euphoric, relaxed feeling.

If you vape or smoke weed, the THC could get into your bloodstream quickly enough for you to get your high in seconds or minutes. The THC level usually peaks in about 30 minutes, and its effects may wear off in 1-3 hours. If you drink or eat pot, it may take many hours for you to fully sober up. You may not always know how potent your recreational marijuana might be. That also goes for most medical marijuana.

It May Affect Your Mental Health

Not everyone’s experience with marijuana is pleasant. It often can leave you anxious, afraid, panicked, or paranoid. Using marijuana may raise your chances for clinical depression or worsen the symptoms of any mental disorders you already have. Scientists aren’t yet sure exactly why. In high doses, it can make you paranoid or lose touch with reality so you hear or see things that aren’t there.

Your Thinking May Get Distorted

Marijuana can cloud your senses and judgment. The effects can differ depending on things like how potent your pot was, how you took it, and how much marijuana you’ve used in the past. It might:

• Heighten your senses (colors might seem brighter and sounds might seem louder)
• Distort your sense of time
• Hurt your motor skills and make driving more dangerous
• Lower your inhibitions so you may have risky sex or take other chances

You May Get Hooked

About 1 in 10 people who use marijuana will become addicted. That means you can’t stop using it even if it harms your relationships, job, health, or finances. The risk is greater the younger you start marijuana and the more heavily you use it. For instance, the odds of addiction are 1 in 6 if you use pot in your teens. It might be as high as 1 in 2 among those who use it every day.

You could also grow physically dependent on marijuana. Your body could go into withdrawal, leaving you irritable, restless, unable to sleep, and uninterested in eating when you don’t use it. Learn more about how to spot the signs of marijuana addiction.

It May Impair Your Brain

Marijuana can make it harder for you to focus, learn, and remember things. This seems to be a short-term effect that lasts for 24 hours or longer after you stop smoking.

But using pot heavily, especially in your teen years, may leave more permanent effects. Imaging tests with some — but not all — adolescents found that marijuana may physically change their brains. Specifically, they had fewer connections in parts of the brain linked to alertness, learning, and memory, and tests show lower IQ scores in some people.

Your Lungs May Hurt

Marijuana smoke can inflame and irritate your lungs. If you use it regularly, you could have the same breathing problems as someone who smokes cigarettes. That could mean ongoing cough with colored mucus. Your lungs may more easily pick up infections. That’s partly because THC seems to weaken some users’ immune systems.

It May Ease Your Pain and Other Symptoms

Medical marijuana is legal in some form in a majority of states. And more than 10 states and Washington, DC, have legalized recreational pot. But the federal government’s ban on marijuana has made it hard to study its effects on humans. Limited research shows that medicinal pot might help:

• Ongoing pain (This is the most common use and a possible benefit of medical marijuana.)
• Stiff muscles or muscle spasms from multiple sclerosis.
• Sleep problems for those with fibromyalgia, MS, and sleep apnea
• Anxiety
• Loss of appetite and weight loss in people with AIDS
• Nausea or throwing up from chemotherapy
• Seizures from epilepsy
• Dravet syndrome or Lennox-Gastaut syndrome

You May Feel Hungrier

Many people who use marijuana regularly notice that it boosts their appetite. They call this “the munchies.” Some research suggests that might help people with AIDS, cancer, or other illnesses regain weight. Scientists are studying this and whether it’s safe.

It May Harm Your Heart

Marijuana makes your heart work harder. Normally the heart beats about 50 to 70 times a minute. But that can jump to 70 to 120 beats or more per minute for 3 hours after the effects kick in. The added strain plus tar and other chemicals in pot may raise your chance of heart attack or stroke. The danger is even bigger if you’re older or if you already have heart problems.

It Intensifies Alcohol’s Dangers

More than 1 in 10 drinkers say they have used marijuana in the past year. Combining alcohol and marijuana at the same time roughly doubled the odds of drunk driving or legal, professional, or personal problems compared to drinking alone.

Your Newborn Might Be Underweight

Mothers who smoke pot while pregnant face a higher risk of giving birth to underweight or premature babies. But researchers don’t know enough to say if those infants are more likely to grow up to struggle in school, use drugs, or have other problems in life.

Health Benefits of Cannabis That Everyone Should Know

Alleviates Stress 

Some would say there are few things better in this world for alleviating stress than some good cannabis. You know it is time to relax when the work is done, and your hand-rolled joint is waiting for you. However you choose to spend your time high, cannabis can help to reduce stress and provide your body the break it needs.

You may watch a movie, go for a long walk, eat a healthy meal, or read a book. No matter the activity, the result is you feeling less stressed. With cannabis, a little can go a long way, so remember to start low and go slow. 

Melt Away Muscle Tension

Adding to the mental relaxation that cannabis produces, it also helps melt away our physical tensions. Of the cannabinoids inside the cannabis plant, THC is the primary driver of this health benefit. It is well known in the research literature that THC is a muscle relaxant, among its many other benefits. 

Are you feeling tight and tense? Enjoying some cannabis is often the perfect way to make it all go away. If you’ve ever tried doing yoga, stretching, or mobility work while high, you know what we’re talking about. The next time you feel tense, try finding a nice quiet spot to sit comfortably while high. Spend some time focusing on your body and your breathing. Notice the tight areas and let the cannabis help you melt away the tension. 

Promote Relaxation and Recovery

Those who regularly consume cannabis understand now it has the powerful ability to promote rest and recovery. As we saw from the health benefits described above, cannabis helps shift the focus away from stress and toward recovery. 

Instead of thinking of cannabis as a drug able to heal us from certain diseases, think of it as a recovery facilitator. Cannabis helps our body do the work of healing by helping it get in the right state of mind. It helps us get out of a fight or flight state and instead into a rest and digest state, as far as our nervous system goes. 

Anti-Inflammatory Power

While THC gets all the credit, it is one of many amazing compounds inside the cannabis plant. Combined, cannabinoids demonstrate remarkable anti-inflammatory properties. By using cannabis, we can help our body use inflammation the right way, without going overboard and causing more harm than good. The anti-inflammatory effects of cannabis play a substantial role in the recovery state we discovered above. All in all, cannabis shifts your body toward healing and health.

Reduce Nausea and Vomiting after Chemotherapy

Numerous studies have demonstrated that cannabinoids can help improve nausea and vomiting that results due from chemotherapy. This is one of those benefits that we all hope never to have to discover for ourselves. That said, it is wonderful to hear that those undergoing chemotherapy can find some relief from cannabis. Especially when these unfortunate symptoms are so resistant to other treatments. 

Mindfulness and Being in the Moment

Cannabis helps shift your attention and focus to the now. How we use cannabis has a significant impact on the benefits we acquire in those moments. Many consumers use cannabis to promote more present-focused and mindful attention. Whether the activity at hand is watching a movie, eating a meal, or going for a walk in nature. Whatever you’re doing, cannabis can help you focus on the little things that make each moment special. 

Pain Management

The research on using cannabis for pain management is mixed and generally not as rigorous as is needed. Unfortunately, this has led some to ask whether the mild side effects of cannabis outweigh the pain management benefits?

Well, all you have to do is go around asking medical cannabis patients what they think to get a very different story. People suffering from various persistent pain problems have found the benefits of cannabis to outweigh every other option they’ve tried. 

An interesting thought is this: cannabis may not lower pain levels directly, but it appears to alter the emotional reaction to the pain experience. You’ll often see this trend underlying the stories of those who use cannabis to help them function throughout the day despite pain problems. 

Treating anxiety disorders

Anxiety is perhaps the most common affliction that people have used CBD for, and a preclinical study found that CBD could be effective in treating generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. 

Fighting cancer

Not only has CBD been used to help alleviate the effects of chemotherapy, but studies have also found it can prevent cell growth and induce cell death in cervical cancer cell lines and it has numerous anti-cancer effects that can help prevent a variety of cancers, treat tumors, and benefit the immune system. 

How to Quit Marijuana ?

1. Get Rid of Your Supply

If you have weed around, you’re going to want to use it. As soon as you’ve decided to quit, don’t keep your drugs around; instead, get rid of them and don’t look back.

2. Avoid “People, Places or Things” That Make You Want to Smoke Weed

People in early recovery from drugs or alcohol are often counseled to avoid people, places or things that trigger cravings to drink or use drugs. This principle can be just as helpful for those hoping to kick a weed habit. If you regularly used to smoke weed with a certain crowd, or bought joints from a dealer in the next town over, you may need to avoid seeing these people and the places and things associated with them— at least for a time.

3. Start Exercising Daily

Research has shown that exercise can help to reduce addiction cravings. It also can go a long way to restoring healthy brain function in the aftermath of pot addiction (which a growing body of research has associated with cognitive and structural impairment). Exercise is also a great buffer against stress, so it can serve as a healthy, alternative coping device for those who may have smoked weed because of stress.

4. Plan Sober Events

If you spend your nights at parties with other pot-smoking friends, breaking your routine will be particularly difficult. Instead of putting yourself in temptation’s way, plan and organize sober events, or at least weed-free events, to avoid the urge to use. You’ll soon begin to discover that you can have fun without getting high, and this discovery will help you find joy in sobriety.

5. Enlist a Support System

In most cases, if you let your friends and family know that you feel you have a problem and are trying to quit, you will be met with support and compassion. You’ll be more compelled to stick to a commitment that you’ve voiced and won’t want to let them down. When you’re feeling weak, lean on your support system to help you get through the tough times.

6. Set Goals

What do you want to accomplish with life after marijuana? By setting goals that can’t be achieved when a weed habit is in the picture, you put yourself in a mindset for success.

7. Get Professional Help

If your own efforts aren’t working and you feel that outside help would be beneficial, there are plenty of rehabilitation centers that handle marijuana detox and treatment. You may also want to consider working with a counselor or therapist with experience in addiction medicine.

Signs of a Problem

Weed is often believed to be fairly unproblematic, in large part due to its less addictive nature, its acceptance by many in the medical community, and its growing legality. That said, frequent weed use can turn into a harmful addiction and may require professional help to resolve. If you display any of these signs related to your use of marijuana, now may be the time to learn how to reduce your pot intake— or, even better, quit weed altogether:

• Anxiety and stress without weed: Marijuana can be a good way to relieve stress, particularly for those with anxiety disorders, but too much can take you over the top. If you can’t function or feel normal without weed, you may have a problem.
• Hiding the extent of your use: If you feel the need to hide your activity from those who generally approve of pot, you may be smoking too much.
• Stealing or lying to secure weed: If you are so desperate for marijuana that you have resorted to lying or stealing to feed your habit, your smoking may have gone too far.
• Disinterest in life without weed: If marijuana is standing in your way of living a full and enriching life when you’re not high, your habits are indicative of a problem.
• Using weed at inappropriate times: If you find yourself smoking during a work shift, at your children’s activities, or in a worship service, for example, reconsider your drug use.

It may be possible to correct your habits after initial signs of problematic behavior, but for regular, recreational marijuana users, any of these factors may indicate a sign to quit.

The Best Way to Stop Smoking

For those with a long-term smoking habit, the idea of stopping can be fairly troubling. When marijuana is at the center of your life—your hobbies, your friends, your nighttime activities—imagining a life without it isn’t easy.

But, whether you realize it or not, your use of drugs that are illegal on a federal level is going to hold you back in one way or another. Maybe that means failing a background check for your dream job or wasting time that could otherwise be invested in creative endeavors. Perhaps your appetite for weed is standing in the way of important personal goals such as weight loss or fitness, or your grades are sliding because you’ve been smoking instead of studying.

You may not have even realized the extent of your challenges so far, but when you really stop to think about it, you’ll likely be able to identify at least one area of life that could be improved by sobriety. From achieving the GPA you need to get into medical school, to testing clean for drugs at your next job interview, quitting weed can help you break away from a toxic lifestyle and open doors to new opportunities. The sooner you realize this, the more motivated you will be to quit.

Reference : nida.nih.gov , webmd.com , jwu.edu , credihealth.com