Our featured article this month is "Marijuana:  The Training Wheels of Drug Addiction" by Andrew Jones, MS, LPC.

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Marijuana: 

The Training Wheels of Drug Addiction

 

by Andrew Jones MS, LPC

 

Marijuana has been described in the past as a "gateway drug". The meaning behind this description is pretty clear.  Marijuana seems to be what most addicts try first, before moving on to drugs that are stronger and even more addicting.  In my clinical experience, I have found that marijuana teaches the user what "getting high" is all about.

 

Many marijuana users report when they first tried this drug, they didn't get high or feel any different.  For them, it took a couple of times using it before they felt any significant change.  Eventually, it hit them like a ton of bricks.

 

Rather than describing marijuana as being a "gateway" through which the user automatically moves on to other drugs; it is a more accurate description to call it a "training drug".  Acting as a medicinal set of training wheels, marijuana defines the term "getting high".  It teaches the user that using the drug is not as terrible as their parents, the school, and media have always stated.  They "feel good" and nothing particularly bad happened to them (as long as they did not get caught).  This experience teaches them that seeking powerful, artificially created pleasure, is something to be desired and sought after.

 

Once this newly learned behavior becomes comfortable and habitual, the user may eventually feel like the high of marijuana is now "the norm" for him or her.  The experience has become ordinary.  The user may find that they miss the excitement and thrill of trying a new "forbidden fruit" and seek to find that excitement in more powerful substances, perhaps substances they heard about from friends.  At this point, the user may embark on a path of trying different substances.  If he or she has researched which drugs cause certain feelings, a path toward a particular substance that matches their favorite way of feeling may suit them.  In other words, if the user likes relaxing, they may move toward opiates.  If the user likes feeling euphoric, cocaine may become a drug of choice.  If the user likes feeling energized, something else may be used such as crack or speed.

 

Regardless of the eventual drug of choice, it usually started out with the training wheels of marijuana to teach them about getting high and how to overcome their inhibition of using any kind of illegal or restricted drug in the first place.  As society becomes more lenient on the use of this substance, the opportunity for young users to receive "getting high training" becomes much more accessible.

 

I predict the states that legalize the use of marijuana may also find a rise in the use of other substances because of the ease in which the user can move through this training phase.  The warnings of the negative effects of marijuana may go unheeded under the new rationalization "If it were really all that dangerous, the government would not have approved it for general use." 

  

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