Western Michigan University
Abstract
We are going to discuss a substance called marijuana. Study the statistics and discuss the rates of abuse. What audience are affording to do this drug and talk about real-life time dependence? Research and explain beneficial and non-harmful purposes of marijuana, its symptoms of withdrawal. Show, how this drug affect human brain. Physiological responses and changes of human personality. What its main purpose? What you should really know before you use it? How non-stop usage grows in awful dependence. Top lies that you can hear about marijuana.
Marijuana is a bunch of dried, broken leaves, seeds or flowers of Cannabis sativa – the hemp plant. The color of mixture can turn from green to brown or gray. This drug have different abbreviations, starting from “weed” and ending with “joint”. There are different type of marijuana usage. It can be smoked as a cigarette, smoked in pipe like Indian people did, or brewed it in drinks or food. This plant contains over 400 chemicals in it, but the THC (chemical) affect our brain the most. When you smoke a joint, THC chemical flies into your blood and then it spreads through the body, effecting your brain. THC makes our brain release more and more pleasure hormones, which is called dopamine. Brain start to excrete more happiness hormones which he used to create daily. Marijuana is the most commonly used illegal drug in the world. A survey conducted in 2007 found that 14.4 million individuals in the US alone had smoked marijuana at least once during the previous month. This statics are really shocking. These statistics represent real people, families and communities dealing with a bad habit such as addiction.
Marijuana usage is widespread among teenagers and adults. The percentage of high school students who reported marijuana use in the early 1990s, has grown steadily. According to the annual survey on illicit drug use among middle and high school Monitoring the Future, the level of drug use in this age group (8, 10, and 12th grades) stabilized. However, in 2001, 20 percent of 8th graders reported that they first tried marijuana, and 9 percent were current users (using drugs for 30 days prior to the survey). Among the 40 percent of ninth-graders have tried marijuana at least once in their lives, and nearly 20 percent were current users. As might be expected, utilization rates of 12-graders were even higher. Almost half of them once tried marijuana, and 22 percent were current users. In 2001 the use of marijuana in the United States resulted in over 110 000 hits in an ambulance (ED), with about 15% of patients were aged from 12 to 17 years, and nearly two-thirds of them were male.
Withdrawal of marijuana cause tachycardia, muscle relaxation, euphoria and a feeling of complete bliss. A person loses all sense of time, his feelings are impermanent and sudden, especially common risibility. Driving and other activities requiring attention and quick response it appears to be hard to do, as marijuana make those qualities go slower and unclear. With an overdose of cannabis occur depersonalization, paranoid and anxious reactions. Person will have sleeplessness and weight loss due to the lack of appetite.
Marijuana abuse leads to the development of psychological dependence. There is a research data showing that in 10-20% of cases its abuse develop mental and physiological dependence. Extreme stop of marijuana usage causes a number of autonomic disorders (slight increase in blood pressure, heart palpitations, discomfort in the heart, headaches). Long-term use of marijuana produces and pharmacokinetic changes (how the drug is absorbed, distributed, metabolized, and excreted in the feces), and pharmacodynamics changes (how drugs interact with the target cells) in the body.
Cannabis and its derivatives have a positive effect in the treatment of affective disorders and a variety of mental health disorders - depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and panic disorder, bipolar disorder, and insomnia. Downturn usage of cannabis in medicine, result two factors. The first is the progress in the development of new drugs and the discovery of new knowledge related to many diseases and to methods for their treatment. The second factor is the Act of duties on Marijuana in 1937. This legal document rapidly reduced the use of marijuana for medical purposes.
THC is a potent psychotropic substance. If a person is injected with one milligram of THC, it can lead to severe mental illness, and in some cases even death. Getting into the blood, THC in a split second distributed throughout the body. Smokers describe their conditions as follows - first, you feel relax, during which the smoker feel the sweet taste of melon in his mouth, while THC creates a brain fog and slight dizziness. Bit later start feelings are getting worsen and get hallucinations. Sometime later, a man has incomprehensible panic attack and even in some cases fall into a state of paranoia. All this is the result of direct exposure to THC on the human brain. Quite a long time remained a mystery of the fact that the use of marijuana dramatically increased appetite. It was found that some of the molecules attach to the receptors of the brain and affect the activation function of hunger in the body. The study was proved that the use of this drug has a devastating effect on the walls of blood vessels. Sharp drug intoxication gives blood flow in the vessels of the brain, causing swelling of the nerve cells. Furthermore regular use of marijuana may cause edema in the brain.
References
http://teens.drugabuse.gov/drug-facts/marijuanahttp://www.drugpolicy.org/drug-facts/10-facts-about-marijuanahttp://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/marijuanahttp://www.drugfreeworld.org/drugfacts/marijuana.htmlhttp://norml.org/aboutmarijuana
Work cited
Volkow ND, Crane NA, Mason BJ. Adverse health effects of marijuana use. New England Journal of Medicine. 2014 Jun 5 – Retrieved from http://teens.drugabuse.gov/drug-facts/marijuana
The truth about marijuana, Foundation for a drug-free world, n.d. – Retrieved from http://www.drugfreeworld.org/drugfacts/marijuana.html
About marijuana, NORML, NORML and NORML Foundation, 2014. – Retrieved from http://norml.org/aboutmarijuana
Drug Facts, NIH, Bethesda, Maryland, 2014 – Retrieved from http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/marijuana
