MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Anees Bahji, MD
PGY5, Department of Psychiatry, Queen’s University
M.Sc. Candidate, Department of Public Health Sciences,
Queen’s University
Kingston, ON, Canada
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
- There has been much speculation into the existence of a withdrawal syndrome involving cannabis much like withdrawal syndromes from opioids or alcohol. Our goal for this study was to estimate the prevalence of cannabis withdrawal syndrome (CWS) and to identify any risk factors for CWS.
- There has been a lot of research into cannabis withdrawal syndrome (CWS) in the past. A big part of this review involved understanding where the CWS field is in terms of the shared understanding on its epidemiology and physiology.
- To that end, we were not surprised to find that the prevalence of cannabis withdrawal syndrome was high. However, we found that some of the characteristics of CWS are consistent with other substance use disorders, which really serves to legitimize the decision to classify CWS and cannabis use disorders as psychiatric conditions.