What About Pot?

What about pot? Isn’t it a safe drug to use? It’s common for a client to come to NewDay wanting help with alcohol (or cocaine, opiates, meth, whatever is they’re drug of choice), but then as they’re going through treatment, they smoke pot. We ask all clients while in treatment to maintain complete abstinence from all mood altering drugs that aren’t prescribed by a physician who understands the person is going through treatment for addiction. Sometimes a person has to take medicine that has some mood altering effect, but there’s usually a non-mood altering alternative medicine.

The person who smokes pot because they don’t think of pot as a dangerous drug is just substituting they’re drug of choice for pot because they think  some kind of drug is necessary. It’s difficult to convince clients that pot puts them at risk to return to their drug of choice, or for pot to become a problem.

It’s true that the person might not become a totally wasted pot head, but when a person has an problem with an addictive drug, they usually abuse other drugs they try. The main answer to the question – what about pot? – is that it affects a person’s judgement. When someone’s trying to stay away from a drug to which they’ve become addicted, it takes a clear head and sound judgement. If the person, say, who’s trying to quit drinking alcohol is under the influence of pot, and, if they’re tempted to drink for any number of reasons, it’s much easier for them to start drinking if their judgement is affected by pot — people under the influence of any mood altering drug are more likely to make poor decisions than if they’re sober and clear headed.

Plus, if the point of smoking pot is to have some way to get high at times, then they’ll likely be unsatisfied with the high they get from pot as compared to their drug of choice, thus while under the influence of pot they’ll likely choose to return to their drug of choice. What about pot? It puts the person at risk of relapsing and returning to the drug that was destroying their life.