Meg Haney, G92

Meg Haney, G92, envisions a treatment for marijuana addiction.

Treating "Chronic" Withdrawal

The decriminalization of marijuana usage by many U.S. communities has drawn new attention to the popular substance's addictive potential.
Meg Haney, G92, codirector of the Columbia University Substance Use Research Center, has been studying habitual marijuana use for fifteen years.

"People seek treatment for chronic marijuana use because they have tried to quit and haven't succeeded," said Haney, who has a Ph.D. in psychology from Tufts. "They worry about the health consequences of marijuana. They feel professionally stuck, that marijuana has impeded their progress in life. I also think they feel distressed that they can't stop."

Haney's research, supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, takes place at a residential laboratory close to campus in New York. Study participants, who are not interested in marijuana treatment and who smoke at least seven marijuana cigarettes a day, sleep and eat in individual rooms and smoke marijuana under controlled conditions. Each room has video cameras and microphones so that Haney and her team can monitor participants around the clock and collect data on cognitive behavior, sleep patterns, mood, and food intake. Haney has found that participants experience classic withdrawal symptomsirritability, anxiety, disrupted sleepwhen given placebo marijuana cigarettes.

Haney now focuses on treatment. She has tested how certain drugs, like the antidepressant Bupropion (also known by the brand names Wellbutrin and Zyban) and the mood stabilizer
Depakote (divalproex sodium), might help chronic marijuana users cope with their withdrawal symptoms. Encouraging lab results indicate that Dronabinol, a cancer drug containing an active ingredient in marijuana, may be an effective treatment option.

Will there be a patch? "With marijuana, we are not dealing with people being on medication for the rest of their lives," said Haney, who also researches cocaine dependence. "It would be something to help them during the first month or two when they have just quit smoking and when withdrawal is peaking. You just want to transition them away from smoking every day, and we think a medication might help."

Photo by Alonso Nichols