Addiction. It’s a loaded word. Lots of baggage, lots of uncertainty in its meaning. It gets tossed around a lot in reference to marijuana, from those who claim that marijuana is provably addictive, to those who say there is no such thing as addiction.

Regardless of those views, I think most people would agree that there are some marijuana users whose use appears to most people to be excessive. And whether that’s reality or perception, it’s still a very real hurdle.

Making this all even more topical, we now have a very real and current controversy regarding the definition of addiction: War Over Addiction: Evaluating The DSM-V

You’ve heard about the Drug War? Well there’s a war being fought over addiction by the Task Force revising the psychiatric bible in the United States.

Called DSM-V, it will be referred to by every therapist, child development specialist, and family court considering mental health issues, as well as criminal court concerning psychiatric defenses. [...]

This template for diagnosing our “mental disorders” has been struggling with addiction – like so many of us. The term “addiction” does not appear in DSM-IV. Rather, “dependence” was introduced as a replacement for addiction in the hope of defining the syndrome more precisely and less emotionally.

DSM-V plans to reintroduce addiction.

This is a roundabout way of leading to the real post, here.

Danny Chapin, the managing editor of AllTreatment.com, a directory for drug rehab centers and substance abuse information resource, approached me about having a dialog about marijuana addiction with all of you, as he searches for understanding himself.

I thought it was a brilliant idea. I wanted to hear what he had to say and also get a chance to respond.

So here we go. I’ll let you have first crack at it, and I’ll respond tomorrow, probably asking Danny for a follow-up post.