How would you treat someone who suffers withdrawal from angel dust (PCP) and cocaine? My friend Nicky was?

She is NOT having withdrawals. Marijuana is not chemically addictive. Patronizing or not, she has psyched herself out, for the most part.

The rest of her problems involve the conditioning she extinguished and replaced with the effects of marijuana. She is moody because she is not receiving any positive reinforcement - all of her positive reinforcement was wrapped up in the pharmacological effects of the marijuana. She needs to replace that with hobbies or other things that give her a strong sense of enjoyment.

She likely hasnt slept much, because her body doesn't know when to sleep. You do not go to sleep when you decide you are tired. You go to sleep when your body understands its time to sleep because of what it is experiencing at that time.

She needs to go to bed and get up at the same time every day. She needs a bed time routine of about 30-40 minutes that consist of low key things that signal bed time to her. She all needs to keep the light and noise to a min, and only sleep and have wanted sex in her bed.

She is anxious because she is moody, not sleeping, not geting any reinforcement - essentially, her body is confused, of course she is anxious. This will calm down if she re establishes some of her conditioning. She needs to set up meal times too, because many chronic users loose their meal conditioning, eating when they get the munchies.

Eat at the same time, and plan meals for nutrition, not taste or emotion. When, where and why does she use? She needs to analyze all that so she can plan alternatives.

She may want to avoid people who she only smokes with at first, or plan something else to do for the hand-oral fixation such as a sucker or gum. She needs to have something planned to do when she is bored and wants to have a hit. Other wise, she will use again.

She needs to set up rewards for meeting her goal, and they need to be long term and short term, large and small. A sticker chart, bribe herself with money, a pat on the back, a new outfit, etc. This stuff can take a few days to a couple weeks to set in, and is primarily the kinds of things rehab deals with, even with chemically addictive substances. Researching classical and operant conditioning can help explain how some of this works and give more details on actually doing it.

As far as anti depressants, if she is actually clinically depressed, anti depressants are not necessarily just one drug replacing another. They could be medicine that helps the situation. I am not saying she should sign on to meds without consideration, but they should not be dis counted without consideration either.

Additionally, it wouldnt just be replacing one drug for another, but replacing the unmonitored abuse of one drug with the medical use of another, or even the same drug. Also realize that very often, illegal drug use is a result of self medication of depression or other mental disorders and diseases. It could be (and certainly sounds like) clinical depression is what started her drug use to begin with.

It is possible that she wouldnt be sitting her trying to figure out how to go off marijuana if she had considered anti depressants, or used the marijuana under the care of a doctor, to begin with. If clinical depression is a problem, getting clean will not solve anything. The clinical depression will have to be treated, through meds or counseling, in order to maintain sobriety.

From what I have heard there aren't any physical symptoms to withdrawal from mj. If she is having psychological withdrawal symptoms a good thing to do is exercise. It makes you feel better, it gets your blood circulating and your muscles working, its fun, and gives you something to occupy your mind rather than thinking about being without the mj.

You can also do something useful like mow the yard or paint a fence, any kind of simple handy work that needs to be done. So sign up for an exercise class right away, and yoga, and find some useful chores that need doing. Aloha.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.