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“I got a bunch of weed to help me through the withdrawals”: Naturalistic cannabis use reported in online opioid and opioid recovery community discussion forums

A growing body of research has reported on the potential opioid-sparing effects of cannabis and cannabinoids, but less is known about specific mechanisms. The present research examines cannabis-related posts in two large online communities on the Reddit platform (“subreddits”) to compare mentions of...

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Autores principales: Meacham, Meredith C., Nobles, Alicia L., Tompkins, D. Andrew, Thrul, Johannes
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8824349/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35134074
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263583
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author Meacham, Meredith C.
Nobles, Alicia L.
Tompkins, D. Andrew
Thrul, Johannes
author_facet Meacham, Meredith C.
Nobles, Alicia L.
Tompkins, D. Andrew
Thrul, Johannes
author_sort Meacham, Meredith C.
collection PubMed
description A growing body of research has reported on the potential opioid-sparing effects of cannabis and cannabinoids, but less is known about specific mechanisms. The present research examines cannabis-related posts in two large online communities on the Reddit platform (“subreddits”) to compare mentions of naturalistic cannabis use by persons self-identifying as actively using opioids versus persons in recovery. We extracted all posts mentioning cannabis-related keywords (e.g., “weed”, “cannabis”, “marijuana”) from December 2015 through August 2019 from an opioid use subreddit and an opioid recovery subreddit. To investigate how cannabis is discussed at-scale, we identified and compared the most frequent phrases in cannabis-related posts in each subreddit using term-frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) weighting. To contextualize these findings, we also conducted a qualitative content analysis of 200 random posts (100 from each subreddit). Cannabis-related posts were about twice as prevalent in the recovery subreddit (n = 908; 5.4% of 16,791 posts) than in the active opioid use subreddit (n = 4,224; 2.6% of 159,994 posts, p < .001). The most frequent phrases from the recovery subreddit referred to time without using opioids and the possibility of using cannabis as a “treatment.” The most frequent phrases from the opioid subreddit referred to concurrent use of cannabis and opioids. The most common motivations for using cannabis were to manage opioid withdrawal symptoms in the recovery subreddit, often in conjunction with anti-anxiety and GI-distress “comfort meds,” and to enhance the “high” when used in combination with opioids in the opioid subreddit. Despite limitations in generalizability from pseudonymous online posts, this examination of reports of naturalistic cannabis use in relation to opioid use identified withdrawal symptom management as a common motivation. Future research is warranted with more structured assessments that examines the role of cannabis and cannabinoids in addressing both somatic and affective symptoms of opioid withdrawal.
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spelling pubmed-88243492022-02-09 “I got a bunch of weed to help me through the withdrawals”: Naturalistic cannabis use reported in online opioid and opioid recovery community discussion forums Meacham, Meredith C. Nobles, Alicia L. Tompkins, D. Andrew Thrul, Johannes PLoS One Research Article A growing body of research has reported on the potential opioid-sparing effects of cannabis and cannabinoids, but less is known about specific mechanisms. The present research examines cannabis-related posts in two large online communities on the Reddit platform (“subreddits”) to compare mentions of naturalistic cannabis use by persons self-identifying as actively using opioids versus persons in recovery. We extracted all posts mentioning cannabis-related keywords (e.g., “weed”, “cannabis”, “marijuana”) from December 2015 through August 2019 from an opioid use subreddit and an opioid recovery subreddit. To investigate how cannabis is discussed at-scale, we identified and compared the most frequent phrases in cannabis-related posts in each subreddit using term-frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) weighting. To contextualize these findings, we also conducted a qualitative content analysis of 200 random posts (100 from each subreddit). Cannabis-related posts were about twice as prevalent in the recovery subreddit (n = 908; 5.4% of 16,791 posts) than in the active opioid use subreddit (n = 4,224; 2.6% of 159,994 posts, p < .001). The most frequent phrases from the recovery subreddit referred to time without using opioids and the possibility of using cannabis as a “treatment.” The most frequent phrases from the opioid subreddit referred to concurrent use of cannabis and opioids. The most common motivations for using cannabis were to manage opioid withdrawal symptoms in the recovery subreddit, often in conjunction with anti-anxiety and GI-distress “comfort meds,” and to enhance the “high” when used in combination with opioids in the opioid subreddit. Despite limitations in generalizability from pseudonymous online posts, this examination of reports of naturalistic cannabis use in relation to opioid use identified withdrawal symptom management as a common motivation. Future research is warranted with more structured assessments that examines the role of cannabis and cannabinoids in addressing both somatic and affective symptoms of opioid withdrawal. Public Library of Science 2022-02-08 /pmc/articles/PMC8824349/ /pubmed/35134074 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263583 Text en © 2022 Meacham et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Meacham, Meredith C.
Nobles, Alicia L.
Tompkins, D. Andrew
Thrul, Johannes
“I got a bunch of weed to help me through the withdrawals”: Naturalistic cannabis use reported in online opioid and opioid recovery community discussion forums
title “I got a bunch of weed to help me through the withdrawals”: Naturalistic cannabis use reported in online opioid and opioid recovery community discussion forums
title_full “I got a bunch of weed to help me through the withdrawals”: Naturalistic cannabis use reported in online opioid and opioid recovery community discussion forums
title_fullStr “I got a bunch of weed to help me through the withdrawals”: Naturalistic cannabis use reported in online opioid and opioid recovery community discussion forums
title_full_unstemmed “I got a bunch of weed to help me through the withdrawals”: Naturalistic cannabis use reported in online opioid and opioid recovery community discussion forums
title_short “I got a bunch of weed to help me through the withdrawals”: Naturalistic cannabis use reported in online opioid and opioid recovery community discussion forums
title_sort “i got a bunch of weed to help me through the withdrawals”: naturalistic cannabis use reported in online opioid and opioid recovery community discussion forums
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8824349/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35134074
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263583
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