Chunk #39 — Conceptualizing Problematic Cannabis Use in Mental Illness: Addiction Vulnerability versus Self-Medication Hypothesis — Addiction Vulnerability Hypothesis Reconceived: Reconciliation with the Allostasis Model
symptoms and the neurobiological deficit. Moreover, the cannabis user is unaware of these processes, perceiving cannabis as a mode to attenuate symptoms. In other words, mental illness makes an individual vulnerable to potential reliance on cannabis as a coping strategy to manage clinical symptoms. This further places an individual at risk to CUD, which leads to an allostatic state that progresses to addiction. Throughout the transition from cannabis use to CUD, the perception that cannabis improves mental illness highlights this paradox.
