To understand why an individual describes self-medicating with cannabis to cope with clinical symptoms of mental illness, a framework highlighting the developmental process of CUD needs explanation. The sensations experienced during an acute intoxication, or “high”, from cannabis facilitate positive reinforcement through the temporary escape from psychiatric symptomolgy, which is followed by craving and further use. This is consistent with theories of addiction vulnerability, which predisposes an individual to not only using cannabis, but developing CUD. Repeated drug use can lead to neurobiological transitioning into an allostatic state [87], which produces an affective deficit over time that coincides with persistent cannabis use.
