A recent study out of the University of New South Wales in Australia has found that habitual marijuana users who try to quit their weed smoking habit may experience many of the same grumpy and irritable side effects as someone trying to quit cigarettes cold turkey.

The study, conducted by researchers at the puritanical-sounding National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre, had about 50 weed smokers abstaining from their usual preferred method of self-medication for a period of two weeks. According to the findings, subjects experienced things like irritability and trouble sleeping when they weren't able to toke away at their leisure. Naturally, trouble sleeping and disagreeable attitudes led to problems in the subjects' work and personal lives.

As one of the Australian researchers told LiveScience, the study is a start in changing people's perceptions of marijuana use, but there is "a long way to go still in changing the popular beliefs."

When asked to comment on how these findings would impact his own regular marijuana use, one anonymous cannabis patient in San Francisco told SFist: "I'm not worried about withdrawal since I'm not quitting. Everything makes me 'irritable, tense and anxious' and disrupts sleep. Traffic does that to me. So does losing at ping-pong."

[LiveScience]
[NYDaily]