ArticlePloS one2022
"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.
Article in PloS one, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Alleviation of opioid withdrawal by cannabis and delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol: A systematic review of observational and experimental human studies.Drug and alcohol dependence · 2022Pooled it
- Cannabis Use Among Individuals Treated with Medication for Opioid Use Disorder: Correlates, Patterns, and Motivations for Use.Substance use & addiction journal · 2026Article
- Self-reported cannabis use to manage opioid withdrawal symptoms and reductions in opioid use among people who use unregulated opioids: a cross-sectional analysis.Journal of cannabis research · 2026Article
- A qualitative study on cannabis use for harm reduction and pain among veterans enrolled in an SUD treatment program.Harm reduction journal · 2026Article
- Opioid reduction in patients with chronic non-cancer pain undergoing treatment with medicinal cannabis.Pain management · 2025Article
- Self-Disclosure and Social Support in a Web-Based Opioid Recovery Community: Machine Learning Analysis.JMIR formative research · 2025Article
- Using Natural Language Processing to Describe the Use of an Online Community for Abortion During 2022: Dynamic Topic Modeling Analysis of Reddit Posts.JMIR infodemiology · 2025Article
- Have Others Had This Experience? A Qualitative Analysis of Posts on Self-Managed Abortion to US-Based Reddit Community.Perspectives on sexual and reproductive health · 2025Article
- The Police Opioid Seizure Temporal Risk (POSTeR) model of increased exposure to fatal overdose.The International journal on drug policy · 2025Article
- Which social media platforms facilitate monitoring the opioid crisis?PLOS digital health · 2025Article
- The Role of Medicinal Cannabis as an Emerging Therapy for Opioid Use Disorder.Pain and therapy · 2024Review
- Article
- The Therapeutic Potential of Cannabidiol in Revolutionising Opioid Use Disorder Management.Cureus · 2023Review
- Investigating Substance Use via Reddit: Systematic Scoping Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Article
- Self-Identified Stage in Recovery and Substance-Use Behaviors among Pregnant and Postpartum Women and People with Opioid Use Disorder.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Using Social Media Data to Investigate Public Perceptions of Cannabis as a Medicine: Narrative Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Review
- Social media discourse and internet search queries on cannabis as a medicine: A systematic scoping review.PloS one · 2023Article
- Consumer-Generated Discourse on Cannabis as a Medicine: Scoping Review of Techniques.Journal of medical Internet research · 2022Article
- Types and Sources of Stigma on Opioid Use Treatment and Recovery Communities on Reddit.Substance use & misuse · 2022Article
- Behavioral Innovations to Access Abortion Post-Dobbs: A Qualitative Thematic Analysis of Reddit's r/abortion Community in 2022.Inquiry : a journal of medical care organization, provision and financingArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
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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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.