Psychotherapy
Motivational enhancement therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy are the best-supported approaches, often combined with contingency management, which rewards progress, and relapse-prevention planning.
Condition
Cannabis Use Disorder
When cannabis stops feeling optional, there are ways to take back control.
Cannabis use disorder is when using cannabis — ganja, charas, bhang or other forms — becomes hard to control and starts to affect motivation, mental health, studies, work or relationships.
Because cannabis is often seen as harmless, people can take a long time to notice the effects. Regular use, especially of strong products or starting in the teenage years, is linked with poorer concentration, low mood, anxiety and, in some people, psychosis.
Talking therapies help many people cut down or stop, and support from family can make a big difference — particularly for young people.
Understand the person. Understand the problem. Find the right path forward.
How it may show up
What Cannabis Use Disorder can look like
Everyone’s experience is different. You may recognise some of these, and not others.
Thoughts
- Poor memory or concentration
- Low motivation
- Paranoid or suspicious thoughts
- Thinking about using much of the time
Emotions
- Anxiety or panic
- Low or flat mood
- Irritability when not using
Body
- Trouble sleeping without cannabis
- Vivid dreams after stopping
- Loss of appetite when cutting down
- Needing more to get the same effect
Behaviour
- Using more often than planned
- Falling behind at college or work
- Withdrawing from family or friends
- Spending more money on cannabis
Understanding the condition
How the cannabis cycle works
Cannabis can bring quick relaxation or escape. With frequent use the brain comes to depend on it to feel calm or sleep, so stopping brings irritability and restlessness — which make using again feel like the answer.
- Trigger
- Craving
- Use
- Short-term relief
- Consequences
- Repetition
…and the cycle repeats.
Assessment at Psymate
The right treatment begins with the right understanding.
- Presenting symptoms
- Severity
- Duration and course
- Functional impact
- Associated psychiatric symptoms
- Physical and neurological factors
- Sleep
- Substance use
- Previous treatment
- Family history where relevant
- Risk and safety
- Pattern, frequency and strength of cannabis use
- Withdrawal symptoms such as sleep problems and irritability
- Screening for psychotic symptoms, anxiety and depression
- Use of alcohol, tobacco or other substances
Start with a conversation
A clinician will take a careful history with you — and, where it helps, with people who know you well — to understand what is happening.
Psychiatry — the clinical core
Psychiatry means more than medication.
Your psychiatrist brings together diagnosis, clinical formulation, treatment selection, coordination of care, measurement and review.
PsychotherapyPharmacotherapyNeuromodulationLifestyle & Sleep InterventionsFamily CareRehabilitation
One person. One clinical plan. Multiple therapeutic modalities.
Treatment
How Cannabis Use Disorder is treated
Treatment is planned around you. These are the core approaches your care may draw on.
Explore Psymate Therapy
Pharmacotherapy
There is no medication approved specifically for cannabis use disorder. Medication may be used to ease withdrawal symptoms such as poor sleep, or to treat co-existing anxiety, depression or psychosis, with regular review.
Emerging evidence
Neuromodulation
TMS is being researched as a way to reduce cannabis craving, but evidence is early and it is not a standard treatment.
Additional care
Care shaped around this condition
Withdrawal Support
Guidance and, where needed, short-term medical support for the sleep difficulty, irritability and low appetite that can follow stopping.
Integrated care pathway
One connected path, from first conversation to lasting change.
- ASSESSA full picture of what you are experiencing
- UNDERSTANDA clear formulation, shared with you
- PERSONALISEA plan built around your goals
- TREATMotivational therapy + CBT + Relapse prevention
- MEASUREProgress tracked, not assumed
- REFINECare adjusted as you change
What recovery can look like
Recovery is more than fewer symptoms.
Clearer thinking and better concentration
Renewed motivation for study or work
Better natural sleep
Calmer, more stable mood
Closer relationships with family and friends
Many of the effects of heavy cannabis use on mood and concentration improve after cutting down or stopping, and support makes that easier.
When to seek help
Consider an assessment when:
- You have tried to cut down without success
- Cannabis is affecting your studies, work or motivation
- You feel anxious, low or paranoid in connection with use
- Symptoms are persistent or keep coming back
- They are causing you significant distress
- They are affecting relationships, work or education
- They are interfering with daily functioning
- They are becoming difficult to control
Urgent help
- Hearing voices, strong paranoid beliefs or confused behaviour after using cannabis
- Immediate risk of suicide
- Serious risk of self-harm
- Severe behavioural disturbance
- Being unable to keep yourself or others safe
- An acute medical or psychiatric emergency
The Psymate promise
What you can expect from us
- You will be heard.
- Your symptoms will be understood in context.
- Your treatment will be planned, not simply prescribed.
- Your progress will be measured.
- Your care will evolve with you.
You are a person before you are a diagnosis.
Begin Care
You don’t need to know what treatment you need before seeking help.
That is what assessment is for.
PSYMATE
Passion for healing meets the power of technology.
Science-led. Human-centred. Connected across the journey.