Am I Addicted to Weed? The Eleven-Question Check

There is no line you cross. That is the first honest thing to say, because most people asking this question are looking for one, and the absence of it is why the question stays open for years.

What clinicians use instead is a list of eleven questions. Meeting two of them inside a twelve-month period is the threshold for cannabis use disorder, and the severity is graded by how many you meet: two to three is mild, four to five moderate, six or more severe. That is the whole definition. It says nothing about how much you smoke or how often — only about what use is costing you and how much control you have over it.

So the useful version of your question is not "am I addicted." It is "how many of the eleven, and which ones."

Where the eleven come from

The DSM-5 is the diagnostic manual American clinicians work from. When it was revised, the older split between "abuse" and "dependence" was collapsed into a single diagnosis with graded severity — which is why the word "dependence" no longer means what it did in the 1990s, and why arguing about whether weed is "really addictive" is arguing about a distinction the field stopped making.

Cannabis use disorder now sits on that same eleven-criterion scale as every other substance use disorder. Research validating the diagnosis in adults with problematic substance use confirms the structure plainly: the threshold is two of eleven criteria, with no disorder at zero to one, mild at two to three, moderate at four to five, and severe at six or more.

How common is it? The National Institute on Drug Abuse states that studies have estimated 22% to 30% of cannabis users have the disorder, and that frequency of use is the strongest predictor of developing it, with family history and duration of use also playing a role. Note the width of that range. It depends heavily on who is being sampled, so treat it as a rough prior rather than your personal odds.

The eleven questions, asked plainly

Answer these for the last twelve months. Be literal. The trap here is generosity toward yourself, and the second trap is the opposite — reading every ordinary week as evidence.

1. Amount and duration. Do you often use more, or for longer, than you meant to? The session that was going to be one bowl and became four.
2. Failed cutting down. Have you wanted to cut down or stop, or tried to, without it holding?
3. Time. Do you spend a lot of time getting cannabis, using it, or recovering from it — including the slow mornings?
4. Craving. Do you get a strong urge or desire to use?
5. Obligations. Has use meant repeatedly failing to do what you are supposed to at work, school, or home?
6. Social friction. Do you keep using despite it causing recurring problems with people close to you?
7. Things given up. Have you dropped or scaled back activities you used to care about because of use?
8. Hazard. Do you use in situations where it is physically risky — driving being the common one?
9. Known harm. Do you keep using knowing it is causing or worsening a physical or psychological problem?
10. Tolerance. Do you need noticeably more for the same effect, or get less effect from the same amount?
11. Withdrawal. Do you get symptoms when you stop, or use to avoid getting them?

Count. Then sit with the number for a minute before deciding what it means.

What the count actually tells you

Two or three is mild. It is also the band most daily users land in and the one most likely to be dismissed, because "mild" sounds like "fine." What mild actually means is that the pattern is established and has started to cost something. It is the easiest band to act on and the one people act on last.

Four to five is moderate. At this point use is shaping decisions rather than just accompanying them.

Six or more is severe, and it is worth saying clearly that this is not a character verdict. It is a description of how deeply a habit has wired itself into a week, and it is the band where trying to handle it alone has the worst odds.

Zero or one is not a clean bill of health either — it means the criteria are not met today, on your own reading of yourself, which is a genuinely useful thing to know and a genuinely unreliable narrator to hear it from.

Two criteria are worth more attention than the others, because they are the hardest to explain away: failed attempts to cut down, and withdrawal. Both are observations about what happened, not judgements about what it meant.

Withdrawal is the criterion you cannot argue with

Most of the eleven require you to assess your own behaviour. Withdrawal does not — it happens to you, on a schedule, whether or not you believe in it.

Cannabis withdrawal is a real syndrome with a documented course. A clinical review of its management describes symptom onset typically 24 to 48 hours after cessation, with most symptoms peaking around days two to six, and symptoms continuing for up to two to three weeks or longer in heavy users. The most common features are anxiety, irritability, anger or aggression, disturbed sleep and dreaming, depressed mood and loss of appetite. The same review cites a meta-analysis pooling more than 20,000 regular and dependent users that put the prevalence of withdrawal at 47%.

So roughly half of regular users get this when they stop. If you have stopped before and found days three and four unaccountably awful, that was not a bad week. That was criterion eleven, and it is the clearest signal in the list that your body has adapted to a regular supply. Our day-by-day account of how long weed withdrawal lasts covers the course in detail.

The distinction that matters: withdrawal alone does not make a diagnosis. It is one criterion out of eleven and the threshold is two. But it is the one that converts an abstract question into a testable one.

What this check cannot do

It cannot diagnose you. Self-report on your own substance use is the least reliable instrument in medicine, and the criteria were written to be applied in a conversation, not read off a page at 11pm.

It also flattens things that are not flat. "Continued use despite a psychological problem" reads very differently if you started using because of anxiety than if the anxiety arrived afterwards, and the eleven questions cannot separate those. Neither can we — that separation needs a clinician, and it changes what you should do next.

Some situations need a person rather than an article. Severe or non-improving withdrawal, use alongside alcohol or benzodiazepines, psychosis or severe paranoia, a co-occurring mental health condition, pregnancy, persistent vomiting, or any thought of self-harm. In the US, SAMHSA's National Helpline is free, confidential and open 24/7 at 1-800-662-4357. If you are in immediate danger, call your local emergency number. You can also read who reviews this blog and to what standard.

What to do with the answer

If you counted two or more, the useful next step is not deciding what to call yourself. It is testing the two criteria that are testable.

Test the cutting-down criterion. Pick a defined period — a week is enough — and try to hold it. Not to prove anything, and not as a quit attempt. Just to find out whether the answer to question two is what you think it is. Most people learn more from four days than from a month of wondering. What to expect when you quit weed sets out what those days usually look like.

Test the craving criterion by watching, not resisting. Cravings peak and pass in minutes; withdrawal peaks and passes in days. Both are short enough to observe. Logging when the urges arrive, what preceded them, and how long they lasted turns question four from a feeling into a readout, and what to do in the twenty minutes a craving lasts is a more answerable problem than what to call your relationship with weed.

If the count came out high, or if you have already run the week-long test more than once without it holding, the honest read is that this is harder than willpower and should be treated that way. A practical method for stopping is a reasonable place to start, and a clinician is a better one.

The number is not a label. It is a measurement, and measurements are the only part of this you can actually change.

Sources

• National Institute on Drug Abuse — Cannabis (Marijuana)
• American Psychiatric Association — DSM-5
• Construct validity of DSM-5 cannabis use disorder diagnosis and severity levels in adults with problematic substance use
• Clinical management of cannabis withdrawal, Addiction (2022)
• SAMHSA National Helpline