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About 10% of people who experiment with marijuana will develop a problem with dependence, which when you consider how many millions of people smoke marijuana in America alone becomes a very large number of people.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a pill at somehow just stopped your cravings for marijuana…

Well, that would be great, but that one doesn’t yet seem in the works, but as a next best thing scientists are chasing down some promising leads on a new drug that may at least eliminate the high from marijuana, leaving addicts little reason to smoke the drug, and helping them in theory get past their addiction.

Scientists have been looking at a substance in a plant from the buttercup family as a possible active ingredient in a new medication for the treatment of marijuana addiction.

To test the substance, researchers gave rats an unlimited supply of synthetic THC through a feed tube. Over time, the rats came to very much appreciate the drug, and would self medicate frequently with the THC over the course of each day. After the rats were given the methyllycaconitine, which is the active ingredient from the plant, the rats immediately cut down on their self administration for the THC, by as much as 70% on the first day. Importantly, researchers note that the drug didn’t seem to have any adverse effects on the rates other than to dampen their enthusiasm to get high.

When the researchers looked at what was happening in the brains of the rats given the medication, they found that the methyllycaconitine seemed to reduce the dopaminergic reaction normally associated with the use of THC down to essentially zero. It took all of the pleasure out of the THC high, and the rats had far less inclination to use the THC after the dopaminergic response was eliminated.

Importantly, the levels of dopamine functioning for other activities did not seem affected, which is very important if it's to be considered as a possible medication for human subjects. A reduction in dopamine from baseline levels is associated with depression.