I would imagine that people report fewer dreams due to cannabinoids' memory effects, rather than an impact on REM sleep. Failing to remember dreams does not mean an absence of them.
An increase in nightmares could easily be due to increased stress/amygdala function depressed by cannabinoids.
It seems that there ate a ton of people speaking on behalf of both actual smokers and people with chronic illnesses and disorders.
If you don't have PTSD, you can't comprehend it, nor should you try to.
Top commenters issue is that they lack self control. Their "addiction" to weed is self imposed and akin to overeating or being addicted to masturbation.
When you stop smoking, you don't have withdrawals. You simply begin experiencing the chronic illnesses that you have been self medicating against.
I'd also like to add that for mental issues like anxiety, PTSD, and depression, weed acts like a mild antidepressant that is extremely manageable compared to the prescription options that typically make people even more unstable. Every antidepressant in America comes with a warning that it can increase suicidal tendencies, and I can tell you from experience that it is very true.
Those kinds of "medicines" work by making you numb, not treating the actual problems. You don't feel normal at all; you don't care about anything, become very reckless and unstable, and many kids end up killing themselves because of this mental state when they had taken the medicine to quell suicidal thoughts in the first place.
Next, PTSD can cause flashbacks in several forms. Many people with the illness never have harmful flashback dreams.
I said that this is causing a mental addiction. So on top of everything effecting people differently, these require particular forms of thinking. If you don't know that marijuana can suppress dreams or use it for that purpose, you won't develop this addiction.
A mental addiction isn't a "lack of self control" or "self imposed" as you say. It works by a similar means to the placebo effect, where your belief that something has an effect leads to the effect.
>It seems that there ate a ton of people speaking on behalf of both actual smokers and people with chronic illnesses and disorders.If you don't have PTSD, you can't comprehend it, nor should you try to.
Seems to me that you shouldn't assume what diseases other people have suffered from. As you aren't the only one with first hand experience.
>Those kinds of "medicines" work by making you numb, not treating the actual problems
Though it's true that the prescribed alternatives are not cures, neither is marijuana. Both help you manage symptoms, but can lead to other problems. Therapy has been the only thing shown to be effective as a cure.
This what is happening to the top level commenter. I don't know if the nightmares in particular are a result of REM rebound, but it could be that the person is simply prone to nightmares, and part of their addiction could be self-medication for their innately nightmarish dreams.