Holistic Treatment for Marijuana Addiction

In the last few decades, the stigma surrounding marijuana has experienced a complete reversal. What was once frowned upon by society at large is now widely accepted and even encouraged. This increasing approval can make marijuana one of the hardest substances to give up. Most people who become dependent don’t realize they have a problem. 

Yet, like any substance you regularly put into your body, marijuana can affect the way you feel. This, in turn, interferes with your ability to be healthy and live your best life. If you’re unhappy with how marijuana is impacting your life, we can help.

The Sanctuary at Sedona offers holistic, non-12 Step marijuana addiction treatment that can help break your dependence on this substance and find healthier, more natural ways to cope with emotional or mental difficulties.


The Sanctuary at Sedona founder Dean Taraborelli discusses in detail the nature of marijuana addiction and The Sanctuary’s approach to the treatment of marijuana with its integrative holistic addiction recovery program and getting to the root cause.

What Is Marijuana Addiction?

Marijuana is one of the most popular psychoactive substances used worldwide. Its increasing legality and mild effects compared to other, “harder” drugs make the idea of marijuana addiction controversial. But prolonged, heavy marijuana use undoubtedly affects your life. In fact, the DMS-5 officially recognizes cannabis use disorder as a psychiatric disorder. 

Signs of marijuana addiction include:

  • Using marijuana more often than intended
  • Being unable to cut down on use
  • Spending excessive amounts of time finding or using marijuana
  • Marijuana use affecting your abilities at work, school, in your home life or relationships
  • A growing tolerance to the effects of cannabis; needing more to feel high
  • Withdrawal symptoms when you try to quit

Holistic Approach to Marijuana Rehabilitation at The Sanctuary

Holistic is a buzzword when it comes to addiction rehab. For many treatment centers, it means add-on therapies like yoga and meditation. At The Sanctuary, we believe that for treatment to be truly holistic, it must be integrative. Every aspect of your care must touch you at every level. Marijuana addiction impacts every area of your life. To help you break free, we offer various healing modalities to enhance neuroplasticity and promote personal growth — within the mind, body, soul and spirit.

Our goal is to take you on a complete, integrative healing journey that ultimately leads to sustainable change. To do this, we embrace the transformative power that comes from multiple, holistic offerings, including science-backed traditional therapies, ancient traditions and complementary treatments. When you choose our marijuana addiction treatment program, we help you by:

  • Providing a welcoming space where you can focus on yourself and heal
  • Giving you access to an invaluable array of holistic therapy options
  • Completely personalizing your treatment experience in our small, intimate setting
  • Optimizing your treatment program for the best possible progress

The Long-Term Impact of Marijuana Addiction

Marijuana’s psychoactive ingredients are cannabinoids: chemicals that are also naturally produced in your brain.

Your brain is designed to keep itself in balance. But long-term marijuana use interferes with the way that it transmits signals. That’s because when your brain gets used to the constant presence of cannabinoids introduced by marijuana, it loses its ability to effectively regulate itself. Once this happens, you have a harder time responding to stressors. As a result, disruptions may make you feel more irritable, anxious or sleepless than they normally would. Marijuana addiction is also associated with mental health disorders like anxiety, depression and schizophrenia.

If you’ve become psychologically dependent on marijuana, you might incur withdrawal symptoms when you try to stop using. These can include:

  • Cravings
  • Irritability
  • Anxiety
  • Trouble sleeping

Heavy cannabis use is also associated with physical health risks like:

  • Hyper-inflated lungs
  • Chronic bronchitis
  • Respiratory infections, such as pneumonia

Who Is at the Risk for Marijuana Addiction?

In short, anyone who regularly uses cannabis can become addicted to it. But certain factors may put you at greater risk for developing marijuana addiction. These include:

  • Your home environment
  • How easily available marijuana is to you
  • Co-occurring mental health conditions
  • Age
  • Genetic predisposition

Many people also use marijuana to self-medicate issues like anxiety and depression. But they may not realize they’re creating a dependency in the process.

Teenagers are at higher risk for marijuana dependence because their developing brains are more sensitive to the effects of cannabis. The neuropathways of teens who regularly use cannabis develop differently than those of teens who don’t. This essentially “wires” their brains for addiction.

How to Overcome Marijuana Addiction

Perhaps you started using marijuana at a young age and now you can’t seem to kick the habit. Or, maybe you found it relieved your anxiety and are afraid to stop for fear that your stress and anxious thoughts will return. The good news is that this can be reversed. And so can genetic tendencies towards addiction. While genetics used to be considered a primary risk factor for addiction, new research shows this isn’t as unchangeable as it was once thought to be.

The emerging science of epigenetics tells us that while we may be born with a certain genetic blueprint, we’re fully capable of influencing our genetic expression. Accordingly, at The Sanctuary, we use certain therapeutic interventions that turn off genes that cause addiction and turn on genes that create health.

What Are the Long-Term Goals of Marijuana Addiction Treatment?

At The Sanctuary, our goal isn’t just to help you stay sober from marijuana. It’s to help you feel fully engaged in, and excited about, life. We want to help you get to know yourself and connect to your passions so that your life is full of meaning and joy without marijuana. We care about helping you solve whatever issues were causing you to self-medicate in the first place. Once these are solved, you won’t feel the need to use marijuana anymore.

Clients who have reached recovery through our non-12 Step, holistic addiction treatment program say that as a result, they:

  • Felt guided to recreate what was working in treatment, in their life
  • Kept going with the practices that resonated with them: yoga, music therapy, energy medicine, etc.
  • Became more mindful of how their diet affected their mental and physical health and learned to eat better as a result of our nutritional education
  • Stayed connected to our weekly support group
  • Sustained the routines and rituals they developed here, on a daily basis
  • Continued paths of spiritual and personal inquiry that they began while working with practitioners at The Sanctuary
  • Learned the value of self-care as a necessity and priority
  • Were able to more easily identify their patterns
  • Gained a new level of awareness about what was happening in their life
  • No longer feared their shadows, but learned to work through fear and harness its transformative powers

On the whole, our clients say their takeaways from The Sanctuary become a constant presence that uplifts and supports their lives.

How Our Marijuana Addiction Treatment Facility Can Help

This healing journey is so much more than a way to get sober from marijuana. It’s a way to completely change the way you live. We help you accomplish this via:

Welcoming You Into Our Healing Community

The Sanctuary is a special place. Our space feels small, safe and non-clinical. There’s no intimidating group dynamic here, and our therapists are warm and personal. In fact, we take extra care to make sure you feel seen, understood and honored. We hold a small welcoming ceremony when you arrive, and you’ll eat your meals with other clients and staff. And, you’ll have the chance to continue the relationships you form here well after you leave.

Providing Ample Opportunities to Explore Different Therapies

At The Sanctuary, you’re not expected to follow one, prescribed path — everything in our marijuana addiction treatment program is completely personalized to you. We understand that different healing methods work for different people. That’s why we offer access to a full range of treatment options and encourage you to try different approaches until you find a path you feel great about.

Paying Special Attention to Your Individual Needs

We limit the number of clients we accept and keep our group sizes small, so we can be sure to give you plenty of personal attention. You’ll receive two one-on-one therapy sessions per day (mainstream rehabs typically offer two per week), as well as group activities. Here, you won’t get lost trying to navigate different parts of the program on your own. Every member of our team is committed to, and understands their role in, your success.

Structuring Your Schedule for Maximum Impact

While our holistic program allows for lots of freedom, it’s also highly organized behind the scenes. Our therapists make a combined effort to ensure you’re making ideal progress. Through thorough communication, record keeping and information sharing, we make sure there’s zero confusion about your treatment plan. We also adjust this as needed, as you grow and progress. All aspects of your schedule are designed to ensure we make the best possible use of your time.

A typical day at The Sanctuary consists of:

  • An early start and light breakfast
  • Movement therapies to warm up the body, such as yoga, qi gong, tai chi or a hike on one of our nature trails
  • Clean, nutritious meals including juices from our garden and supplements for brain health
  • Two individual therapy sessions
  • Process groups
  • Addiction classes and homework

The work of undoing addiction and changing your life isn’t easy, and we design your daily schedule to maximize your progress. But we pace the program in a way that allows you to retain all the new information you’re learning. You’ll work through a mix of lighter and heavier therapies, which helps you process everything. And, we build free time into your schedule to allow for plenty of exploration on our scenic Sedona property.

We Can Help You Recover From Marijuana Addiction

We know how stuck addiction can make you feel. But at The Sanctuary, we provide opportunities for growth and change in ways you may not expect. As one former client says:

“Seeing through the stories I had about who I am and who other people are has made room for beautiful development of relationships within my family that I never thought were possible. All of the staff there are on their own healing journey and definitely doing their part to continue their own personal growth and development.”

Begin Your Journey to a Substance-Free Life

Don’t allow the growing acceptance of marijuana to stop you from receiving marijuana addiction help. Whether you’re looking for a treatment center near you or need a safe and supportive space where you can get away and find healing, we want to partner with you.

Start your healing journey and see where it leads you. Contact us today to learn how.

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