• Mallory Loflin, Mitch Earleywine, and Marcel Bonn-Miller.
• Department of Psychology, University at Albany, State University of New York, United States; National Center for PTSD, VA Palo Alto Health Care System, United States. Electronic address: mallory.loflin@va.gov.
• Addict Behav. 2017 May 1; 68: 18-23.

IntroductionThe present study is the first to test whether veterans who use cannabis specifically for the purposes of self-medication for their reported PTSD symptoms differ from veterans who use cannabis medicinally for other reasons, or recreationally, in terms of patterns of cannabis use, use of alcohol, and reactivity to written combat trauma reminders.MethodsAssessment measures were administered online to a sample of veterans with a history of cannabis use (n=1971). Cued arousal was assessed pre/post via a prompt about combat experiences. Hypotheses were tested using a series of Bonferroni corrected one-way analyses of variance, t-tests, bivariate and partial correlations, and a Chi-square test.ResultsCompared to recreational users, veterans who identify as medicinal cannabis users reported greater combat exposure (d=0.56), PTSD symptoms (d=1.02), subjective arousal when cued (d=0.25), and cannabis use (dfrequency=0.40; ddensity=0.42), but less alcohol use (d=0.28). Few differences were observed between medicinal users who reported using for PTSD versus those who reported using for other reasons.ConclusionsCompared to those who use cannabis recreationally, veterans who report that they use cannabis medicinally use more cannabis and endorse significantly more symptoms of arousal following a prompt about combat trauma experiences.Published by Elsevier Ltd.

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