Anxiety & Marijuana

I'm sorry to say that there have been studies done disproving some of what has been stated above. For example Time magazine had an article back in the day (i'm sure this can be looked up on the internet) that spoke of a study in which people were placed in a driving simulator after having smoked and reached an adequate "high" for the tests. With the help of a control group the test was underway. the results of this test showed that those who had smoked before the test drove closer to the speed limit, stopped - or began to stop - well within safe stopping distance, and were much more alert of what was going on on the road. Thus disproving the statement about accidents increasing. The study did add that those who drive with multiple passengers or tinker with gadgets cannot be spoken for in this test and juggling more activities than simply driving may effect concentration and mental processing. In other words, pot doesn't make people bad drivers, cell phones, ipods, and backseat conversation does. But since no electronic devices are allowed to be in the driver's hands and the driver's eyes are supposed to remain on the road at all times in an ideal world this drug would not effect driving. I do admit that I doubt most people would follow this.



Second, if it became legal it wouldn't be like bubble gum. You would have to be a minimum of 18 to purchase it much like a cigarette. I don't mean to attack the poster at all, I simply would like to present an alternate argument so that readers may make educated choices whether they are for or against the substance.



Next, marijuana is not addictive as stated above. Cigarettes are addictive. You can develop a dependence on marijuana however. This would be referred to as a social/psychological dependence which is the same as needing a cup of tea or coffee every morning. The behavior is repeated because the act was perceived as pleasurable. Similar to drinking green tea or coffee because you found the energy it gave you pleasurable in the sense that the added energy allowed you to complete your daily tasks easier. Similar to the idea that the altered state of mind from marijuana may increase creativity. An addiction is when your body physically needs the substance, not your mind enjoying the effects. It can become a crutch if not monitored. Tolerance to cannabis can increase, just as you can learn to live within your altered mental state.



Environment also plays a big part. Smoking in a car in a neighborhood can produce a significantly more paranoid state than smoking in the safety of one's own home. It is much easier to fall prey to anxiety when you know a cop could drive by at any moment. As far as loss of motivation any veteran smoker can agree that you can learn to deal with the adverse effects by simply forcing yourself to do something whenever you hear yourself in your head saying "meh, i'm high. i'll do that later." I would also state that if you are not comfortable being in public places and smoking then perhaps you should not turn it into a habit, while i also add that I was able to grow passed that stage. The mental drawbacks of marijuana are not set in stone and can be overcome by adapting one's behavior to underline these side effects and confront them.



Finally, residual effects can differ based on quality, quantity, and the user's mental stability before usage. Cannabinoids (THC, CBD, CBN being the big three psychoactives of the 60 cannabinoids) can stay in your system for up to 50 days, although it can also be less depending on frequency. The residual effects of these in the system can lead many to believe they are experiencing permanent effects. However, this is simply due to these cannabinoids remaining in the system. Also if you are not a frequent smoker you will be less comfortable with your mental state during and after smoking.



I will not claim that marijuana does not destroy lives. It could lead to jail sentences, or your lover leaving you for your habits. It is NOT for everyone. However, it is not how many would depict it. Claiming marijuana to be a drug of the rebellious counter-culture (not to claim that the quoted post above this in any way stated it to be so) is truly irresponsible and counter productive in my opinion. Rather, state the facts and let other people decide if it suits their lifestyle.



Personally as a writer I feel it allowed me to move past my inner perfectionist and simply put pen to paper without my usual mental boundaries. I have known musicians personally that have had a much better experience with writing while on the substance. I have also known people who cannot control themselves and produce more trouble for themselves than anything else.



I will add though, I have never met anyone who smoked too much and became violent. I have never known anyone under the influence of marijuana to over indulge, then go home and strike their significant other. I have never known anyone to smoke and say "man, i just wanna hit something right now! let's start a fight" Yet we still allow citizens to not only purchase alcohol, but to drink it at bars where they will then later have to drive home. We allow it even though we have seen numerous cases in which husbands shoot their wives in a drunken rage, or beat them until their faces turn to a blue-black mass of tears.



I am not a Cannabis Crusader, I will not attempt to try and convince anyone to indulge in marijuana. But i would like to close with the statement that it is not as bad as those who seek to demonize it would like us to believe. Here is a fraction of the information out there I have amassed within my own lifetime as a 21 year old that has smoked since he was 18 years old. I hope it is of help to anyone seeking information. And if any information can be proven to be incorrect, please do quote this post and add to it so that my error may not misinform anyone looking to make an educated decision on this matter.



Hope this was helpful.

^ exactly the same thing happens to me. I used to smoke weed all the time till last year it started happening to me

I don't get anxiety unless I go without for more than a day and a half, which I do regularly for tolerance breaks (skipping days insures I get the psychotropic effect without having to use 3x as much)

It is important if you experience racing thoughts to do "mood logs" (CBT) so that you will become more familiar with your thought process and the physiologic effects that pair with those thoughts, and to use thought stopping techniques, and thoughts re-direction or replacement techniques. (this is like the secret to life, really, you have to do it, not think about it.

Pot will effect different people differently, and there is certainly a physio component, but pot does not make you anxious except for rare strains.  What you do with the experience CAN.  Once you get good at managing the thoughts the volume of the anxiety gets turned down a lot.

For myself, tolerance breaks are difficult...i have to make a concentrated effort to stop my anger and irritability...like there's a tingle, the physio component, and my head takes it to bad places.  so, if you get anxiety, I recommend turning off the phone, and do some journalling or mood logs until you calm yourself.  Hint: it's probably the same six or eight thoughts that get you going, and once you're familiar with them and the physio, you get to notice the feelings that signal you're starting to have those thoughts, and it makes it much easier to stop yourself from scaling up so quickly and making that tingle into a roar.

CBT, or cognitive behaviour therapy, is a key skill for everyone to acquire, and it taught in anger management classes, depression classes & anxiety classes at Kaiser and other places.  And they teach mood logs in every one of those classes, it's the main thing people are encouraged to do, and the more you do it the better you get at catching yourself before you go someplace you're already familiar with and don't want to do again.

My issue is more about relationships and tolerance breaks...i was hoping to find advice, but hope what i've posted helps the world (they'll all come read this, right? hehe)

:-) how ya doin? first off am 18, been with mary since i was 12, no cigs! recently iv been getting anxiety WHEN I SMOKE WEED TOO!!!! i question cuz am a talktive person, why cant i talk as much as when am high!?!?! i dont say a word at all!!! well anyways

1) maybe it cuz we arnt thinking happy thougts.
2) maybe its the music
3)maybe we just got to used to the weed
4) TALK!!!!!! just try to talk with people like normal.
 
          No matter what weed its is reggie or chronic etc. i still get that same feeling of **cant explain it lol** maybe its anxiety, now that i think of it am run some test and see what results i get remember hypothesis




~~~yea i was high when typing/thinking? this


 

well maybe this will help you out. I was always a worried person my whole life. But when i started smoking weed i liked it but i would only smoke a bowl or two. When me and my friend smoked one time with this dank stuff. It caused me to have what the doctor said a panic attack.  but i did not feel like one because i felt like i was in a twister and i couldnt remeber anything that happened. It was the worst feeling i have ever experienced.That night i smoked it was so bad i had to go to the hospital. If i was you and you are experiencing pannicy feelings when you smoke i would stop or adleast smoke just a little because this ruined my life. Now i have severe andiexy and i can barley do anything now without getting horrible panic attacks. I have it all day and it never goes away. Smoking that weed was a horrible decision and i think you guys shouldnt smoke because i would not want you to go threw what i have to go threw.

Hi, I've been smoking weed about once a month or two for about a year now, and every time I smoke it I don't get the best feelings. Sometimes I do, like if I was home with my best friend and we were high I would feel very comfortable and I would be able to eat and drink and be myself, where if I was at a party I would feel so insecure about myself, so extremely uncomfortable that I wouldn't want to talk to anyone, I wouldn't be able to eat because I feel people are watching me. I know that no one really gives a f**k about what I'm doing but its all about me myself and I if you know what I mean. Lately even when I'm with my friends who I feel comfortable around I still feel insecure and after they leave I would just sit on my bed and think about why I'm feeling insecure for so long (30 min) and the only reason I snap out of it is because I know I'm thinking extreme level. I honestly don't like the feeling, I just did it yesterday at my friends house and I still feel a little uneasy about myself. I feel like I'm not in reality sometimes like everything looks different and clearer to me. Although its a good thing that my vision is clearer, it doesn't feel good. I feel like I'm in the 4th dimension, like an outside viewer just looking at everything as life goes by. I know weed f**ks with my emotion a lot and I'm quitting for sure stating today. I'm not happy with myself when I get high I feel really depressed and just think wild thoughts. This is how I truly feel, and I hate it. I always feel nervous and insecure and it sticks on when I'm sober sometimes and I hate it!

If anyone has any advice please feel free to tell me how I could overcome these unwanted feelings.

Thanks

Wrong, it depends on the person

After the third use of weed for me, i had serve anxiety for maybe 6 months. Last time i got high I just remember thinking "S*** man, i gotta lay down" and just rolling arround in my bed for about 2 hours stuffing myself with bread, i have never had anxiety untill that third time i did weed.

Probly a major reason that weed is illegal is how serve some of the people who react with anxiety as servere as i have,  you only are looking at the view of the drug for yourself.  I know quite afew people that had the same responses as i have had to the drug.

I would like you to consider or do research on different things that have happened to people that have had cases like mine, it has caused multible suicides because people arent used to the kind of altering view of the world.

Hey all,

I've been a 10 yr sufferer of Paranoia and anxiety after smoking weed. The thing with me is that I never gave it up durning that time and it has pretty much screwed up my life.

What it did to me was made me go to the worst possible sceniro in all situations, for instance if a woman sits near me and places her purse next to her on a table or chair I would have trouble taking my eyes off her purse. I mean I could'nt look her in the eyes without eyeing her purse like some kind of mad man. I would spend the whole time trying not to look and would end up fighting with myself because i knew what I was doing but could'nt stop it. It was driving me crazy. I felt like I was entertaining two thoughts at the same time, and that people could see through me into my soul.

The scary part came when it leaked into my sober life. Even when i was'nt high I was experiencing the same or simular paranoia. I would go to sleep or atleast try to and then wake up thinking about the same sh*t I was tripping about before i went to bed. I could'nt escape it. I ended up developing a un-named illness that mimicked rheumatoid arthritis. I became stiff and could barely walk my wrists became stiff and I could'nt even twist a door knob to open the front door. I went to the doctor and took the test for rheumatoid arthritis but thakfully it came out neg.

I finally quit for good after having been smoking for about 15-20 yrs. most of that time with no ill effects. I found yoga which helped me regain health back. I feel the best thing to do is to do a total detox. I stopped all smoking of any kind and all drinking. I started using cleaning herbs like goldenseal and dandelion.

Im starting to feel better even though Ive lost 10 yrs of my life to this. This has changed my life so much I wrote a little book about it called "Invisible Valium" .

I hope this helps some people.

High everyone. I've read all of the posts and what I'm thinking is, at least I'm not alone in this situation of annoyance. I've been a heavy smoker since I was 14, now I'm 18 and a half. I take a few tokes from some roaches around 2 hrs. after waking, and I usually wake and bake. Bad idea. I quit on the second small roach because I began having shortness of breath and minor head rushes, all in all this didn't feel like my regular happy weed buzz I've always been looking for. So I try to calm down which didn't seem to work, I got cold so I got a jacket, put it on and started sweating 15 secs. after I put it on, so I take it off. I was trying to convince myself it would be OK, but then I got a " pins and needles " feeling in both my hands. Immediately I knew that this is bad, I wasn't losing blood  to my hands and yet the feelings persisted, which didn't help my current anxiety state. I had asked a family member to drive to the hospital, but by the time we got to the freeway ramp, the " pins and needles" feeling had ascended up both my arms, it had felt like both my arms were vibrating violently. we stopped at a nearby gas station and called an ambulance. By the time they got there my index and middle finger of my left hand was contracting back, my diaphragm and the bottoms of my feet were tingling as well. When I was put on the stretcher and in the ambulance, my symptoms subsided.

i am struggling with something similiar to you.im 18 year old male very skinny.been smoking on and off for 4 years. i have ocd and mabey another mental disorder before my bad experience but have never been diagnosed.

in early January i ate 2 pot brownies and around an hour later it hit me instantly. i started freaking out constantly pacing back and forth. my heart was racing, i was shaking badly, i had that really bad dreamy vision you mentioned. it was by far the scariest/worst experience of my life and went on for 6 hours. although strangely enough i felt pretty normal the next day. however a few weeks later in early february i was in school and i started shaking and having the same feeling as when i was high. i couldnt concentrate and was uncontrollably anxous. since then i havent felt normal. i am always anxious and jittery. i have dreamy vision and cant think straight. all i do now after i get home from school is lay down and try to sleep but i cant. when i lay there its almost like im deaming but im actually awake. i do breathing excercises and calm myself down but that doesnt really help. i also have no appetite like you said which is concerning cause before this happened i ate a huge diet. i can barely even focus enough to watch tv. sometimes i feel close to normal but that only lasts for a while and then i can feel the anxiety or whatever it is coming back on. its truly torture. i went to a psychologist recently and he didnt say much. i dont know how much longer i can take it.

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advice i would give to u would be to stay busy and tell yourself your fine and its all in your head. do your best to ignore it and let it pass. replace negative thoughts with positive ones. i know its hard im struggling very much.

I'm F take Zoloft is 4 my anxity also not sad and Val 4 my anxiety high anxiety Bp med heart Meds. 31 I'm fine been through ringer with diff Meds geeez . Got to drs now who are always on top of my blood work every two weeks. I'm doing better now . But I'm clean freak not just that roommate smokes . Does anyone know if this cause anything reacts to my Meds I take daily . Don't need here crazy comments of people who got no clue what chronic anxiety is ok none . Just need no if he smokes I need kick him out ? Thank you all I have concern with roommate ? Smoking pot 24/7

Marijuana can cause depersonalization and derealization a serious illness which is caused by anxiety. You can smoke weed as much as you want and it can just happen like that. It can last forever too. I got it from taking just 2 hits. I smoked every day for about 4 years and all of a sudden it hit me. It is more likely to happen on first or second try though. You loose touch with reality, everything seems fake, you dont feel like your in your body, hard to concentrate and it seems like the house is on water and you think your falling and cant walk straight. Very bad it is terrible I loved smoking weed don't get me wrong but I will never do it again because anything is better than this. Even killing myself seems more peaceful then this.

i have a similar story. i had smoked weed for nearly 15 year straight - i mean i don't think i missed a day. i was high every waking moment. i still don't condone it, for i am now very successful with a beautiful family. but i would occasionally get mildly panicky when smoking, only once or twice it was noticeably bad. but i had a big life change when i was 29 - and one night after smoking i was trying to sleep, and the negative thoughts came pouring in - i couild not stop them, and they kept compounding - then BOOM a full blown panic attack. i never had one like this, and never want to again. IT SUCKED! i think you all can relate. after that, i oficcially had anxiety disorder. i could not do normal things that i had done all of my life - like getting stuck sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic on a highway, go on an airplane, and even be a passenger in a car! mostly control issues i guess, i needed to be in absolute control. i also stopped smoking weed and the symptoms slowly went away. after nearly ten years of not smoking, i've decided to take it up again, only to help me sleep, and i'm doin' ok. I do not like to take medications from big pharm, but used to always have valium on hand just in case... similar to some other posts i've seen here, this is my advice / lessons learned:

1) breathe! deep breaths. seriously, you have no idea how good this is for you. maybe even research some techniques and breathe deeply as often as you can.

2) excercise! vigorous workouts promote a very even state of mental health. i suggest even doing a martial art as the confidence that goes with it is an added bonus.

3) sativa vs. indica: if you are fortunate enough to be able to pick and choose what you get, go for the indicas. sativas typically are more of a speedy, heady high that can bring on anxiety. whereas indicas are solid body high - very relaxing.

4) control your intake. i only smoke 1/2 hits anymore, and as long as it's enough for me to feel it i'm good. also, i try to have at least one beer in me before i smoke, which seems to help prevent any anxiety.

5) don't mix smoking weed with coffee - i've read this elsewhere too and believe myself that this combination can bring on anxiety.

6) i recently did some hypnosis, one session from a professional and several self-induced sessions. THIS IS AWESOME. it helps you RELAX and can also target getting rid of anxiety - it really works and i highly recommend exploring options here.

7) if you feel anxiety coming on, from weed or not, eat something sweet / sugary. low seratonin levels can be responsible, so a quick boost there can curb an attack.

8) explore other self-help books. in the end, it's a battle with yourself that only you can fix - and you can do it!

Hello everyone. I am a person who is living in a state where weed is illegal.  I have a problem with it being illegal because I have an anxiety disorder that makes it difficult to leave the house sometimes. I am a strong person and have found ways to deal with this problem in ways besides weed but most only have short term effects. Weed is the only thing that makes me less anxious and less stressed for long periods of time.  I am a college student and never ever go to class high. I also take care of my nieces and nephew alot and despite my weed buddies protests there is no smoking of weed or tobacco around them.  Despite how bad my anxiety gets I really would like a weed free life sometimes or at least to use it less. I admit my anxiety disorder comes from my family who is always fighting or starting some severe dramas. From birth my family has been a disaster.   I deal with the disasters of my family with strength, determination, hope and an unbreakable love for my nieces and nephew. My goal is to always be sober around them so I can be what they need me to be.  But sometimes when my anxiety gets too bad weed is really the only thing that helps. I have tried depression pills and they gave me horrific nightmares so I am terrified what anxiety pills will do to me.  I tried weed designed for anxiety but oddly enough I think it brought out my anxiety disorder and made me a nervous wreck. Does that happen a lot? If so are there types of weed that a person with an anxiety disorder should avoid?  Is there anybody out there with an anxiety disorder that has any advice for me?  Thank you.:)

I never thought marijuana could really make someone stupid, but now I wonder after reading (or trying to read) your post.