Quote:
This is a repost, but I think it might help one or two here. It isn't applicable to everyone, but certainly to quite a few, myself included:
4:20 And Why It's Not A Good Idea For Some
The causes of dope anxiety and paranoia are both mental and chemical. Although some episodes can be created by your expectations and fears about having a bad high, it's more likely that much of your discomfort is being created by the things I talk about below. Even if you've never had a moment's anxiety with weed in your life, it'll be useful if you can read through the following just in case it should ever happen â?? and just to check that you really are avoiding these pitfalls.
Blood Sugar & Mood
Changes in blood sugar levels can be responsible for pretty extreme effects when you're high, both good and bad, so you have to pay real attention to it if you want to get, and keep, a good high.
Too much blood sugar, from eating a lot of candy, for example, and you get a rush as the dope high and the sugar high combine â?? but the sugar high is short-lived, and will make you want to fall asleep as your system burns off the excess insulin that all the sugar has forced the release of. Too little blood sugar, and things go from uncomfortable to extremely unpleasant very quickly.
As you first start to get stoned, your metabolism hikes up a notch and causes a sudden dip in blood sugar. That's no problem if you've just eaten, but if you're already on the edge of being hungry without realising it, that first toke can make you feel pretty nasty in less than ten minutes. Never take the chance of getting high when you're somewhere without access to the right kinds of food and drink, just in case. If you have the added 'pleasure' of being a borderline diabetic and you don't know it, you could get into quite a state from just that one first high, if you're not careful.
The problem for we tokers is that many regular users begin their day's session in the late afternoon at 4:20, as work is winding down, and maybe an hour or two before their evening meal â?? just at the very time when their blood sugar is already on the wane. If this is you, you'll more than likely feel a lot of the symptoms below within ten minutes or so of getting high. Eat! Better still, make sure that you've eaten well in advance of getting high.
For any weed user, even without food binges, the increase in metabolism that dope creates burns off blood sugar very quickly, so you're much more likely to have the symptoms listed below. Look out for any of the following as indicators of low blood sugar:
Sweating, shaking, anxiety, hunger, dizziness, faintness, pounding heart, personality changes, confused thinking, impatience, numbness of lips and tongue, headache, nausea, blurred vision, slurred or slow speech, convulsions, coldness, white hands and face. Eventually, if not attended to, can lead to unconsciousness.
If all of that's not bad enough, you can also have low blood sugar at night when you're asleep, and you may wake up with some of these same symptoms. As I said earlier, the rhythm of your high could mean that you get your best highs when you're asleep at night, so the weed is still working away on your metabolism into the early hours of the morning.
There's no getting away from the fact that too much weed can make getting out of bed the following day a bit of a struggle, but if you get headaches, muscle aches and a grogginess that you can't seem to shake and that seems disproportionate to your weed intake, then low blood sugar could be the cause. If you're already prone to night time dips in blood sugar (as many people are), then the dope will exacerbate that and make you feel much worse when you wake up. Check out your diet.
What foods then?
When you appreciate that not eating properly is going to reduce the amount of pleasure you can get from your weed a lot, then things have become truly serious. To overcome this, eat foods that release sugars slowly, if they contain them. 'Slow-release' sugars, such as fructose â?? as opposed to fast-release, quick up, quick down, glucose sugars - are poorly absorbed (hence why they're referred to as 'slow'). Potatoes and bananas are slow-release, for example; bread is possibly the fastest release of all. At the very least, have toast and a good bowl of cereal an hour or two before you start getting high; that way, you're sure to begin with a steady glucose supply to keep you, and your brain, stable.
If you're high and going through a sugar crash, and are in need of quick relief (without the downside of see-sawing blood sugar levels that you'll get from things like chocolate), bread, figs and especially dates, are very good for getting you rapidly back to normal.
From: 'Cannabis & Meditation â?? An Explorer's Guide'
MelT