Marijuana and Anxiety

[Dream of the iris]

Here's a technique for all those that suffer from anxiety while high. While stoned, one reason I noticed that getting high can be scary is because it makes you more present. Now, bear with me here. While stoned, if you really notice it, you feel timeless, very here in the moment. It's why the Hindus feel it is a gift from the god Shiva. It's a presence-inducing substance. Next time you get stoned, try to be more aware of this presence. Feel yourself being in the moment, realize that you are here. Realize that this presence is what all of life is and that there is nothing to be afraid of. You'll be surprised at how calm you can get just from that simple awareness. It works for me, although I can understand that some anxiety stems from deeper problems. This simple technique is useful mainly for the occasional anxiety sufferers. Try it out and see if it works for you. It's a bit spiritual, but I feel it holds fundamental truths.

[zosozelena]

i find all of this funny because marijuana actually helps with my anxiety attacks, if i feel like i am having an anxiety attack it usually does the trick

[03Dmartin]

Now a strange thing happened. I got stoned and after i wasnt stoned anymore i still got that weird feeling in my chest like its opened or something.

This is almost the 7th day and i still have that feeling. It's like my emotions are lower i dont feel so much and i can mostly only feel that feel (its like adrenaline and like theres a hole in my chest)

I posted the the above post in some other forums and they told me it's anxiety for sure. Did anyone have this weird feeling for 7 days or more (i still have it atm but its getting better).

I'm not a everyday smoker but when i smoke i smoke very strong stuff so i'm almost trippin.

I hope everything will get better

arightttt,
ive been looking for someone that has this too....:O
basically i smoked some pretty strong stuff last saturday
im pretty inexperienced and usually i freak out, i make the mistake of smoking in the most inappropriate places at the wrong time. but i geuss im learning (hopefully).

i smoked the TINIEST amount in my back yard and didnt feel much at first, when i settled down back indoors i suddenly had some sort of realisation that im losing it and im in serious danger (lol).

so i started pacing around the place and whatnot, my friends didnt really help -_-. it was a pretty gay night overall and from past experience i knew that id feel pretty freaky for about 5 days afterwards (i smoked my first blunt at home then went into town at about 1 oclock in teh day).

Its been a week now and i still feel like i have brain damage and find it hard to get to sleep for fear of talking to myself :S... (im not sure about the whole in teh chest thing though)

i REALLY would like to know the period of time that it takes for this to pass. Because it doesnt seem clear at all, one site will say ten years, another will say this shouldnt happen at all its ridiculous,gahhh .O_O. because like that guy said, i feel like im trapped in the present, its okay for a little while (or when i get hammered) but i have college, and i feel like im guna throw up in every frikkin lesson.

i think thats all,
plees halp meh
big love xox

[weedidas]

Anxiety, and returning to smoking again: Please read and respond - Page 4 - Grasscity.com Forums

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

[weedidas]

and

I thought I should include the second part of the chapter above to include general another of the causes of bad highs:


Adrenaline & Cannabis
A second cause of dope-anxiety is something I term here the 'Adrenaline Cascade'; really a mild form of 'shock'. After any stressful event, anxiety causes your system to dump adrenaline (also called epinephrine) into your blood-stream, creating a rapid heart-beat, a growing demand on your BSL, and thus deeper and deeper feelings of anxiety as your BSL levels drop. Of course, you'll usually find these effects uncomfortable or worrying, thus causing the release of even more adrenaline and a worsening of symptoms. This vicious circle of adrenaline release will be increasingly hard to overcome, and the deeper it gets the more likely it is to lead to a 'white-out' due to its depressive effects on your blood sugar.

Many things trigger the release of adrenaline:

* Apprehension about potentially bad highs
* Stress
* Anxiety
* Fatigue
* Stimulants, such as alcohol, caffeine, cocaine, and heroin.
* Bright lights
* Loud noises
* Exercise
* Sugar sensitivity
* Abnormal glucose metabolism

Again, do not underestimate the mental effects that adrenaline can cause by itself - irregular heart-beat, palpitations, abnormal behaviour, anxiety and headaches - even before it starts reducing our BSL to a point where it can no longer support full brain function (about 60% of our blood sugar is used by our brains).

Unfortunately, there's very little you can do to remove excess adrenaline from your system once it's in there, and it can only really be counteracted by 'nor-adrenaline', something that usually only our bodies can provide. It can be burned off by exercise, but if adrenaline has caused a very deep dip in your BSL then that may not be a viable option. The only things you can truly do are: eat to get rid of some of the more unpleasant symptoms; or, simply wait it out, knowing that it is a brief physiological effect.

I've seen a number of people offering advice to 'just suck it up and it'll go away' on this particular kind of anxiety and, to some extent that is helpful, as relaxing and trying to be calm will help break the cycle of adrenaline release. On the other hand, if someone is having an intense version of this then relaxing is far easier said than done and, if you should experience the above yourself, then you need to treat yourself as you would for low BSL and the effects of a grade 4 high (see later), removing yourself from any strong stimuli - lights, noises, etc. - that might help promote the effects of the high and further adrenaline release.

It's interesting to consider all of the effects that adrenaline has on our systems, especially when we're high, especially in light of the small amount of research that's been done into cannabis and the control of BSL in diabetics. Cannabis works for some diabetics in this respect, but not all. Some have found that it lowers BSL and helps control the illness, others that it has no effect at all, which may simply be down to the amount of adrenaline they might or might not produce when they're high. Many have rigorously self-tested their BSL and found that cannabis causes an initial rise in blood sugar (caused by increased hydrolysis of glycogen to glucose), followed by a low period where they're unable to return their background sugar levels to a normal level.

If we look at the actions of adrenaline in this respect then the mechanism that prevents this rise becomes obvious (remember that this same effect will be present in anyone who has a burst of adrenaline in their systems, not just diabetics): adrenaline prepares the body for 'fight or flight' in an emergency by increasing the supply of glucose and oxygen to the brain and muscles, whilst at the same time suppressing other less-important processes, digestion in particular. This means that the initial elevation in blood-sugar (through increased catabolism) may be short-lived, and whether it then leads to a later dip and anxiety is dependent on the amount of adrenaline present in the blood at the time. Not only does it reduce the bodies ability to take in new blood sugar to redress the balance, but it increases speedier depletion of stored blood sugar, preventing restoration.

Some people, particularly those with bad diets or who are subjected regularly to stress, may have semi-permanent hypoglycemia (a deficiency of glucose in the blood), resulting in adverse reactions to cannabis through their bodies inability to control adrenaline and/or cortisol through 'adrenal fatigue'.

The Answer
In light of the above, those who know they're already at risk from fluctuating BSL will find that their symptoms of anxiety during cannabis use will be significantly reduced if they can pay full attention not only to those levels before use, but also setting and mood before use, as recommended in other chapters here.

Testing for Hypoglycemia
'Many more people believe they have hypoglycemia than actually test positive when given blood-sugar tests...
Dr. Callaway suspects that people can experience pharmacological effects from sugar, even if blood-sugar levels remain within the normal range. People's responses to fluctuating blood-sugar levels vary greatly. Some people experience symptoms when blood-sugar levels are well within the normal range, while others report no symptoms even when blood-sugar levels have dropped substantially. It is likely that each person has a unique blood-sugar range, with fatigue or mood changes occurring when levels fluctuate above or below these levels. (Pages 109, 112)'
'Food & Mood' Somer, Elizabeth, M.A., R.D. (Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 1999.)

From 'Cannabis & Meditation â?? An Explorer's Guide'

MelT

[wishfulsmoker]

heres the thing, i loove weed. i used to love just unwinding at the end of the day with a blunt and some music cuz i am a fairly depressed person and liked to just escape reality for a little. i was an every day smoker for about 3 years ive been smokin for 4 and im so pissed off cause i get panic attacks when i smoke now too its horrible. i quit for about a month after my second panic attack just started again a couple weeks ago and the other night i had another one after smokin a nice amount. this really sucks because i miss the feeling of just being retardedly stoned but now i could barely smoke or ill either A have an attack or B think im going to have one the whole time which usually almost starts one. i mean i could still smoke but it has to be when im at home and i no i got no where to go but to sleep and i still feel somewhat anxious when i do that....shits beat. i wonder if i smoked an indica if it would be different but unfortunatly where i am its impossible to know what your getting. anyway i feel for your situation i just had to respond because ive been lookin all oer the place for a solution so i could keep smokin but it looks like im gonna have to quit..never would have though the one thing that relieved my stress the most causes it now

[4harley]

INDICA.100% hope this helps.

[kailazee]

Okay here's my story.

I smoked yesterday and was fine till i lost my high then i panicked and felt like i was still high and my mind was numb and i couldnt focus on anything, I almost felt delirious. I smoked today before church and was fine when I lost my high. but after church we smoked again and i panicked and now I feel like before I feel like my mind is permanantly high or numb.
Please help?

[Mark S]

Anxiety Attacks/Panic Attacks/Pain Management And Marijuana:

I have been a heavy pot smoker most my adult life. At the age of 16 I started using recreationally, I am currently 37. Over the past decade or even more the only time I am not high/smoking was when I was sleeping, seriously. Because of my work being a massage therapist and owning my own clinic, I was able to live this life style without it affecting my every day life. So I thought. I have no medical problems, healthy as they come and had a possitive/healthy state of mind and well-being. About 2 months ago from this day I had a severe anxiety/panic attack. So severe I had to call 911 and go to the hospital. I thought I was going to die, having a heart attack. This was my first time ever experiencing an attack. I didn't even know what they really were until they explained at the hospital. Thank goodness that has been my only "severe" attack in the past 2 months although I have had two smaller ones and am still in the "critical" stage of this ordeal. Why I am posting this is because of what I found out after seeing numerous doctors and doing my own research over the past couple of months. I saw two MDs, psychiatrist and a psychologist. After sitting down with each one and being honest about my marijuana abuse for so long they all told me the same thing, "I have over-dosed and have been over dosing on the levels of THC in my system for to long.". This affects the GABA receptors which when affected will produce the feelings of depression and will cause panic/anxiety disorders among other things. These are both results in my case of an abnormal interference with the GABA receptors caused by long term over dosing of marijuana.

Each person's body is different of course and moderation is always key. You always hear how marijuana is natural and what not and all these great things about it. Through all my experiences with weed and especially now, I don't agree. Once again in moderation, fine. In certain medical cases after the patient has tried everything else, why not? Especially cancer patients and what not. But for pain? I just don't think marijuana is the answer. At first it may work for the individual especially if THC is new to the body. Just the new feeling of being "high" can be enough of a new sensation to the body that it may interfere positively to the pain cycle. But like with everything else our bodies build up tolerances and the more THC that is put in to the body for a duration of time is only opening the door to more unrelated problems to the pain, like severe anxiety.

From what my doctors told me and through my research I have found that pot isn't all that it is made out to be. Especially these days where pot has become stronger and stronger and more unhealthy chemicals in them as well which is mostly dependent on how it was grown (certain toxic fertilizers/water sources/ground soil and so on) are just a couple factors. I have been told by professionals that I will feel like a new man once all the THC is out of my system and allow time for my brain to literally heal. I know there are other issues and factors at work here. But I was very relieved. So relieved I cried in one of the doctor's offices when they told me this because I thought I was going crazy. I am currently on pharmaceutical medication for the first time in my life. I am taking the lowest dosage possible(other then not taking any) of Alprazolam and the same with Lamotrigine. The Alpra to calm the daily anxiety symptoms I still experience and the Lamotrigine as a mood stabilizer. I have always gone the natural/nutritional path but in certain situations like this one I felt I had little choice. It is still unclear how long it will take to get the majority of the THC out of my system. My system which has had it in it for so long and so much. And it also unclear how long it will take for my brain to almost fully recover to a healthier state. I was told 4-6 months and I should start noticing a difference from not having it in my system anymore. All I know is I have been pot free for 2 months now and don't plan on using it again. I don't even miss it, which is great! I got scared shitless and that was all I needed to quit. I hope over the next couple months I can ween off the medications and start going the natural route. I am ready to heal. I am ready for peace. I am ready for a sense of "well-being". And for me my friends, marijuana robbed me of those things. I'm at fault of course because of my depth of usage. But, don't let anyone fool you about marijuana. Although, no body has died from an overdose, overdosing is real and is a very common and a very valid thing that leads to other disorders. You would be surprised how many conditions/problems are misdiagnosed and the underlying cause was the overdosing of THC in the body's system. There's a long list and I included the website. Marijuana overdose Symptoms, Diagnosis, Treatments and Causes - RightDiagnosis.com

Once again, I am not anti-pot as long as it used in moderation but I am not a fan of people medicating themselves with it. You may become very dependent of it and it may for you open the door to more serious medical problems. Don't forget marijuana alters our brain and it's functions. Have fun but don't be like me. Once again, moderation is key. I am a drastic example of what large amounts of THC for extended amount/s of time can do your body's system. I have smoked it all, this strand that strand;Amsterdam, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Israel... it's still THC. "Thoughts become things" if you truly believe pot will help you on a cellular level then maybe it will. But still the facts are the facts. I hoped I helped some of you by using my experiences to guide some light on this topic. Take it from a veteran-over-the-top smoker.

Thanks for putting up with my rambling. Just trying to help and inform from my experiences..

[Mark S]

I don't know why all those clickable links showed up. Don't click on any of them other then the website link near the end if interested. When I clicked on the green links it took me to some b.s. where I couldn't click "back" to get back here. Just a heads up. May peace and happiness always find you