Quote Originally Posted by Non
I've had severe agoraphobia for a while now. I also have had severe social setbacks and of course anxiety. It's hard to see exactly where I went wrong during the crucial years of high school when I started smoking pot up until now. I just want to know why marijuana cause such panic and anxiety in me.

Is it because I feel I wont act normal in front of people?

Whats the difference between a person who smokes and enjoys being outside and can handle it and me? How can the other person handle it so effectively? Maybe pot doesn't make me dumber but it can enhance my perceptions but why do I have to be afraid that it shows?
I found your thread searching for help for my friend, who is supposedly agoraphobic (as well as a pothead, 30, single, unemployed and lives with his parents still), and I couldn't resist offering you my thoughts. A lot of people on a board like this will disagree, but hear me out.

When I read your message, it may as well have been me writing it a few years ago. I started smoking in high school, about 16. Right before that, I was making new friends, dating girls, doing "socially acceptable" things. Then, I started smoking, and pretty much everyone I knew was a pothead after that, and my life revolved around weed.

At first it was fun all the time, but I soon got the same symptoms you describe, extreme anxiety when high, I'd become very self conscious, and when really high would just basically be like a statue. Eventually, I started feeling depressed when I wasn't messed up.

I hate to say it, but the problem for you (and A LOT of other people) is weed. Not everyone is affected negatively by it, but after years of chronic use, it starts to affect you. When you're young and learning new social skills and developing, weed can be very harmful for you. It prevents you from growing socially, because you are "content" just getting high all the time. Life become about getting messed up, and not "normal".

After years about 5 years of denial, I quit smoking, and its amazing the difference you feel after a couple months of abstaining. Your brain starts to "correct" itself, back to the state it was intended to be: SOBER.

I still smoke time to time, but after I quit, I started dating a great girl, stopped getting drunk as much, and now I'm married, about to have a kid.

Trust me, there is so much more to life than a plant.

I know it sounds like a lame anti-drug commercial, but as the Kids in the Hall say, "Only a dope smokes dope".