Advice-does weed help me emotionally-wise?

[nancy145]

I think this belongs in sober living but I've never posted there before and know it's a really sensitive forum so I figured its best to put it in homeless.
So anyway, I wanted some insight on whether or not weed helps or hurts me emotionally. Im not asking whether I should smoke or not, that's my choice, I just want an outsider opinion on how it effects me emotionally. I have significant depression, anxiety, and motivation/energy problems. The weed helps a lot with my depression and anxiety (my psychiatrist agreed it did too), not just when I'm high but when I'm sober too, but it lowers my motivation and energy, which is the root of many of my problems. I have trouble getting to school, making it through the day, and even just taking care of basic day to day responsibilities like doing laundry or brushing my teeth. The depression and motivation problems feed into each other and make each other worse. The anxiety prevents me from taking care of basic responsibilities and usually ends up turning into massive lack of motivation in the end. I've noticed recently that when I smoke I feel better in general (sober), but have a bit more trouble with motivation. Sorry this infromation s scattered and unorginizrd, but I'd appreciate some advice on the matter. Thanks

 

[Yourbaker]

Being completely unqualified in any way to provide you real information, I'll suggest the issue of motivation is deeper and is not linked solely to marijuana use.

There are many factors involved. Marijuana may be helping a lot in social settings but it does tend to prevent a lot of daily activities from get sorted into memory, short term memory issues and school don't do well together. Anxiety and school don't either, making the choice one or the other seems pointless why go to school with anxiety and depression and get nothing out of it. If using weed solves this problem but leaves you unmotivated to go in the first place you are still getting nothing out of it.

Learning while using daily is not impossible but your motivation must be real. Study a topic that interests you, be flexible in your study, often while using weed you will find yourself chasing an idea that takes you away from the material. Allow this with limitations. The increase in positive mental stimuli from letting your focus dig deep into material you may only need to cover lightly can produce a powerful motivation. It can also waste your time, stay in control and make good choices.

Make notes and read them. Seems like nothing new but weed based epiphanies can be fleeting. Reading while clear what was written while stoned can be a good measuring tool. You need to always stay clear on the answer to the question "is this helping me?"

Setting up a method to assist my learning to prove to myself I could learn on weed made, it something I could focus on and it helped pull me past motivational issues. In my mind if I could not function at par or above while using weed, I wouldn't be able to justify using it despite how much it improved my social abilities. I made that my focus and shortly after I found the dopamine response to learning came back with a vengeance.

Age: The medical studies have never been done so we have only rumours and personal perspective to go on so this is pure opinion on my part. It appears below or during puberty marijuana may cause slowed development in your brains pleasure centre. Because I grew up watching commercials about drugs that were made by people who had no clue I doubt almost 100% of what I read and hear. If this is true, it would be horrible, so I'd give this boogeyman man full attention until the real research is done and we don't need a weed boogeyman anymore.

I'd give a completely separate reason though to avoid using weed regularly as a teen. Emotions have begun to switch into a high gear and you have just developed a pleasure centre in your brain. Your own body chemistry needs time to switch on and get up to speed. You actually need to experience horrible shitty days so your body chemistry can adjust, this is primarily done in your teen years. Give your amazing brain as much space as you can and it will reward you often, use weed to do the job too much while young and your brain will never learn to do this job right.