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Marijuana use and paranoia

its the lack of cbd in a lot of modern cannabis.

i find hash never gives me anxiety, and it ussually has a high content of cbd. in fact i prefer standard indian comercial hash (soapbar,not morrocan soapbar though-yuk) to pollen, and its more relaxing. its a kind of relaxed feeling you cant get from skunk.
 
If I had to take a stab at it, I would say that it's really just a matter of "losing the magic." Just as MDMA users can lose all of the positve effects and only experience negative side effects, I think the same thing can happen with cannabis users.

I used to smoke a lot of pot and eventually grew bored with it. Taking breaks would help but over time the high got increasingly more anxious and now it's not a matter of a tolerance anymore. I could take a week long break and I'll still get anxious if I smoke more than a hit or two. Nothing has changed for me, my life is not any more stressful than it was when I started. I think it's just a "loss of magic" which causes the negative effects to become more prominent.
 
There has been some study on the anxiolytic/antidepressant effects of CB1 agonists (THC is one) and the results of the last study I read on it were that "chronic" dosing of CB1 agonists has anxiolytic/antidepressant effects, whereas acute dosing tends to cause anxiety-like effects. Maybe a break is the last thing you need 8) I posted a thread regarding that study earlier tonight actually.

And as far as "loss of magic" with MDMA is concerned, I'm pretty sure that has a neurological cause closely related to the action of the drug. I haven't read anything on "loss of magic" per se, but extended frequent use can do some damage. Infrequent use is quite safe though, provided doses aren't terribly excessive.
 
I started smoking pot at 25! Didn't get anxiogenic effects until ~36 yo.

Also, I've had panic attacks without pot as a teenager combined with depression. In the 'good' years of smoking weed, I never had an anxiety attack and was seldom depressed. It was like some miracle drug.

I used to smoke really good weed with high THC content so I don't think it was the THC/CBD ratio- though hash is seldom available here in the US so I'd like to try it.

I think my neurochemistry has changed. Did pot change it or is it an effect of natural aging...???

I wonder if endocannibinoids play a role in the aging brain normally....
 
I didn't know this was this common.

I started smoking pot when I was 15, and by the time I was 16 I was smoking everyday. As DG mentioned, it was just some kind of miracle drug for me...I had tried other drugs, and I liked weed the best haha.

I don't know exactly what happened, but basically one day I had a really bad time on some clean E, I took 3 strong pills and rolled face for about a half hour. I smoked a few really fat joints with my boy, and somehow I instantly stopped rolling and for the next 7 months was pretty suicidal...the day after the E I was feeling so bad I relapsed and did 48mg of hydromorphone...I woke up the next morning depressed and anxious from the E and in opiate withdrawal...it took a long time to recover from that agony, and even though I feel pretty good these days pot still makes me feel like I'm back at square one. Really weird shit.

The craziest thing, in my opinion, is that the JWH-series, which are supposed to be so anxiogenic, make me feel GREAT...I feel like I'm 15 again haha.
 
on the subject of cbd content an old hippy i met said that green messes your head long term, hash is the only one you can smoke for years and stay fine with. another heavy smoker i knew said that i some countries before pot is made into hash it is not considered a finished product and they wont touch it- where this is i dont know as it was hearsay from a hash and weed coinosseur

CBD takes time to form as it is a breakdwon product of THC

remember that if you atek a drug chronically it will affect you brain and change the structure somewhat e.g SSRI's
 
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In Holland a lot of coffeeshop dealers only smoke hash, they don't want to touch weed, even grade A weed.
 
theseeker said:
I started smoking pot at 25! Didn't get anxiogenic effects until ~36 yo.

Also, I've had panic attacks without pot as a teenager combined with depression. In the 'good' years of smoking weed, I never had an anxiety attack and was seldom depressed. It was like some miracle drug.

I used to smoke really good weed with high THC content so I don't think it was the THC/CBD ratio- though hash is seldom available here in the US so I'd like to try it.

I think my neurochemistry has changed. Did pot change it or is it an effect of natural aging...???

I wonder if endocannibinoids play a role in the aging brain normally....
Click to expand...

That has been my experience too, especially the part in bold. I know that straight THC is more prone to cause dysphoria than THC/CBD, but my experience over the years is that I could smoke A LOT of buds in the past, but now I can only smoke a little bit before I get anxious. This is with ALL reefer, not just those with a high THC to CBD ratio.
 
I'm in the same boat. Smoking the smallest amount gives me terrible anxiety, and smoking more seems to make it exponentially worse.

A year or two ago I took 6 grams of gabapentin over the course of an evening and also decided to smoke. There was no anxiety at all. Unfortunately I haven't been able to try and repeat that scenario. Benzos don't seem to work.
 
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^agree

Even when I've taken Benzo's I've gotten some 'breakthrough' panic when smoking. However, if I'm sufficiently drunk, this helps things quite a bit.
 
Personally, I'm sticking with the THC/CBD content ratios. If I smoke much lighter, less strong weed I can still actually enjoy it.
It happened to me like it happened to a great deal of people here - a brick wall of panic attack just sprung up from nowhere and I couldn't touch it again for years. I now know that there were reasons in my life for being overly anxious and developing anxiety when I did.
I put it down completely for around 4 years atleast, then started having the odd toke every now n again of milder strains of weed and I can actually enjoy it if I make sure to have just a little :)
 
^^^
I can still enjoy it in small doses too. A hit or two out of the bong is really all it takes for me to get stoned. Anything else is overkill and could possibly lead to anxiety.
 
N0 W4RN1NG said:
I didn't know this was this common.

I started smoking pot when I was 15, and by the time I was 16 I was smoking everyday. As DG mentioned, it was just some kind of miracle drug for me...I had tried other drugs, and I liked weed the best haha.

I don't know exactly what happened, but basically one day I had a really bad time on some clean E, I took 3 strong pills and rolled face for about a half hour. I smoked a few really fat joints with my boy, and somehow I instantly stopped rolling and for the next 7 months was pretty suicidal...the day after the E I was feeling so bad I relapsed and did 48mg of hydromorphone...I woke up the next morning depressed and anxious from the E and in opiate withdrawal...it took a long time to recover from that agony, and even though I feel pretty good these days pot still makes me feel like I'm back at square one. Really weird shit.

The craziest thing, in my opinion, is that the JWH-series, which are supposed to be so anxiogenic, make me feel GREAT...I feel like I'm 15 again haha.
Click to expand...

same I started smoking LOTS of weed at 15, I would get sooo high. Around 2 years later I started getting anxious/panicy off even one hit of weed. I can still smoke weed and get high, but I have to deal with at least 10minutes of anxiety usually.

JWH-018 and 073 cause me no anxiety, when I did end up overdosing on 018 and getting "the fear" it wasn't even that bad(I was shaking uncontrollably and it was hard to breath from the shaking, but there was very little actual anxiety in comparison with high doses of weed).

edit: I'll go further and say that after being high on JWH it leaves me with less social anxiety than I normally have sober for a good day after. It's actually a very obvious effect and its made
me a lot more social with people I don't know very well. Weed does this to some extent, but nothing really noticeable.
 
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it's not the ratios. the brain changes with chronic use and the positive effects become less.

when i started smoking it was fantastic, euphoric and psychedelic and i just loved it. but then after smoking multiple times daily for years, it lost its magic and began causing horrible anxiety and panic attcks.

i tried taking a break but it did not take long after i started up again for the anxiety to come back.

other drugs change in how they effect you over time as well. for instance, when i started drinking alcohol, at first it was highly euphoric, did not ever make me blackout and did not cause overly severe hangovers. after drinking heavily for a while, i no longer experienced the same euphoria, blacked out easily and experienced horrible hangovers.

marijuana tends to cause anxiety and panic with long term use, also racing heart. it's happened to so many people.
 
I was most interested to see if anyone knew what neurochemical changes are taking place. It is indeed true that this seems rather common. In the case of EtOH, as we get older or start drinking heavily our ability to metabolize alcohol can become less efficient and that may account for some of the effects mentioned in the post above. This is not the case with marijuana- that is- there is no toxicity effect as with EtOH.
 
This is most interesting as I had never come across many others having this problem too, thought it was just me.

Personally I started smoking at around 15-16, mainly solid, and found near the end of my 20s early 30s (about 3-5 years ago) I was justing getting major anxiety after just one hit, with weed and solid both (though mainly weed by then as solid seems to be rare now and thenadays).

It got so bad I just decided to quit and did not do any for 1-2 years, been on it again for the last year or so (roughly every other weekend) and been fine again.

I found at the time smoking on my own is worse, though it still happened most times with others. I am not sure what has changed, though I think I am slightly less stressed and do not go out partying and taking other things as much.
 
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