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So I believe cannabis has a dissociative effect in me , anyone else?

al-laddin

al-laddin

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I had a hard time figuring out what category to post this but I believe this category will receive the most interesting responses. I feel that I may experience unusual effects with cannabis that may be fairly uncommon for average cannabis users, thus fewer responses in the cannabis forums. If I post this in "cannabis forum" I wont be targeting the right people; those who find cannabis AND NOIDS to be dissociative. Most people seem to experience cannabis as a gentle intoxicant which can be used daily.

So, Ive heard far too many people call cannabis a psychedelic and this makes me personally wince. I resent hearing that, as I personally find weed to be an intense anxiogen and almost NO similarity to tryptamines or phenethylamines. Muddy foggy mind versus a sparkling clear headedness of psychedelics. However I found some striking similarities to the small amount of experience Ive had with dissociatives.

Aslo, I have no experience with noids but from my online research with some of these synthetics people are experiencing many of the same long term effects that you would hear about PCP in the 90's and 80's. Like long term emotional and sychological harm. I know to take this all with a grain of salt but Ive also read and watched many personal anecdotal accounts with synthetic noids where people were left severly traumatized and/or DP/DR type of symptoms.

Cannabis effects for me ; feelings of claustrophobia or feeling closed in, frame like vision, anxiety, paranoid thoughts, depression, impending doom panic, extreme time dilation. black outs and "hole" type experiences. Feelings of profoundness. head feels detatched or floating above the body, things feel alien or not real. Odd tactile sensations, Hallucinations/delusions (not in the classic psychedelic way)

Cannabis hallucinations ; Distortions including macropsia /micropsia, frame like vision, geometric hallucinations in dark shades and more simplified much less aesthetically pleasing than classic seratonergic psychs. Very similar to the DXM CEVs Ive had. thinking/hearing/believing people are talking about me, time lapses (mini black outs?)

Now Im talking about consuming cannabis edibles, although this has happened when smoking too much as well. For me cannabis is a more adventurous drug which often is uncomfortable and dysphoric not hedonistic euphoria like opiates or even alcohol(although I don't find alcohol euphoric). These are reasons I FEEL that its similar to dissociatives. This is what creates the extreme dissociative type effect for me, in which it takes two days to recover.

Ive heard others describe the dissociative experience as I have very little. People describe it as extremely similar to my high dose cannabis experiences. I have a small handful of experiences taking smallish to medium doses of DXM and I find it to create a VERY similar uncomfortable experience. Very closed in and clausterphobic.

I think I may also be sensitive to DXM as I have had a few Hole-like experiences from lower doses when sick. I would often take 3x the amount of DXM cough syrup to get to sleep when I had the flu. I would have crazy restless nights with some of the most bizzare delusions of being in some sort of steam punk esque brainscapes. I cant even call these PLACES...more like fragments of consciousness....a mix of time space and blips of realities manufactured in my own mind. However I would often become very confused and believe that I am in these places.

Classic psychedelics give me profound feelings of OPENESS...the opposite of being closed in. Like being in a big cosmic open field. Im free to move around and explore and if things get uncomfortable I can change the environment to correct the problem.

Just my two cents on this. Anyone else have similar experiences?
 
It sounds like oral Cannabis makes you anxious, which is actually quite common. YMMV, as for many people Cannabis does indeed have psychedelic effects, up to and including visuals.
 
Just because it's different from other classes of psychedelics and it makes you anxious doesn't mean it's not a psychedelic. I've never done a long acting dissociative, just nitrous. Weed reminds me more of psychs than nitrous, but I don't know how relevant that is.

I find anxiety itself has dissociative effects. Most of what you're describing reminds me of panic attacks I've had. I think weed just gives you anxiety and magnifies its effects for you.
 
I agree with the post above. Cannabis is certainly anxiogenic and anxiety is known to have dissociative effects. You can just google it, and you'll have plenty of confirm to this.
I think it's unprobable that cannabis is having a direct dissociative effect.
 
Cannabis and synthetic cannabinoids can actually have depressant (and painkilling), stimulant, dissociative and psychedelic effects. Also it can be anxiolytic (anxiety relieving) or anxiogenic (anxiety producing).
Cannabinoids are very versatile that way, though it might be tempting to classify cannabinoids more strictly and limited. Different cannabinoid products may have different tendencies towards these possible "classes" of drug effects, and also different results are reached with different dosages.
Qualitative differences probably depends on the effects profile on the two major cannabinoid receptors CB1 and CB2.

We can accept that cannabinoids can have dissociative effects even if there is no direct NMDA antagonism that drugs like ketamine have to produce the more commonly known dissociative effects. Serotonergic psychedelics like LSD and mushrooms can also be dissociative, and this is IMO partially what mediates OBE or mystical experiences.

The effects you also describe in your post including those feelings of impending doom and psychedelic effects unusually strong compared to what you might call the average cannabis high, those are more or less typical for overdose / high dose of cannabinoids (including natural cannabinoids from cannabis). It is easy to overdose if you have (almost) no tolerance, also it is easier to get these effects when using edibles / oral cannabis, and also synthetic cannabinoids can often have an effect that is less attenuated, and therefore there may be much less of a 'ceiling' protecting you from these very strong effects. In other words: there might be effects produced via say CB1 receptors that are very psychedelic, that are not 'cushioned' by other effects like those on CB2. That may be oversimplified, but it seems it's like that.
 
If you have taken heavy psychedelic doses then that could be a contributing factor as intensified and more psychedelic highs are quite a common thing after taking PD's.
 
im with you bro, cannabis is psychedelic for me. i know exactly what you mean when you say some people consider it a 'gentle intoxicant who can be used daily'. cannabis is a very weird and unpredictable drug imo, and apparently to most people it indeed is a gentle intoxicant. i have friends who smoke a shit ton and function normally, just feel relaxed and stupid.

when i first started smoking it'd be a full blown psychedelic with total confusion, full blown visuals, distortion, as if reason had disappeared and all that shit. nowadays it isn't so strong, but still, if i take more than a few hits of some mids, i'm already baked off my mind.

so yeah, some people are more sensitive to it, some aren't. i came up with a thread like this a while ago in CD (cannabis makin me feel very weird, visual distortions even when not high, paranoia, psychedelia blah blah blah) and they told me what im gonna tell you... cannabis just isn't for everyone

so may be smoke very little so you get just that gentle buzz (if you like it) or quit it altogether.

i was smokin every day and it was driving me crazy, so i stopped. i smoked occasionally still, and very little. it's a bummer for me. weed is benign and has a very nice social aspect to it, but yeah... isn't for me. different brains i guess

peace
 
I've had maybe 3 events where I've experienced dissociation in my life so far, knock on wood, all 3 not caused by "drugs." I think I get what you are saying that strong weed creates these strange, intense experiences somewhat similar to a "dissociative" effect. But I will say a pure dissociation is some really funky stuff, like a catatonia crossed with a heavy calmness that I've never really experienced elsewhere. I had a very heavy feeling of not being in control of what I was doing and being only aware of experiencing events in a backseat-type, child like wonder. Very much not aware of feeling my body, or rather the absence of having one. This sort of state lasted a week or so, with probably lasting not as strongly for a month. At another point in time in my life it was so strong I was actually having a conscious OBE.

I think with weed its sort of a paradoxical effect at high doses with low tolerance for some people where the brain panics at being flooded with too much, neurologically it makes sense that if the brain is flooded with a depressant it conversely tries to "wake up" although produces errors common like you mentioned as well I have experienced. As well as strain. High sativa strains seem to promote these effects, where for myself on an indica I basically go to sleep (sort of).

My point is that dissociation is nothing like an intense weed smoking session. With weed, its over in probably an hour or two although feels like a life time, if you don't smoke again. And strangely enough snacking doesn't seem to go out the window. At least for me. Huge munchie urge.

As an aside: I've heard that in trauma events, high doses of ketamine are used to create a amnesia effect that completely blocks out the event itself. And that theA low doses that are used recreationally and the experiences people have are a result of taking too low a dose. That's pretty incidental, though. I've read probably on the wiki that dissociation can create amnesia like experiences.
 
I think dissociatives are psychedelics with cns depressant effects mixed in, and cannabis has that to some degree, but as has been mentioned, while bringing on a darker weirdness, it also has stimulant character, adding a twitchy paranoia to the darkish psychedelic.
I realize that sounds contradictory.
In any case, like psychedelics in general it can increase time dilation or distortions, and enhance sensation. It really has something spooky darkish in the middle as well - which is sedating - ish.
However
I find that when added to any other psychedelic it pushes the visual patterning a lot.
salvia is an accelerated kind of psychedelic with dissociative sedation as well and it also has tremendous patterning effects.
 
I personally find cannabis to be psychedelic. I'm not a heavy user, and when I use it's always only a couple of tokes, but it always has a psychedelic feeling to it. The disassociation you experience seems very anxiety related as I experienced similar feelings during my only two panic attacks, and during a bad psychedelic trip.

With that said cannabis is very versatile in its effects as others have mentioned. It's a stimulant, a depressant, a dissociative, and a psychedelic, and it all depends on the person using it.
 
Solipsis said:
Cannabis and synthetic cannabinoids can actually have depressant (and painkilling), stimulant, dissociative and psychedelic effects. Also it can be anxiolytic (anxiety relieving) or anxiogenic (anxiety producing).
Click to expand...

Exactly this.

I have experienced all of the above at different points (and many at the same!); Unfortunately these days for me it tends to be more anxiogenic, tension causing, dissociative and an unpleasantly sedating. In the past I it was more anxiolytic, psychedelic with a buzzy but calm high.

Different drugs have different effects on different people at different times! Sounds like unfortunately maybe cannabis ain't right for you.

It is also worth noting that cannabis is very potent if you haven't got a tolerance to it, so as others have pointed it it could easily be a case of over dosing. You could try a single sub 50mg dose of plant material and see where that takes you, even that may be too much at first.
 
Thanks for all the I interesting responses.

To the poster that said he has tried nitrous, I wouldn't say that is any where near a classic dissociative i.e., PCP,DXM,Ketamine, Methoxetamine, etc. Nitrous oxide has a very different quality to it and it strays further from than the classic dissociative effects that I describe that are in common with cannabis.

Sekio, Cannabis DOES indeed have a very dark sedative vibe for me. I have been in a catatonic state traversing strange different worlds in my mindseye....very close to DXM doses I have experienced.

Like I said , for me their is no seratonergic liveliness of LSD or mushrooms in cannabis..But it does seem to "bring back" old psychedelic effects from previous LSD trips but with its own "filter" over it if you will. Cannabis visual effects are grainy and dull, color enhancement isn't bright and luminous....for me its dark and dull like an old grainy film...similar to what Ive experienced with DXM. Also I have noticed with cannabis and DXM there is a "frame by frame" effect as well. Seratonergics seem to have a fluid "realistic" movement to visual effects which give them a more 'divine" quality. I see no mystical or divine potential with cannabis or dissociatives. I am however very green when it comes to dissociatives so I may change my mind.
 
al-laddin said:
frame like vision, anxiety, head feels detatched or floating above the body, things feel alien or not real.
Click to expand...
yes!, possible, yes and yes!

for me the dissociative effects of cannabis (also the thought processess are altered in a similar way to dxm ime) clearly dominate. and while the frame like vision only lasts for the "duration of the effects" the derealisation last for days...

also, all other dissociatives i've tried (dxm, ketamine) give me unpleasant aftereffects for a few days (nitrous makes me confused for a whole hour [while the "normal effects" last the usual time]) while i need much lower doses than anyone else.
 
When I was first starting cannabis it used to make me extremely dissociated. To this day I have a "mental video" of a time that I smoked a bunch of weed and went to a liquor store and spent like 10mins staring at the candy bar section not knowing what the hell was going on around me while also knocking over one of those cardboard advertisements. I was maybe 11 or so at the time, the clerk knew what was up lol. Looking back it was an incredibly similar feeling to dxm in a way, it was very different, but definately had that hazy similarity. Nowadays it feels more like a psychedelic than a dissociative, though if I smoke way too much for way too long I start to develop depersonalization/derealization which starts to feel like a dissociative in a very unpleasant way.
 
I'd say some good information has already been posted, now this still does belong in the CD forum and let's give those guys some more credit, so moving PD >> CD.
 
Agreed Solipsis, Id like to hear some Noid-heads perspectives on this matter as well :)
 
I would say cannabis is most similar, if to any drug, to dissociatives, although it is very different. I'd say it has a very light dissociative effect similar to large amounts of alcohol, but it's really very subtle. Also the stimulant effects add a whole other mental dimension that is very unlike dissociatives.
 
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