Weed withdrawal is very real and it's not fun

[shaddi]

Wonderful theory as well!

Thanks! And I have some personal experience to back this up, just read below:

Currently 3 days sober, I can say it has been hell doing so after 3 years without taking a break of more than a week... Mind you, I've never had opiate/benzo WD's. I'll argue that my alcohol and caffiene WD's are actually much, MUCH easier to handle than pot WD's. I haven't slept for shit in three nights. I too have had nightmares, cold/hot flashes for no reason, etc. I've never been more bored in my life than the times I have quit pot. I even had a nightmare last night that I had broken down and smoked with my roommate, and I was so upset with myself lol. Luckily, I hadn't actually. Tryin to make it till the end of my summer school in three weeks, lets hope I don't break down and buy some ganja!

I'll be able to relate to this.

Smoked 3-4 times a day for 2 years (3-4 hits each time), not really as much as some other people, but i'm only 23 now so this was the longest streak (i was 19-20). was working BK full time (very stressful). had some 'personal' issues, so decided it was time to quit smoking, because I found myself 'flirting' more than I should've, so things went wrong, ETC...

After quitting, found myself unable to sleep for...4-5 days. I truly mean probably 100 more or less hours awake at once. It was miserable. Felt like i was floating out of my body. Time to make a sandwich went from 1 min to 10 mins; everyone customer left because it took my brain too long to figure out how to make food lol.

Was this related to my personal/emotional issues that I had at the time/all along? Or from the cold turkey of weed which would help me sleep, etc. It doesn't matter, but all of that stress I believe was held within me when i smoked. my theory is i just smoked away my problems, and all it did was put a bandage on them, over and over, until i had to rip all of those bandages at once, and it hurt. reality comes crashing at once.


I think lack of sleep could be from stress, tho. because working full-time domino's delivery i went 90 hours without sleep (and on the road that's sort of dangerous.) that is before i had any sort of guidance or understanding of my emotions, or anything. i was young blood. at that time i'd smoke randomly here and there, not much at all tho.

Oh and i have problems now sleeping anyways (prob cuz im loading up on coffee now, but it happened without it too.) i would skip every other night of sleep, while working full time, and while smoking 10hits a day. (recently). its weird. and that's happening now too, without weed. so maybe unrelated. (and i still consider myself stressed at some point every day, so its a matter of learning calmness, hope, and patience.)


But, now, I find it much much easier to stop and go with weed. I never allow myself to get too high at once, just a hit or two more than once a day. i basically like to stay comfortably buzzed all day. i make sure to deal with my emotions before anything. before i was bottling them away. now i cry more than once a day (and im a tough guy). No one needs to know i do that, but i'm not afraid to admit it. The crying usually comes from prayer, but that's another story. (I'm Muslim)



but really i think stress is something that you need to deal with emotionally, and pray a lot to deal with. smoking will not relieve stress in its own (but it can surely help).


can't say what my final point or stance on any of that is or was. just some thoughts

 

[bit_pattern]

I'd say that weed is much safer and more effective than an ssri. i say because the plant is natural, grown, God-given. I have used ssri and other meds for over a year daily. i was up to 60mg of prozac, as well as welbutren, risperidone, and took diazapem for anxiety.

Not to mention you can DIE from taking anti-anxiety meds, you should look that up as well and it's very real. those pills are no game to play with, taking the natural and safe alternatives is always better. and that doesnt HAVE to be weed, it can be meditation, prayer, sleep...

i would never go back to them. i've found weed much more effective, safer, and a better feeling. you cannot just stop taking an ssri all of a sudden, or any anxiety med, when on a steady dose over a long period of time without MUCH WORSE side effects. you can DIE from coming off of anxiety meds all of a suddon without weening yourself off (My friend trying to come off of a pill for months/year).


also i wonder if the plant has been curing all of this depression/anxiety/sleep issues all along, and when you arent on it, those problems were just kind of stored away, ready to come back and hit you when you stop smoking, so it's as if you had to deal with them either way, as in you would've had them without the plant to begin with. i'd suggest just 'taking it easy'


And sorry i'm not a doctor but ive been thru all of the psycho-therapy BS

So you're saying weed is the most effective treatment for weed withdrawals? Awesome logic

 

[bit_pattern]

I'll argue that my alcohol and caffiene WD's are actually much, MUCH easier to handle than pot WD's

This is my experience too - mind you I've never had a raging alcohol problem, it's well known that alcohol withdrawls can kill a person if severe enough.

 

[Doldrugs]

I'd say that weed is much safer and more effective than an ssri.

I'd say it highly depends on the patient, as with all medicine. I do think weed is a great tool for people with depression, but it's not feasible for everyone to be high all the time. Weed is better for moderate depression in my opinion. It's not gonna cut it for people with severe depression.

i say because the plant is natural, grown, God-given.

This has nothing to do with anything. "Natural" medicine can be as or more harmful than anything. Nature produces plenty of poisons.

 

[Cream Gravy?]

This is my experience too - mind you I've never had a raging alcohol problem, it's well known that alcohol withdrawls can kill a person if severe enough.

Yeah, I doubt I've had true alcohol WD's, but I did drink daily for a month or two, and when I stopped I certainly didn't enjoy it hahah. I'd still rather do that than quit pot 4 days sober today, gotta keep truckin!

 

[shaddi]

So you're saying weed is the most effective treatment for weed withdrawals? Awesome logic

I mean to say, to go from smoking 10 hits a day to 1 hit a day, for example... or from 2 hits a day to 1 hit every 3 days or something, to slowly ween off instead of cold turkey.

I'd say it highly depends on the patient, as with all medicine. I do think weed is a great tool for people with depression, but it's not feasible for everyone to be high all the time. Weed is better for moderate depression in my opinion. It's not gonna cut it for people with severe depression.



This has nothing to do with anything. "Natural" medicine can be as or more harmful than anything. Nature produces plenty of poisons.

ssri's/benzos/pills dont grow from the ground, whereas pot does, is what im saying

 

[Mafioso]

I agree with OP, cannabis will cause withdraws if you are using it heavily, just as any drug will. Introducing any chemical into your body will cause an initial imbalance(in the case of drugs this is the high we experience) and continued use will cause your body to adjust its normal level of chemicals to compensate(drug tolerance), which brings us to the final stage- stopping use, which will cause your body to revert back to its normal levels but in the mean time this sort of imbalance is what we call withdraw.

They are mostly if not entirely mental, however, and in comparison to most other drugs relatively harmless but definitely not completely harmless. I think the real struggle for myself and most is that we have learned to think and live stoned, and now our brains are trying to revert back to that. Most stoners I know, myself included, usally get stoned before they do most anything. This creates a pattern of 'stimulation' first, then 'thought' so to speak, which is sort of backwards from normal. Normally you do activities to 'stimulate' your brain- like working or playing music for example. I know when I am sober these activities, and most everything else except sex, isn't what I would describe as pleasurable starting out and usually requires a deal of 'metal effort' or pushing myself to continue. That is until I can start to see or feel progress, at which point I feel stimulated sober.

with weed it is just to opposite- I don't want to do anything UNLESS I already feel good or 'stimulated' so to speak.

 

[St3ve]

Whoever tells you marijuana isn't addictive is nothing short of a liar, and I have found that most people who say that are those held down by their addiction and still in denial. Sure, it's not comparable to a lot of substances, but the addictive aspects are surely still there.

Yes this matches my observations very, very well. If you start telling potheads that their drug of choice is actually not as harmless as they think it to be, they will be get highly defensive about it and try their best to convince you (and themselves) that there is nothing bad about it. "Hey man, at least it's not alcohol/other drugs", "Brooo, it's natural", "Weed doesn't cause problems, it's the ultimate medicine for every fucking disease on the planet!". Accepting that you have a problem with a drug is necessarily the first step towards improving your situation. Potheads refusing to accept that an all day-every day style of smoking is causing problems are, as you said, very much in denial.

I've not experienced the OCD like symptoms you speak off, but the intense never felt before anger bursts sound very familiar. I had them for quite some time after quitting weed each time, although the worst seems to be gone after about a week. Sweats, nightmares and difficulty sleeping were other symptoms I had.

I'd say that weed is much safer and more effective than an ssri. i say because the plant is natural, grown, God-given. I have used ssri and other meds for over a year daily. i was up to 60mg of prozac, as well as welbutren, risperidone, and took diazapem for anxiety.

.......

also i wonder if the plant has been curing all of this depression/anxiety/sleep issues all along , and when you arent on it, those problems were just kind of stored away, ready to come back and hit you when you stop smoking, so it's as if you had to deal with them either way, as in you would've had them without the plant to begin with. i'd suggest just 'taking it easy'

Weed is better than approved medicine for depression, because weed is natural/god given. RIIIIIIGHT. This it's natural so it must be good attitude of people is terrible. Morphine is naturally occurring in poppy plants, eating poppy plants all day long would rapidly lead to a powerful addiction + withdrawal symptoms. There's hundreds of thousands of poisonous plants out there that can kill you in an instant.

Weed as we smoke it today is far from what I'd call "God given". God given weed would be smoking the stuff that grows out there in the wild. What we get is carefully selected strains grown in ideal indoor conditions producing ridiculous amounts of THC and next to no CBD for maximizing highness effect.

If pot were to actually cure depression/sleep/anxiety issues, they wouldn't come back after quitting use. It works in a similar fashion as taking an over the counter cold remedy does, not by fixing the cause (Ie. killing the virus responsible for your cold) but by masking the symptoms (aches, fever, runny nose). You wouldn't recommend anyone to take paracetamol all day every day to cure their pain, you shouldn't smoke weed on daily basis for months on end to treat your "depression". It will hide symptoms for a bit, only to worsen them once you stop using...

 

[bit_pattern]

I'd say it highly depends on the patient, as with all medicine. I do think weed is a great tool for people with depression, but it's not feasible for everyone to be high all the time. Weed is better for moderate depression in my opinion. It's not gonna cut it for people with severe depression.

http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mentalheal.../alcoholanddrugs/cannabisandmentalhealth.aspx

There is growing evidence that people with serious mental illness, including depression and psychosis, are more likely to use cannabis or have used it for long periods of time in the past. Regular use of the drug has appeared to double the risk of developing a psychotic episode or long-term schizophrenia. However, does cannabis cause depression and schizophrenia or do people with these disorders use it as a medication?

Over the past few years, research has strongly suggested that there is a clear link between early cannabis use and later mental health problems in those with a genetic vulnerability - and that there is a particular issue with the use of cannabis by adolescents.

Depression

A study following 1600 Australian school-children, aged 14 to 15 for seven years, found that while children who use cannabis regularly have a significantly higher risk of depression, the opposite was not the case - children who already suffered from depression were not more likely than anyone else to use cannabis. However, adolescents who used cannabis daily were five times more likely to develop depression and anxiety in later life.

Maybe it's just because I started smoking as a young adolescent but there is no way that could ever stand back and let someone say smoking pot is good for depression.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14616175

Addiction. 2003 Nov;98 (11):1493-504.
Exploring the association between cannabis use and depression.
Degenhardt L1, Hall W, Lynskey M.
Author information
Abstract
AIM:

To examine the evidence on the association between cannabis and depression and evaluate competing explanations of the association.
METHODS:

A search of Medline, Psychinfo and EMBASE databases was conducted. All references in which the terms 'cannabis', 'marijuana' or 'cannabinoid', and in which the words 'depression/depressive disorder/depressed', 'mood', 'mood disorder' or 'dysthymia' were collected. Only research studies were reviewed. Case reports are not discussed.
RESULTS:

There was a modest association between heavy or problematic cannabis use and depression in cohort studies and well-designed cross-sectional studies in the general population. Little evidence was found for an association between depression and infrequent cannabis use. A number of studies found a modest association between early-onset, regular cannabis use and later depression, which persisted after controlling for potential confounding variables. There was little evidence of an increased risk of later cannabis use among people with depression and hence little support for the self-medication hypothesis. There have been a limited number of studies that have controlled for potential confounding variables in the association between heavy cannabis use and depression. These have found that the risk is much reduced by statistical control but a modest relationship remains.
CONCLUSIONS:

Heavy cannabis use and depression are associated and evidence from longitudinal studies suggests that heavy cannabis use may increase depressive symptoms among some users. It is still too early, however, to rule out the hypothesis that the association is due to common social, family and contextual factors that increase risks of both heavy cannabis use and depression. Longitudinal studies and studies of twins discordant for heavy cannabis use and depression are needed to rule out common causes. If the relationship is causal, then on current patterns of cannabis use in the most developed societies cannabis use makes, at most, a modest contribution to the population prevalence of depression.

 

[Mafioso]

From what I understand there is a fairly well established connection between changes in the brain and heavy cannabis use and now there has recently been a new study that found a link between recreational users and cannabis use.http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/823730

 

[thujone]

Thanks for cleaning this thread up thujone

i did nothing but you're welcome

 

[rave_itsrealfun!!!]

Anyways I wrote a longer more aggressive post but it was kind of stupid and I am more clearheaded now since I am on a little hydromorphone so I am trying to write a more constructive contribution now. I was heavily addicted to cannabis both physically and psychologically for many years. However, I was a functional pothead for many years. I could take breaks for a month or two and I always suffered but it was never all that bad. I would be bedridden for 2 weeks, and then by one month I'd be pretty much feeling great, just slightly anxious for another month or so. The main issue apart from severe depression and cravings was appetite suppression, I'd lose a lot of weight and puke when I tried to eat food. Oh and insomnia of course, but melatonin always cured that (but I'd get sleep paralysis and night terrors). I got an advanced engineering degree and I was stoned for exams and all. I was beginning my career as an engineer. I was also an exercise maniac. I would run 10km like it was a walk for me, I was in the gym 10 hours a week, I had a daily yoga practice, I went from 200km bicycle adventures... working out was everything to me. Weed was an unhealthy addiction and it definitely fucked with my mental health a bit, but it was better than being an alcoholic or cigarette smoker.

Then one day, I had a really bad injury in the gym, doing squats. I suffered a facet joint dislocation, and now for two years I have been in excruciating pain in the middle of my spine. It has ruined my life in so many ways, and that was when I really started to get out of control with the weed. It became a 24/7 obsession because I was so miserable about the chronic pain... like I literally couldn't even cook myself meals or get out of bed. I couldn't even walk down to the lake and go fishing. All my hard work in the gym was reversed as I watched my body wither away. I had such a sedentary lifestyle and I used to be a gym rat, it was miserable. So burning through weed and hash oil was a 24/7 activity that allowed me to be reasonably happy, although it had no effect whatsoever on my pain levels and I was really just using it out of misery and despair from the constant never-ending pain.

One day, a severe panic disorder was triggered. I had lost my job, I was going nowhere in life and I was getting fucked around by the back pain it was just unbearable. There was too much stress. I had a psychotic break, I completely lost my mind. Smoking the tiniest puff of weed would give me a full blown panic attack and I was forced to quit. Obviously I was under way too much stress, but smoking weed always gave me anxiety as a side effect of being high, and I was getting really high so I think it contributed to triggering my mental illness. I experienced a severe withdrawal which lasted around 3 months, but the panic attacks never went away. The withdrawal was definitely compounded by the sudden onset panic disorder though, which made the withdrawal irrelevant basically even though it was still torture. But experience 10 seconds of one of my panic attacks and you'll seriously wish you were dead.

I miss smoking weed, but I'll never be able to use it again. Those were the good old days, before I hurt my back. I'm hooked on benzos now, because otherwise I feel like I am having a heart attack 24/7 and I just can't function at all. Plus I have a new career path and I'm getting my shit together, apart from being addicted to various substances. I'm an oxycodone user now too, and to be honest I prefer low doses of opioids more than I ever liked weed. Plus it's actually effective at relieving my extreme spinal pain. I'm already getting cravings on days when I don't use, but I require 5mg of oxycodone IR each day in order to get some relief and at least be able to ride my bike a little. Not like I can hit up the gym like a maniac anymore. I don't go to the gym at all, it sucks donkey dick. The pain is really severe, I'm waiting to go see a specialist and see the chronic pain clinic. I have been waiting far, far too long to get into the specialists. Annoying medical system, I've been in hell for two years. I'm too young for this shit... my back is worse than most old men.

What the fuck happened to me... I used to be a regular pothead like you guys. But I took 4 months off the gym because I was living in the great outdoors. I was still running 10k's, biking, and doing yoga and getting all sorts of exercise. I joined a gym once more, and on my first workout I did my regular old squat routine which is pretty intense. I thought since I had been constantly working out I would be fine to jump back into my gym routine. Didn't think twice about it. I hurt myself and I've never been the same, for a while my knees were completely fucked as well and I could barely walk... my life has been going straight to hell ever since that day.

 

[bit_pattern]

i did nothing but you're welcome

Haha, yeah I thought you'd deleted some posts but then a day or two later I found the posts in another thread - I'm such a tool