• N&PD Moderators: Skorpio

"Hard" drug use affecting cannabis high.

I think its largely psychological.. When I first started smoking I was a lot more mentally sound than I am these days after years of polydrug abuse.

I treat weed as a psychedelic, in the respect that if I go into it with a bad / chaotic mindset then I'm going to have a bad time. I find the worst bit is the initial transition (i.e. the first 5 mins after hitting a bowl).. during that period I like to stretch and try and clear my mind, then absorb myself in an activity, whether its browsing the internet or making music.

From my perspective, the anxiety associated with weed is a sign of a cluttered / disorganised mind.. and the more hedonistic the drug of choice, the more cluttered the mind is.
 
From my perspective, the anxiety associated with weed is a sign of a cluttered / disorganised mind.. and the more hedonistic the drug of choice, the more cluttered the mind is.

this makes sense, if you are stressed taking acid would be a foolish choice to make, same with pot:)

my head is a lot better now i am older though and i think where pot affects people is it can open up the other side of your personality.

all drugs affect your personality and pot for me makes me more emotional and empathetic, except i no longer am used to behaving with empathy so when i smoke weed i go over all my recent behaviours with a new (often overwhelming) perspective. i "feel" what others might have felt and it can freak me, but then i realise that i must be doing fine as everything is going fine. the reality is pot can open your eye's just like 5HT psychedelics and we dont always like what we see
 
As a person is getting addicted to opiates, benzos, alcohol, etc. he may forget about smoking weed and eventually realizes he hasn't smoked in a few months, or years, and when he does go to smoke it ends up being a very unpleasant experience because of all the changes his body's chemistry has undergone, as well as his psychological condition at the time.

Luckily the body has an amazing capacity to heal itself, and after quitting the addiction, and smoking weed for a few months, everything should be normal again. Notice I said a few months; even if a ex junkie is clean the brain is still fucked up and smoking will probably be unpleasant, but if you give it time, and keep smoking, the brain will heal and you will be able to enjoy marijuana again. I'm not really sure if it's the body healing itself, or if its the cannabinoids acting to heal the brain, but I think the latter is reasonable.

Keep in mind that what I am talking about here would require an understanding and appreciation for cannabis; it's not like going on methadone "therapy."
 
^ Nah, it goes the other way for me. 'cid + maryjane = one hell of a trip

Same here. Gave me my first panic attack ... afterward I'd panic any time I smoked weed, for several months. Even now the gnawing dread is ever-present. Psychedelics not respected, mixed willy-nilly with other drugs, often bite their users in the ass.
 
Weed pretty much been the same after the first year of smoking it, although when I smoke a few days after a good night of rolling. The high Is more intense then when I usually smoke up.
 
Using MDMA changed the high of weed and alcohol dramatically; it ruined them for me. It did not affect benzodiazepines or amphetamines. Im sure it has to do with the way MDMA re-organizes serotonin structure.
 
I'm posting this here as the incident is well documented in drug specific fourms and I'm hoping for an attempt at a chemical or physiological explanation for the event.


A god deal of hard drug users report a change in the effects of smoking cannabis that seems to coincide with the use of another drug.

Specifically -

Opiate users seem to be the most common to experience this. Many say (a close friend of mine being the first I had heard speak on the topic, but many on bluelight seem to agree) that after being addicted to opiates pot is too intense a high and is unpleasant at best. My friend was a huge pot head before becoming addicated to oxycotin, after she could not take 2 hits without freaking out.


Many benzo users say they can only smoke when fucked up on a good deal of benzos.

But the posts that got me were from the E fourm, many users said that after rolling several times weed brought dark thoughts. I've kind of noticed a similar event myself and was wondering who has felt this, who has NOT felt this (after years of concurrent use) and why it may be true.

Im not an expert, but recently the same thing has happened to me. Before I was delt vyvance by my doctor, Marijuana used to be an amazing past time for me.
Granted, i had been on methylphenidate since i was 11, but pot was very enjoyable.

When i begin abusing my vyvance, I still smoked a shit load of pot;however, instead of being overrun by the urge to giggle it just made me dark and introspective. THe vyvance crashing def made smoking pot less enjoyable, but i dont believe it is responsible for my growing distaste of thc.

In my opinion, the drugs didnt change pot or the objective effects it has on the human psyche, I assume that the drugs, along with growing up, have changed me. The effects of pot are highly subjective and are determined by the users state of mind. It makes those retrospections and conclusions that normally dwell in subconcious silence arise loudly into the relms of percievable thought.

Before I was perscribed amphetamines and tampered with many drugs that one shouldnt, my brain chemistry was intact (unaltered by foreign chemicals) and I was content with the natural reality I was born into. When i smoked weed, the subconcious thoughts that arose were happy, interesting, naive. Even the anxiety my smoking produced was relatively benign (i.e. O, no, that man on the street might know that im high. Dear God, let it not be)

Perhaps my amphetamine abuse has changed my brainchemisty, making me more prone to anxiety, or maybe-just maybe-Now, having matured, my subconious is no longer as naive as it was when i first starting smoking back in highschool. No longer ignorant of death, heartbreak, pain, rejection, and addiction, my subconcious is pessimistic-a fact that is obvious based on the anxiety I must bare post smoking pot.

I still love to get high, so im going to deal with my anxiety instead of giving up the herb.

Sincerely high,
forensic bob
 
What about the potential confounding variable of duration of regular use of cannabis?

ebola

Or the duration of opiate/stimulant use. Or if there was any poly drug use. A bunch of variables may be at play... :)



Anyway, it happened to me as well. I loved pot and used quite a bit of it. At most, I used multiple times daily for roughly a year and a half. After going through heavy opiate use, and to a lesser degree cocaine use, I can't touch cannabis. I've used a bunch of times even while using coke and/or opiates, but the effects of cannabis just kept getting worse. Panic attacks, severe depression, horrible introspection, and being extremely critical of everything(especially other people) while high causes me to stay far away. Oh, and I can't enjoy alcohol anymore either and my tolerance has become extremely low to both. :|

Oh, and I don't think it's simply psychological or some sort of conditioned response. Since I first noticed those effects I've tried several times, in different environments and during different mental states, and it always yielded the same type of negative reaction.
 
it's chilly out here said:
Or the duration of opiate/stimulant use. Or if there was any poly drug use. A bunch of variables may be at play...

Well, yes, you're referring to most examples of the main independent variable about which we were talking, albeit with greater nuance. What is 'main effect' and what is 'confound' are relative, of course. . .

I was just wondering, what if it's more that a lengthy career with 'heavy' (let's say almost daily) cannabis use skews the high, and entry into regular 'hard' drug use often happens to accompany such, but solely spuriously?

If we were to launch a study, we should have available demographics to speak to this question.

I, for one, find that regular cannabis use REDUCES its anxiogenesis (via reduced psychedelia), but over-use also makes me too introverted/social-phobic in the medium-term. My use of 'hard' drugs has remained mostly consistent over 5 years (*knock on wood*). Also, if relatively non-tolerant to cannabis, it can overshadow/obscure opioid intoxication (with concurrent use) quite easily. But I don't see other drugs having affected my experiences on cannabis.

ebola
 
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Hmmm, let me see if I'm following...

You're saying the amount, and frequency, of cannabis use needs to first be isolated and taken into account? I agree. But does that change the fact that the change in cannabis' effects happens only after the use of those other drugs occurs? Of course we don't really know if the change in effects would have happened to these individuals regardless if those other drugs were used. But they did, and only after those drugs were used, so isn't it a fair assumption that those drugs caused some sort of change? Or at least triggered it...


I'm out of my element here, which is why I hardly venture into this forum. :|
 
A few days ago I had some really good indian charas. I must say, most weed and low quality hash kinda gives me an anxious feeling, but real quality hash is a whole different story... So smooth and meditative, peaceful feeling.

I recommend all of you who get anxiety from cannabis to try some quality hash.
 
Hmmm, let me see if I'm following...

You're saying the amount, and frequency, of cannabis use needs to first be isolated and taken into account? I agree. But does that change the fact that the change in cannabis' effects happens only after the use of those other drugs occurs? Of course we don't really know if the change in effects would have happened to these individuals regardless if those other drugs were used. But they did, and only after those drugs were used, so isn't it a fair assumption that those drugs caused some sort of change? Or at least triggered it...


I'm out of my element here, which is why I hardly venture into this forum. :|

If anything, it's not that you're out of your element, but rather that I was high enough that I didn't even get the quoting syntax right. ;)

I think that your logic stands, but I believe there exists a large number for whom early frequent cannabis use and forays into 'hard' drugs occured simultaneously, so you can't really tell what causes what.

To add another layer of skepticism, even if we can determine the time-course of 'hard' drug use on a fine enough grain to indicate it as a key causal factor in the cannabis high changing, it could be some interaction between frequency of cannabis use and 'hard' drug use that transforms the high.

ebola
 
Psyches are not hard drugs, but I heard many cases where people tried psychedelic, and then after experience ended, and they smoked cannabis, they somehow started tripping.

I would agree that psychedelics aren't hard drugs.

I used to smoke several times a day, but cut back to once a day last June, and have only smoked ~3 times, maybe 5 or 6, since January. A couple of those times I was on acid, and back in the day when I'd trip I would always smoke cannabis as well. Nowadays, when I smoke I start to get slight visuals reminiscent of my LSD and shroom experiences, and I seem to get into a similar mindset as well.
 
Man, just reading some of the things in this thread are giving me slight hints of anxiety.

There was a time a few years ago where I smoked weed every day. It was enjoyable. A nice, pleasurable, recreational high. Before and during that time, I stayed away from most drugs except for the psychedelics and alcohol. Very occasional stimulant and opioid use.

After a while, I stopped smoking weed pretty much altogether. I started doing things like fentanyl and xanax as well as more drinking. That ended badly, and now I don't do hardly anything except for alcohol.

I've smoked weed a few times recently and I have always had a bad reaction. It's no longer fun at all. I start shaking a lot and get severe anxiety and paranoia. From my past experience, I know it's not primarily a psychological thing, set & setting and all that. I've taken some trippy drugs recently as well and had a great time.

Pot seems like it's just ruined for me now. Not sure what did it, but I probably should not smoke it any more at all.
 
Same here

I have the exact same problem... I wont get into my whole life story, but heres an addiction time line (past 8yrs):

Weed (good-ole days)
psychedelics
alcohol
cocaine
pills (opiates)
Heroin
Suboxone

Now i cant smoke without becoming totally self conscious and paranoid.

I miss the good-ole days... i was so much happier.
 
I know several people who have this problem, mostly opiate users. Also seen panic attacks from smoking while on meth. Of course that is alot easier to understand. The opiate thing has always seemed strange, as opiates are calming, at least for me. And a little weed even helps when I'm paranoid on meth. Guess I'm just lucky, because I can't imagine not smoking weed, even if I had to take a xanax everytime I smoked. LOL, that doesn't sound bad actually.
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Cannot handle pot anymore unless I'm drunk. Then I take a couple puffs and it adds a bit to my buzz.

I remember when I'd smoke just for the sake of being high. Hell, I'd even pay money for the privilege. Nowaways, I wouldn't even take money for it.
 
""Hard" drug use affecting cannabis high."

Oh yes.
My belief is drugs go into one of two master categories:
1) Hallucinogens (LSD, marijuana, psilocybin, etc.)
2) Dopers (everything else that's recreational).
3) There is really no need for dopers. It's hypocritical for me to say this as I am on 3 or so right now. But I'd say stay far far away from them and appreciate a good acid trip as less as possible.
 
I know what you mean (referring to the thread title). For me it's definitely opiate TOLERANCE that has ruined bud for me, but I found that I can bring it down by using DXM to make the weed high feel like it used to =D
 
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