When I first read this post I thought it was some sort of adverse reaction, paranoia, or unrelated event that just happened to present with such synchronicity. Unfortunately, I now sit here with severe problems that I believe may have been due to my ingestion of JWH-018. Everyone here refers to smoking K2 or spice, but in my experience I smoked roughly 15g of pure JWH-018 over the course of, well, I smoked too much too quickly.
I had smoked the drugs without problems for quite a long time, with the only adverse reaction happening not to me, but to my roommate. He had become tachycardic and "paranoid" after JWH-018 and I took him to the ER. His heart rate subsided after an hour and he was released with the diagnosis of a panic attack. Assuming this was just a panic attack, I kept smoking.
Weeks later I began to feel a slight, wavelike pain in my left flank. This progressed to a severe and constant pain in my left flank over the course of another couple days. At this point the pain had begun to radiate down to my testicles, my right flank began to hurt, and I had begun experiencing paroxysmal anxiety and constant sweaty palms/feet. At this point I went to the urologist as I thought I might have a kidney stone. I didn't. CT came up completely clean as did my urinalysis. By this point I had my blood pressure measured at 180/120 in the supine position but it was attributed to anxiety. I was put on beta blockers and given lorazepam to help with the blood pressure and anxiety problems.
Once I took the beta blockers and lorazepam my problems began to subside. Over the course of the next few days my kidney pains went away but my sweaty palms persisted, and now I was only able to sleep for 30 minutes at a time without waking up with night sweats. My next symptom to develop was intolerance to cold and waking up freezing cold at night, which progressed to just being cold all of the time.
At this point I went to see my GP (I have had these symptoms for about 2 weeks at this point). Upon taking my supine blood pressure it was measured at 180/110. With this second reading we were fairly certain this was not entirely anxiety related, as I have never had anxiety attacks in the past. My tremors at this point became unbearable and my GP suspected I had a Pheochromocytoma (catecholamine secreting tumor of the adrenal gland). I was forced off the beta blockers to take a 24 hour urine test, and let me tell you, being off the beta blockers was unbearable.
Unfortunately my blood VMA came back low which means the chances of me having a pheochromocytoma are extremely low, in fact low VMA is more indicative of mercury poisoning (which is a differential diagnosis for a pheo). So now we are considering the possibility that the JWH was contaminated with some sort of heavy metal (perhaps as a catalyst or in equipment) or some type of toxin that can cause autonomic and peripheral neuropathy.
This could be entirely coincidental, but I have been healthy my entire life with none of the problems listed above until smoking the JWH for a few months. Heavy metals do take time to build up in your system, and after taking a mild chelating agent (ALA) I am experiencing the pain in my kidneys again. I will keep people posted on whether we find an actual problem or rule everything out and simply presume it is a somatoform disorder (which I am hesitant to believe, as I doubt my brain can wake me up consistently at night while at the same time causing dis-regulation of my temperature and hyperhidrosis)
If anyone else has experienced similar symptoms after smoking JWH please let me know. To sum it up my main symptoms have been: Flank pain progressing to waves of anxiety and paranoia progressing to constant sweaty palms and tremors. Now I am beginning to get neurological symptoms such as random nerve pain and myalgias, in addition to the illusion of seeing stationary objects as moving when i turn my head (frontal lobe problem?). The constellation of symptoms is fits extremely well with mercury poisoning (which happens to prevent the metabolism of catecholamines, leading to excess adrenaline/noradrenaline in the blood).
Any similar persisting experiences would be great, especially if anyone has experienced chronic high blood pressure and sweating since smoking JWH.
Thanks!
Also, as a former pharmacy student I can tell you right now that JWH-018 is extremely unlikely to cause the symptoms all of you are describing such as tachycardia, cluster headaches, etc (unless it is an acute anxiety attack). It seems more likely there was a contaminant (or adulterant) in the JWH that either caused neurological damage (unlikely in my case as I had been smoking for a month with no adverse effects) or perhaps an imbalance in neurotransmitters in the brain. For all we know the doctors may be right and it could be all in our heads, as pain from a somatoform disorder is just as real to those who experience the pain. It is merely a misinterpretation or "hallucination" of pain.
Sorry for the essay!