heavy marijuana use

[socceroos1]

I have smoked weed for 3 years and i have now stopped because i can see it was changing me . But for 3 months there i was smoking everynight and i was having heavy dosage. I used to be the happiest person going around and i could have a conversation with anyone even if i had never met them before. It was easy for me. I now feel like my mind is blank all the time i am distant because i cant think of anything i struggle in social situations now. People will be talking to me and i will give back a 2 word answer because that is all i can think of. Everybody bags me out for being slow and dumb now i never used to be like this. I constantly think about suicide but i would never do it because i have had some experiences with it in the past. i feel like i need to use 100% of my brain to talk to people now and my head hurts all the time. I can just stare at nothing not thinking of anything for ages my mind used to be so active. I dont remember things well at all now and i even find it hard to talk to the ones closest to me. i keep reading about phycosis and Social anxiety i just hate what i have become and need help getting back to the old me

 

[Tommyboy]

Hmm, the psychosis and social anxiety that you hear about with marijuana use is usually when someone becomes that way while under the influence of it, and in some cases it continues after they have stopped. So if you weren't experiencing these symptoms while under the influence of the marijuana then I don't think that's it.

There are definitely some mental withdrawals from stopping marijuana so that's likely what is going on here. Do you feel this way all the time now? I know that I will feel the way you described some of the time, but not all. Like sometimes it's not even worth it for me to go out because I will feel a bit anxious and not be good at talking or relating to others. But other times I have more energy and want to talk so will strike up a conversation with anybody.

I'm going to move this over to the cannabis discussion section, but it might be moved over to the recovery support area if the mods in CD don't think it fits there.

Support --> CD

 

[RedRum OG]

if you have substantial amounts of time without smoking you should be better. i had some similar symptoms after 4 years of all day every day smoking. but i havent smoked in almost a year and i feel 80% better. give it time, exercise, eat healthy.

 

[omnipresenthuman]

I'm not surprised about the social anxiety part, that can happen to potheads post-pot from my and others' experience. All the same though, the great bulk of my own personal social anxiety post-pot, while I'm in 'withdrawal', if you want to call it that, is about how the pot is still in my system for around 2-3 months. Just something about that really pisses me off...I'm not smoking but it's still in me, in society's view based on testing people for drug history (especially with the hair tests out there), and it's not like I'm high because of that. Just thinking about that fact makes me anxious to deal with society in of itself.

That's getting off topic though...

As far as mental withdrawals, I really don't know, I think you're kind of going a little far there, thinking things are way, way worse than they are. In the last semester I went to college, I went complete cold turkey on smoking pot, which I had done for four years prior, everyday, and I proceeded to have the best semester I had ever had at college, even though I was taking some of the hardest classes I had ever taken in college at the same time, finishing up major prerequisite classes and such. So, I was definitely not mentally withdrawn from my own experience post pot. (EDIT: This semester which I did really well in that I just mentioned, though, came about a month after I had stopped smoking and had just been relaxing at home doing nothing for a few weeks...so I did have a period where I could just recoup and chill. That's actually a pretty important point to note - it does take some time to get in the full swing of things after CHRONIC use, but not all that long, really.)

If you want my opinion, you're just blowing things out of proportion. Stopping chronic use of smoking pot is easier for some than others, but all it is is just you not getting high anymore. Just use mind over matter if you have to. Because it's really your body that's undergoing 'withdrawal', and, at least from a medical point of view, withdrawing from smoking any amount of weed a day is relatively tame, no? At least when compared to tobacco, alcohol, heroin, opiates in general, amphetamines/meth, the list goes on and on. Going cold turkey on weed by itself shouldn't be able to zap your mental strength or ability to think and work...even though you can think that it will. Clearly that's what you think has happened, though, and I don't have a definitive response for that.

Anyway, I'm not expecting you to agree with me, but I have been there myself.