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How long do the vivid nightmares last when you go off marijuana?

MyDoorsAreOpen

MyDoorsAreOpen

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Aug 20, 2003
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As of 6h from now, it will have been 2wks since I had any marijuana. Before that I was a once or twice daily toker for years. Never thought I'd have to take a long break from it (long story, work related), but am glad I am, because I really did need to clear my head and get reacquainted with my sober self. It's gone surprisingly well after the first week, with one glaring exception -- I have multiple vivid, rather psychologically horrifying nightmares multiple times nightly. Not a single night these past two weeks have I not had to get up and read or do something for a little while in order to forget the frightening images and events that I thought I was just part of. It's not like they have a common theme, even, or any connection I can see to recent stressors or preoccupations in my waking life (which are actually fairly few at the moment). I normally don't remember much of my dreams, but I can recall the plot of at least 3-4 nightmares I've had over the past 2wks right now, and still get goosebumps when I think about them. Others have been more of the frustrated and anguished type, and I've woken up on the verge of real tears. I'm not noticing the problem gradually subsiding either. It's about as bad as it was on day 1, if not worse.

The biggest problem of all this is that my sleep pattern is becoming disrupted, because I'm getting scared to fall asleep. It can take me a good 1~1.5h to nod off, and the past two nights I've spent 2h up at odd hours when I woke up scared, such that I've been tired at odd times during the day.

I should mention that I'm on day 3 of a ketogenic diet to try to shed most of my body's fat and all the cannabis metabolites that were stored in it, for drug teating purposes. I weighed 146# 4d ago. I weigh 139 now. I've had no sedating drugs since the shot of lorazepam I was given involuntarily 2wks ago. I don't really drink alcohol anymore, and can't while I'm in ketosis anyway. I'm on day 5 without any caffeine for the first time in as long as I can remember (don't miss it), and have been on no meds or drugs of any sort for 2wks.

I'll only consider taking something if it won't fuck up my diet and is pretty sure to make the nightmares stop. But what?? 5-htp and diphenhydramine only make dreams more vivid, not less. They're good for falling asleep and stating asleep, but do nothing for the content of it. I can't imagine melatonin would work much better, since this involves the same pathway as taking 5-htp for sleep.

Any ideas?
 
Very common PAWS symptom and this and other symptoms could continue for a bit. I would say the symptoms will disappear in one to three months, but they can also last up to a year. You can engage in activities that help promote this healing, can reduce the symptoms, and the time frame of the healing. If you do not already engage in thirty minutes of aerobic exercise four or fives times a week then this is something that can have amazing results.

Exercise and Brain Neurotransmission
Neurobiology of Exercise
exercise and sleep

Exercise 4 Health, Mental Health, and Addiction vs. I worked all that out

I also agree that melatonin has a good chance of making things worse.

Hope this helps and you heal fast. :)
 
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MDAO, are you absolutely sure that there is nothing deeper that you are indeed worried about? I find that when the stress of work, relationships, daily life etc. are low, that is when the deeper stuff tends to surface in ways I can't ignore--often through disturbing dreams. Writing the dreams down is a process that I have found illuminating. When you try to record a dream in writing it is almost impossible to do it in a way that is truly representational of a dream because so much happens that makes no sense. Because of this it can be very helpful to try to write it anyway; what you do record is significant and it often makes you reflect on the content in ways you could not initially due to the state of fear the dream induced.
 
Vivid dreams or nightmares are an extremely common feature of cannabis withdrawal. I am lucky enough to have just have highly emotional dreams rather than nightmares but in my experience things level out and find some kind of normalcy within a month or so. If you already have 2 weeks off it hopefully it won't be to much longer for you. I still had frequent dreams after the first month but they weren't hyper-real like they were in the beginning.

Good luck
 
Are you having stress or any anxiety? Those can cause nightmares.

I never smoked cannabis daily for years; but friends of mine who have and then quit said how they got night sweats, heart palpitations/increased pulse rate, and nightmares when they stopped.

I'll have to ask if they had nightmares, when they quit, and how long that lasted for.

Good luck.
 
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If nothing else works, Clonidine is a good sleep-aid that kills dreams. Pretty readily prescribed, I believe. Watch out though, it's a fast acting antihypertensive, so fucking with it won't turn out kind results.
 
RichardMooner said:
If nothing else works, Clonidine is a good sleep-aid that kills dreams. Pretty readily prescribed, I believe. Watch out though, it's a fast acting antihypertensive, so fucking with it won't turn out kind results.
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Wow. Clonidine is a drug that never ceases to amaze me with its versatility, along the same lines as diphenhydramine (and cannabis, ironically). I know that people in alcohol or opiate withdrawal swear it's a godsend, and I believe it has some established merit as a non-stimulant treatment for ADHD and generalized anxiety disorder. I bet by the time I'm done with my medical career, we'll have discovered and approved at least two more novel uses for clonidine that are unknown now. I guess this just goes to show how widespread and varied in function alpha-2 receptor are in the body.
 
MyDoorsAreOpen said:
Wow. Clonidine is a drug that never ceases to amaze me with its versatility, along the same lines as diphenhydramine (and cannabis, ironically). I know that people in alcohol or opiate withdrawal swear it's a godsend, and I believe it has some established merit as a non-stimulant treatment for ADHD and generalized anxiety disorder. I bet by the time I'm done with my medical career, we'll have discovered and approved at least two more novel uses for clonidine that are unknown now. I guess this just goes to show how widespread and varied in function alpha-2 receptor are in the body.
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I can confirm that it works for ADHD, although, not as well as stimulants. It's truly great, other than tolerance building fairly quickly, but that can be circumvented by small breaks.
 
i stopped smoking green and started taking clonidine (unrelated) about two weeks ago, and have been having disturbing, vivid dreams. leading me to this thread. there are online sources describing vivid nightmares as a side effect of clonidine, and there are papers suggesting it can be effective treatment for nightmares. i remember vivid dreams as a withdrawal symptom from past attempts to quit. i just don't remember them being so disturbing. i really wanted to use this as an excuse to discontinue the medication, but guess it's probably the pot.
 
Happens to me too everytime I take a break, hateeeee it lol cuz I never remember my dreams...When I do it's during a break & they're the most vivid terrible nightmares I've ever had. Smoke a lot more than u seem to tho & I would expect them to stop for me around the 1-2 month range. Probably closer to 1 just said 2 to b safe id say you'll be good pretty soon
 
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