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Lithium & Marijuana

Dunno

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Anyone have any experience with Lithium & weed?

Does Lithium (or any other anti psychotic) take away the paranoia of smoking?
I know Xanax kills the paranoid but i don't have many to spare can i replace it with an anti psychotic?
 
no, they do not both work the same like that at all. xanax is a benzo primarily for anxiety, lithium is a different drug entirely.
 
more info? So lithium won't do anything for anxiety,paranoia,panic attacks?
 
Well, lithium is a mood stabilizer, not an antipsychotic. If you take it everyday for bipolar disorder for example, it will help control the mania-depression swings, but just taking it "as needed" as you can take benzos is useless. Xanax is a benzo (alprazolam), so anything else in that class will help kill anxiety especially if you don't have a tolerance/use benzos too often.

In terms of antipsychotics, there is a class of first generation, older "typical" antipsychotics and there is the newer class of atypical antipsychotics (those are the wikipedia links.) While the atypicals can certainly be used to stop a bad trip in it's tracks (I'm sure you've read about Seroquel and Risperidone and other common ones on here,) just like benzos are able to, Lithium is a totally different drug and won't work very well if you don't take it daily to overall stabilize mood.

Do you take lithium daily for bipolar disorder, OP? Or do you just have it along with xanax? And, FYI, so you read above, it is NOT an antipsychotic, at all. It's a mood stabilizer.
 
It's also got some really nasty effects in high doses, and long term health effects in small doses. If you're not on it already for a some kind of mood disorder or mental illness (or going to be) then don't fuck around with it. If weed makes you paranoid to the point that you need meds to balance it out, you need to just stop smoking.
 
^ Agreed powdakilla. You shouldn't need to be taking meds to cancel out the side effects you're getting from cannabis --- just don't smoke if you get anxious or paranoid every time. Trying to find a drug you can use with it to make it more tolerable is just setting yourself up for disaster --- benzos are physically addicting and can cause nasty withdrawal, lithium has nasty side effects as mentioned above, and I take lamotrigene which is also a mood stabilizer, but has a nasty withdrawal syndrome and some weird side effects on it's own. Maybe weed just isn't for you.
 
Honestly if you insist you can try taking some non addictive drugs. I would recommend Seroquel even though it could ruin you're fun. I mean if it really becomes a problem other then not smoking it could be you're only option.
 
ou shouldn't need to be taking meds to cancel out the side effects you're getting from cannabis --- just don't smoke if you get anxious or paranoid every time.

I agree completely, however if the weed smoking is a once in a fortnight type of thing for you then I can see it working. However, we all know that most people would end up smoking more frequently than that so it doesn't apply for most.

I have to be honest though. If I'm planning to get really stoned (and I don't get that stoned that often - maybe once a month?) then I will take just a low enough dose of a benzo to cancel out the anxiety. However the only reason I do this is because it's only done once in a blue moon. It could be a slippery slope to addiction for some, all because they wanted to get stoned.

Really the best way is to just smoke very small amounts and be patient. Redose only when you're absolutely sure you're comfortable and not getting overly anxious. That and, as I've said hundreds of times before probably, changing your strain. If you compared something like SmellyBerry to Oldtimes it's like comparing night and day. The latter is so so much more likely to cause anxiety that the first it's shocking. So the choice of strain, and whether the plant was harvested too quickly or not, can influence whether you feel anxious when smoking.

Honestly if you insist you can try taking some non addictive drugs. I would recommend Seroquel even though it could ruin you're fun. I mean if it really becomes a problem other then not smoking it could be you're only option.

Yes it could help with the agitation and possibly the paranoia but some but for most I doubt it would work that well, although it definitely would help the person get to sleep if that's what they want. I like the idea though mate. A better option might be some sedating antihistamine like hydroxyzine or promethazine (the latter is available without a prescription in the UK, even in syrup form which makes accurate dosing easier), although they would obviously be nowhere near as efficacious as a benzo would.

If you were to take the quetiapine (Seroquel), which is what I am prescribed myself actually, then you need to take a far lower dose than someone like me. I take 600mg, reduced from something like 900mg I believe but for someone just smoking weed, you'd only need a fraction of the dose I take. IIRC something like 25-50mg should do the trick for someone that doesn't use it regularly. I think for smoking weed, olanzapine (Zyprexa) would be a much better option if you're going down that route (which I wouldn't advocate myself actually).
 
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