Looking for some advice

[undertow13]

I'm not really sure if I should be posting this here or in the Cannabis section, so sorry if I posted in the wrong place.

A little bit of background info about my situation: I used to be a regular user of psychedelics (mostly LSD, mushrooms, DMT, among others.) and a regular user of weed. Sometime back in 2007 I had a really bad trip while on a combination of psychedelics that started with anxiety and mild paranoia and spiraled into a 'psychotic' episode with voices telling me to kill myself and that they were going to kill me if I didn't do it myself, etc. There's a lot more to it than that; but the point is that it was a really intense, traumatic trip that left me in a semi-psychotic state for a quite a long time. It took about 2 years for me to process everything and realize it was just a bad trip.

The flashbacks faded with time and for the most part I've completely recovered. I've taken LSD and other psychedelics since then and had wonderful trips. But for some reason I just can't smoke weed. Every time I smoke it, regardless of set, setting, or dose, I go into a full blown panic attack and get a vivid flashback of that bad trip. I'm just wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience with weed triggering flashbacks and/or panic attacks after a bad trip and if it ever went away. I've decided I'm just not going to smoke anymore but it kind of upsets me since weed used to always relax me and help me sleep etc. and now it does the exact opposite. And I find it really strange that I can take a drug as strong as LSD and be okay, but one toke of herb makes me freak out.

 

[GolemGolem]

I've had my share of weed and bad trips in my youth, and for me it is not related. I still like to trip, but one hit of weed will make me spend two hours going over every reason I should hate myself with exacting precision, mixed with irrational cop fear. I can still handle and love acid, shrooms, trypts, 2c-x, dox, nbome, mxe, ect. Sucks, but I just pass the pipe now if it ever comes to me. Used to love the stuff. I hear shitty Mexican and old hippy weed is good for folks like me, if that comes at a time when I'm in a very relaxed and good mood I might lightly indulge. I also might indulge when I need a good self ass-kicking, other than that I broke weed for myself too.

 

[kidklmx]

A friend of mine had an extreme, maybe +4 experience and now every time he smokes he sees a colored light somewhere round his eye. I myself have some static, always have, but every time I smoke I begin to see the static twirling around and moving around 3 dimensionally, even though the static appears as 2D. It's quite like fractals. So yeah, I feel like that weed can trigger flashbacks. But, weed is known to cause panic attacks, especially if you smoke for a longer time*. Maybe it has to do something with that?

*Though, in the beginning it was so anxiogenic. I don't mean a panic attack, but sudden movements would scare me to death. In a funny way though.

 

[T. Calderone]

This sometimes happened to me after a trip, and then weed over the next couple days. I would start to feel paranoid and then get over it.
But suddenly "stuck on stupid" I wasn't high on anything except weed and I felt like an idiot. Like memory loss.

 

[TheAzo]

This is not unheard of.

Traumatic experiences while on cannabinoids (brought on by the cannabinoids or by other drugs taken, typically psychedelics) seem to be capable of making weed become anxiogenic longterm.

There are abundant reports of this effect after overdoses on synthetic cannabinoids, as well as scattered other reports on BL of a bad trip changing weed into something darker. I am not aware of any procedures to make weed go back to how it was before they ruined it.

In my experience, Intense experiences (and non-intense unpleasant ones) on psychedelics do seem to make it easier for me to get anxiogenic effects from smoking too much weed - though never to the point of me not being able to enjoy smoking weed in moderation, and it seems to get less-bad over time.

If I were to venture a guess, i'd suggest that part of the problem is that since you stopped smoking, your tolerance is way the fuck down; so with modern weed, it's very easy to get very high with a single hit. At the same time, the level of "high" that you can get without it triggering anxiety is considerably lower. The two factors combine to make using weed in a rewarding manner pretty well impossible.

 

[GolemGolem]

I don't think it's a simple tolerance issue for me anywho, as years ago I liked getting as baked as possible on the best weed I could get my hands on, I thought of it as a very relaxing way to spend time with friends enjoying music and/or movies, a way to keep my cool at work when I had 20 orders of food to get out before the next 50 came in and half the line called in hung-over, and the sous-chef is throwing plates and screaming. It just isn't that drug for me anymore. Those cb1 or 2 receptor sites get tickled just a bit, and like clockwork a self-loathing personal inventory awaits, that is different and far less useful than the same thing on say, acid, and the self-loathing personal inventory comes like clockwork, not just something that happens sometimes, it happens every time, till I stopped.
But, I still love getting very, very high, higher than I did 10 years ago(albeit a lot less often). Just gotta pass on the weed. Still a great menu of things to try.

 

[Blake7]

With regard to the OP's experience, I suspect that the only thing that will help is to take a long break from the weed. I also started to get negative effects from it and it's taken a more or less solid 7 year break to be able to start to enjoy it again though some negatives still remain.

I don't have experience with weed and psychedelics except for having had a large hit of hash soon after doing some psilocybe mushrooms years ago. All that happened was that it made me feel as sick as a dog and ruined the whole experience, never again will I mix them together but bud/hash used to bring back the effects of the MDMA I'd done days earlier. Positive frame of mind, euphoria, music appreciation etc and what I now know was mild psychosis but in a really pleasurable way so I can see how it could go well after psychedelics. I also used to love doing loads of coke and doing huge quantities of strong bud which used to put me in an otherworldly disassociated state which I used to love but that's not really relevant here.

I'm not sure what the trigger was but pretty much overnight I found that bud especially but also hash to a lesser extent just started to bring on paranoia and anxiety and I had to knock them on the head followed soon after with the MDMA and amphetamines that I was doing at the the time as they all seemed to be producing their own negative effects. Actually I gave up all drugs for quite a few years after a pretty self destructive run.

Once every year or two I have a few puffs on a few spliffs when they're about just to see what happens which usually makes me feel a bit paranoid and unsettled and serves to remind me why I don't touch it any more. The last time, after a two year gap, I didn't feel any paranoia but did experience mild psychosis which gave me some auditory hallucinations which enhanced the experience in a positive way and wore off with the high. It was a positive experience though I did suffer some very mild anxiety for a couple of days after but not enough to bother me.

As much as I'd like to enjoy a good smoke occasionally, I had pretty much come to accept that it's not something I'd be able to do again but after the last try and after reading the positive experiences of others around PD, having recently discovered etizolam, I would be curious to see how etizolam deals with the residual anxiety of smoking when the opportunity next arises though this may not happen for some time.

If the results are positive I might try some mushrooms which I haven't touched for years and try a bit of bud after the trip and see if anything positive comes of it. I have no real expectations so won't feel disappointed if it's not a success but I would be curious to give it a try.

Do benzo/thienodiazipines have a counterproductive effect on psychedelics? Just wondered about taking psychedelics with ethylphenidate but it would mean taking etizolam to remove the anxiety that I get off it. I always found that amphetamines went well with mushrooms in a really positive way, I have no desire to do amps again but would be up for trying EPH with them in place of the amps.

If anyone has any opinions, good or bad then please feel free to share.

Sorry if I'm hijacking the thread.

 

[RobotRipping]

I've had my share of weed and bad trips in my youth, and for me it is not related. I still like to trip, but one hit of weed will make me spend two hours going over every reason I should hate myself with exacting precision, mixed with irrational cop fear.

lol that describes many of my bad experiences. I quit smoking for a few months to help my anxiety and recently started again. I take 1 or 2 hits and i'm okay. The effects don't seem the same anymore though, i don't really feel much and i am positive it is high quality. Like others, cannabis used to be great for me, it sucks that i can't just sit around all day getting high without a worry in the world.

i do think the strain plays a big role, those sativa doms are going to make your thoughts race.

 

[harmhunter]

After having a LSD trip go completely wrong, I've never had the same marijuana high afterwards. I will be able to fine trip on other psychedelics even tryptamines, but the marijuana high emulates symptoms of PTSD. Extreme anxiety, fear, delusions, and having full blown hallucinations of the LSD trip where I would relive the experience.

 

[harmhunter]

Don't feel like you have to enjoy a particular substance if you can't anymore. I wish I would know the cause of this, but like others have said, a strong psychedelic trip seems to increase the chances of marijuana's anxiogenic effects to occur. If this is every "curable", I'd love to know so I don't always have to be the one that declines my friend's toke invitations and then explain to them why. There's a lot of drugs out there..

 

[Rastahund]

This exact same thing happens to me too. I can't even smoke weed anymore, even though it used to be my favorite. For me, I don't think tripping had anything to do with it (even though I did have a rather harsh shroom trip during the time I was starting to not be able to smoke anymore)... it just seemed to happen gradually and the anxiety, unreasonable paranoia and shakiness would get worse each time I smoked until I finally decided that enough was enough. I can still smoke when I'm rolling for some reason but that's ALL. It seems like some of my other friends (all girls like me... coincidence maybe?) have this same problem that is also unprovoked. My theory is that maybe as your brain develops more with age, some people just can't handle weed anymore?

good luck and I hope you find your balance... it's been hard for me. =/