I feel your pain, man. It seems so many of us psychedelic heads end up craving escape. I've struggled with that for almost 20 years now. I finally managed to stop craving alcohol, which is a small miracle. But currently been bouncing from one thing to another. At the moment I'm coming off of kratom, doing a dose every other day but I was doing a lot more to try to get off of a mild benzo dependence I developed, so I still get interdose withdrawals. I did some yesterday and now I'm trying to wait until Wednesday. I bought a bunch of kava, but kava doesn't really do it for me, but it does at least help sometimes, a little. Weed also doesn't do it for me, in fact weed rarely makes things better when I'm feeling anxious. Going from a little something for escape to nothing is pretty challenging. I really wish weed did it for me. It actually kinda does, sometimes, when I am not withdrawing from something. But it's inconsistent. It's much more like psychedelics for me, I need to space out my usage or it turns on me. Weed used to do it for me, but somewhere along the line, it stopped. I get really high, and when my brain will accept that, it's great, a real experience. But it brings out latent anxieties very strongly, in fact I find LSD or most other psychedelics more relaxing than weed. Even delta-8 THC can make me anxious sometimes these days.
I can relate to a lot of that. You’re making a good determined bid with the Kratom by the sounds. It’s surely going to take a longer, more protracted and patient, gradual withdrawal as I know your Kratom doses were very high.
Weed indeed isn’t the kindest drug when it comes to anxiety. Although generally, our homemade edibles, simple infused coconut oil, barely trigger any anxiety in me vs a small few hits of vaporizer, and this is especially true when I use weed when tripping.
Although depending on the timing of the edible dose and how the comeup and peak converges with the acid, the edibles can really add some wings to the acid peak where vapor effects can be more acutely intense initially then fade back sooner.
But outside of tripping, and inside to an extent, the edibles never really trigger anxiety, while small doses of vaporized weed can launch me into a mentally tense state quite easily at times, any time on a trip and the following days.
Pity the kava can’t help more but at least you’ve been giving it a go. No harm done and nothing to lose as long as you don’t mix it with alcohol of course.
So just one point really- I’m wondering if you have tried combining a decent amount of weed with a decent amount of kava, I personally don’t think Kava would work for me without cannabis. I use the kava partly to modulate the cannabis experience, and I use the cannabis, especially vaporisation, to jazz up the kava.
Once nicely into a kava session, vaping weed is much more enjoyable, pleasurable and satisfying to me, without triggering any anxiety.
I like to modulate the effects of each by spontaneously flicking between more kava here, there, little vape here, there.
I struggle to be fully satisfied with kava’s effects without any vaporisation, and it doesn’t take much vapor, at select points, to add so much more to the experience of the kava, without near as much potential for the weed to trigger anxiety.
