To all that have had unsatisfactory results with the use of cannabis due to anxiety, paranoia, panic attacks, or any other stress related side effects, this post is directed towards you.
It is in my belief that although marijuana may act as a trigger for paranoia in some people, it's not the bullet, safety switch, clip, or even the gun for that matter.
(I will try to put this all in the analogy of a gun to help illustrate my belief on this whole upsetting subject.)
Being anxious and or paranoid, as well as having panic attacks will be as if you were to fire a gun at your face. Now, in order for that gun to actually go off and kill you, a few things must first be in place.
One, you will need a gun. In this analogy the gun will resemble one's own life and natural biochemistry.
Two, you will need a need a clip. The total capacity of the clip will resemble the amount of times a particularly traumatic life event will be able to cause a significantly stressful episode to occur.
Three, you will need a safety lock. The status of the safety lock will resemble the existence or nonexistence of a peak in the threshold of one's own tolerance for stress and or trauma throughout the course of his or her entire life.
Four, you will need bullets. Bullets will resemble the individual events in which memorable amounts of stress may have occurred, or even prospects of what may occur.
Five, you will need a trigger. The trigger can resemble anything that might resurface a stressful event (load a bullet) from the chamber of our past experiences, even if it is a chemical trigger due to the temporary lowering of the tolerance threshold for a seemingly mild or even forgotten past stress related event (marijuana for instance).
Okay, so now that we have set our parameters for this analogy, lets try to put them into place and see if the process does not concur with everyone's own situation.
On the day you were born, you were given a gun (life). We all have different types of guns. Some have clips that hold many bullets, some that don't, some have safety locks, some don't. But by a certain age there are two things we all have in common about our guns, bullets and a trigger. And once that clip fills up, the next bullet we put in (stress, paranoia, panic) sits nicely in the chamber, ready to fire. So all it takes is something to trigger that stress, and it will fire right at you. So many of us often use drugs to help unload the clip of stress we have built up. But the problem occurs when the clip begins to fill up with stress that is directly related to the use of a drug.
How can this relate to your experience?
I will give a few explanations for why your gun may have fired on you, but for anything I leave out you can respond directly with your specific case and I will try to see if I can fit it into my understanding of this problem.
One, you may have started smoking grass to relieve stress, (unload the clip a bit) and it may have worked for a while. But then a new bullet entered the clip, only this bullet of stress was directly related to your use of marijuana. Perhaps you were running out of money and you knew you shouldn't be spending it on smoke? Or, maybe you had a close call with the cops, and knew that if you were ever caught your life would be badly wounded. Or, you could have been spending to much time doing things that were ultimately unproductive while you were high, such as playing video games (unless that's how you make your living). Possibly you were beginning to fail in school, and it had once been important for you to do well, or at least it was important to your parents. It could also have been that your health was concerning you. Or, a loved one's disapproval. This list can go on and on, so to spare some time I will cut to the chase.
Our body's are all different and vary in sensitivity to our circumstances. But in no means are we flawed by being depressed, anxious, stressed, angry sad etc.. All of these feeling are simply our body's own natural response to the status of our well being. When we cut a finger or twist an ankle, the pain and discomfort is only our body doing it's job in warning us about what needs to be prioritized for our own well being. And the same goes for when we feel emotional or mental discomfort. If weed fires your gun, please don't blame the weed.
Marijuana is an amazing natural herb with huge potential for pleasure and benefit in anyone's life, but the most important thing is to listen to your body. So just because weed makes you paranoid is no reason to say you should never do it, because that would be depriving you of something great. All it means is that you need to asses what your body needs and attending to that before the weed. If you know you don't have the money for weed but you buy it anyway, chances are you will feel stressed when your high because your body is telling you that you made the wrong choice. Make the money and then enjoy. Eliminate the problem, and then reward your self with weed, or even be productive on weed. Your body will then begin to see productivity in cohesion with your use of herb and give you signs that it's a good thing in your life (pleasure).
In a nutshell: Don't load your clip with bullets related to weed. This creates a paradox and your body rejects the drug. Why didn't Marley have a problem? because weed helped him make the music that helped him live well. His body rewarded it.
-Joshua.
P.S. Sorry if this was bullshit long. I just don't like to see what I feel are misconceptions about herb confirm people in believing that they can't benefit from it.
Everything's so funny and sounds awesome. Indica, for me, has nothing on this.
