[ddoolin]

Only sort of related, but I'm almost completely unable to smoke anymore. I used to smoke heavily in my early 20s (33 now). Now if I take more than one hit of anything, I'm liable to have an anxiety/panic attack. I can hardly move and I get these awful chills. The way it's consumed hardly matters; even with edibles, I can only have 1-2mg. I've ceased entirely and I don't regret it at all.

I'm sure there are at least a couple of other causes (genetics, early life diet), but I think it did worsen some hormonal imbalance issues I've had too.

[username135]

Its been my observation that most moderate to heavy users have similar reactions eventually - myself included. I gave it up for years. Eventually, I found my way back and was determined to get through the anxiety/unpleasantness. What worked for me was starting back slow (2.5 mg of edibles) and working my way up from there.

Some times it was great, sometimes I could feel the anxiety/panic attack coming. In cases where the latter happened, I would really try to focus on why it was happening and what feelings I was having (mentally/physically). At a low dose, it was much easier to sort out the "who, what, when, where, why" of why the experience turned negative. I started recognizing the onset of the negative experience and learned to simply 'ride the wave' past it. And so I learned a big part of that was the expectation that it was going to be bad and everything that came with it. It became self fulfilling. As soon as I made those internal connections, it's been amazing. The only problems I have now are tolerance related :)

Any way, if you enjoyed it in the past, I'd encourage you to try it again at some point, but start with very small doses and work your way up.

[codr7]

From what I've seen, worrying about reactions and resisting the effect, for whatever reasons; which makes you see exactly what you expect and experience the effects stronger.

Like many here, I finally managed to fix that by leaning into it for a while, which wasn't always pleasant, but fixing internal issues is rarely pleasant. For me it was a lot about letting go of fear, which is always a good thing.

[andoando]

I also went back to it over the years because I wanted to "beat it" and I think there is truth to what you're saying. The biggest help I got that seemed to work was a reddit comment that said the best way to fight the anxiety was essentially to not be scared if it and egg the panic on.

Start feeling panicky? Come Your heart is racing? Ok Go head and beat faster fucker.

But anyway I don't think its worth it.

[bradleykingz]

my solution has been somewhat similar... i only smoke once a week.

in my experience, weed 'flips the world' so that 'stuff' is no longer 'shut out'.

if you've lots of issues you'd rather not deal with, you're probably in for a bad time... depends a lot of course - where are you, how you feeling, who you with, do you trust them, the weed itself,

to me the experience is like a waking dream, where a very raw version of you comes out...

but that only works if you take massive breaks (1+week?) in between. give time for the 'stuff' to build up again.

excellent for meditative activities, but incredibly difficult from a self control perspective

[gedy]

Same here. I think the link to panic attacks and psychosis triggers gets downplayed a bit.

[bradleykingz]

had a six month period where i was pretty much a zombie. i call it my time in hell...

i know another guy that got admitted to a mental institution... and seen plenty of people 'stuck in their own heads' - talking to themselves, blabbering about things nobody understands but them...

side effects of weed are downplayed a lot

[andoando]

Same. Stupid me kept smoking for a year despite that.

It's fairly common. Works great then one day, boom, pure anxiety hell. I went from being my happiest ever to taking years to just feel "ok" again

[ddoolin]

Whoa, you and the other commenter are the only ones I've ever met who even remotely relate to this though (I've never bothered searching it out on the net). That's actually kind of a relief. For me it also coincided with just higher anxiety in general so I'm not really sure which came first.