Snus and anxiety

[itchystiches]

I must admit I'm with storm on this one... whenever things have turned to shit in my life, and I just haven't felt like I could cope... marijuana has always been there and the deep insight gathered through its use has both helped to medicate the immediate symptoms (anxiety/nervousness... whatever) whilst simultaneously helping me to think through whatever has been going on in my life from an objective point of view... thus finding solutions which I may not have otherwise found, and trivializing the rightly trivial... even when it appears as a huge issue to the subject.

[Dead Rabbit]

weed makes me hide in my garage.

I was an everyday user for about a decade after I got out of the service. It made ice cream taste great, at times sparked some great insights on life and made music sound amazing.

It also made me lazy as all hell, more unsocial and a procrastinator. It lowered my testosterone and ravaged my lungs. It also made me so paranoid I didn’t even like having a conversation with my wife. Oh yeah, did I say it made me hide in my garage? It certainly made depression worse.


I feel 1,000 times better since quitting.

I only use it now for help when making a life decision. I’ll smoke a little the night before and ponder shit. I probably use it about twice a year.

[sagedil]

Wow, truly interesting thread. And it seems to be pulling us fellow travelers out as well :wink:

First, I have a few good friends who had to stop smoking weed because it made them MORE anxious. For those folks, they absolutely made the right choice. Like ALL drugs, we each sometimes have our own reactions. Fortunately, for most uf us, weed helps.

I made a decision at 25, to smoke every day. 17 years later, I still do. Twice this year, I have stopped for a few months. The last time was job related (so I could pass a piss test), the first was more just to take a time out and re-evaluate. I had been separated from my wife for 3 months, and going potless was VERY hard. I entered into the worst state of depression I had yet to hit. So bad, I reached out to a number if friends as I was worried I might hurt myself.

After about 2 months, I started to smoke again. That first night, it immediately hit me. This is what pot does for me... It allows me to let go. When I don't smoke, I remember pain, and re-live it over and over. When I don't smoke, my focus stays on what has already happened. When I smoke, I immediately forget about yesterday. Instead, I can finally focus on RIGHT now. This moment right in front of me. I am also able to focus forwards. I am actually far more industrui0ous when I smoke. Because I do smoke, I incessantly make lists in my mind. I know I have to work to keep track. When I smoke, I am happy, focused on the now, so I do what needs to be done now. When I don't smoke, I become listless, sad, backwards focused. Since I am always re-living old, I don't bother doing what should be done now.

So for me, pot, like snus, is a choice. Yes, I am self medicating in the broadest sense. I am seeking out herbs that make me work better.

But for those who have quit to get better. I remember from my friends the relief that choice made. There are other drugs that no longer work well for me, so I won't touch them any more. I'm hoping though to still be enjoying my spiff when I am 80.

[Premium Parrots]

Excellent post Sagedil!! I must say I absolutely agree with you because thats how I am on herb. And thats nightly [almost never during the day] for over 40 years now, only not useing when traveling overseas. [so I don't end up in a third world prison, lol]. Anyway, I get more done and do a better job. My job mostly consists of doing research and trying to get several types of endangered large parrots to reproduce. There are so very few people doing this and there is no book to learn from so we all have too figure out how to make em do the deed, so to speak, and actually produce live babies. So I have to sit and think alot and use my imagination. So in this respect herb has been a great asset. But I know several people that can't cope with it and shouldn't do it. But back to the point, yes I agree, you and I both have ALOT in common.
PP











patiently waits for the DEA to bust in the door.................

[sagedil]

[quote="Premium Parrots"]Excellent post Sagedil!! And thats daily for over 40 years now, only not using when traveling overseas. [so I don't end up in a third world prison, lol].PP

I have to admit, I did smuggle it across international borders a few years ago. But it was St. Barths. They have a kindly gentleman at the Immigration counter who just checks and makes sure you have a ticket to leave. St Barth's is so laid back, the x-ray scanners France sent them after 9/11 are still sitting in a corner in the airport in boxes.

After 9/11, I had to figure out how to fly with it. Before then, I just left it in a cigarette pack in my pocket, but post 9/11, they seem to check a lot more. I finally figured out to grind it up, put it in two small baggies, and bandage the baggies to the bottom of my feet. You can pat me down till the cows come home, and you won't find it cause I guess they assume I'm not walking on a gun.

I agree, we do share much in common. And I bet we are not alone hereI would suspect that if we did a poll of snusers, we would find a much higher percentage of smokers than in the general population. By definition, we are unafraid of trying something new to us, understand that we are feeding a drug habit, and seek out the most satisfying way to deal with it. Kind of like how I smoke :P

[Soft Morning, City!]

sagedil & Premium Parrots:

I'm also a daily pot smoker. I smoke every day, multiple times per day, and it keeps me happy and almost entirely free of anxiety.

Like you, pot also makes me more productive. I get my homework done faster when I'm stoned, especially if the assignment involves reading. For some reason, I seem to absorb information more readily when stoned.

Also, I rarely write when I'm sober. As long as I have pot, the songs come incredibly fast and often need very little work afterward. I've been writing and smoking for so long now that when I'm by myself and I get stoned, I always inevitably wind up picking up the guitar and writing a song or at least writing a poem or two.

If you want to get down to the heart of the matter, if I'm awake I'm probably high. Addiction? Maybe. I don't get withdrawals when I don't smoke, but I definitely miss it when it's not there. If it is addiction, so be it. I'd rather live a functional life as a drug addict than an emotionally distraught life without marijuana. As long as I'm alive, I'll use marijuana. I hope to be an old man someday, sitting on the front porch of some house with a prilla in my upper lip and a joint between my fingers.

It was a decision I made when I was 16 years old... that I would smoke whenever I possibly could. I've kept that promise to myself and I've never looked back.

I will now proceed to smoke a bowl and do my English homework. Cheers!

[Premium Parrots]

Ah Ha............I may smoke but it doesn't affect me.......anymore. Meaning that I don't get high anymore, even with the best bud [like BC bud]. It does relax me somewhat and it clears my head so I can concentrate on my research but no buzz for me. I also use it to help with several medical conditions. I have meds for that but they do more harm to my body than the herb. That being said, I would never recommend useing it to anyone that hasn't. Its use is still outlawed. But I believe that small quanities for personal use is not a serious crime. Happily. I never got into any other drugs and because of a medical condition I don't drink alcohol. So, my crutches now are only snus and herb. Oh.........and sex. Thers just some things I can't do without. lol

[sagedil]

I've been separated for 14 months, please don't go there ;->

Yeah, I have a mighty good tolerance built up. I still feel it, but the world doesn't fall away any more. Plus, I am so used to it, I'm as normal when i smoke as when i don't. Even people that know me well can never tell if i had smoked or not.

But it does relax me, clear my head, and allow me to focus on what does matter. I have ADHD. That is the big reason why I need the nicotine. Pot, caffeine, and nicotine. My three magic little fixers.

[Soft Morning, City!]

Yeah, I have a mighty good tolerance built up. I still feel it, but the world doesn't fall away any more. Plus, I am so used to it, I'm as normal when i smoke as when i don't. Even people that know me well can never tell if i had smoked or not.

But it does relax me, clear my head, and allow me to focus on what does matter.

I have the same experience. I just get relaxed and clear headed. Basically, when I'm sober my brain tends to race. Tons and tons of ideas flow through my head and I can't quite concentrate on just one of them. But when I smoke some pot, I suddenly find myself able to narrow down my myriad thoughts to one important thought and focus only upon that thought. It makes the creative process much less frustrating.

My friends can never really tell when I'm stoned either. Most of them just assume that I am, even if I'm not showing any visible signs of intoxication. Most of the time, they assume correctly. I'm very discreet. I've met all of my friends' (and girlfriends') parents whilst intoxicated and none of them have ever noticed.

[sagedil]

I have the same experience. I just get relaxed and clear headed. Basically, when I'm sober my brain tends to race. Tons and tons of ideas flow through my head and I can't quite concentrate on just one of them. But when I smoke some pot, I suddenly find myself able to narrow down my myriad thoughts to one important thought and focus only upon that thought. It makes the creative process much less frustrating.

Wow, you have just articulated the reasons I decided to smoke every ay when i was 25. Exactly!!!! When i was much younger, I was so overwhelmed with ideas, thoughts, that I would get overwhelmed and just shut down. Or, I would bounce from one thing to another, never following though. As i smoked a bunch more between ages 22 -25, it slowly dawned on me that pot seemed to quiet that rush down, and allowed me to focus. It's funny, it has been so long since I have thought about what it was like before I started using regularly. Honestly, until I was 25, I failed at most things I tried. Now, almost 18 years later, it amazes me what I have succeeded in, and I give pot much of the credit.

[Zero]

^ I third that. I try not to have any weed around nowadays as I tend to smoke like a chronic until it's gone - just can't help it. Still, without it my brain is always in overdrive to the point where I have to almost give up trying to sort out everything that's going on in my head. I think so much that it almost jams up the mental pipeline and I end up in gridlock. At least when I smoke I can focus on something, to the exclusion of everything else, and get things done in peace. It does, sadly, kill the "manager" in my brain, though, and while I usually end up getting things done, they're not always the things I need to get done....maybe I just need to be less apprehensive about smoking while at work :lol:

[Z480]

I can identify with the OP--nicotine (or any stimulant really) is great for anxiety.

Weed, on the other hand, tends to make me more paranoid. I know a lot of people who get a strong calming effect from it, but not me. It does work wonders for boredom, though...

Weed exacerbates any mental condition, especially depression. Anyone who is going to self-medicate for PTSD is really kidding themselves by operating like a junkie. I have personal experience of this.
Unless your going to work through the problem(s) fundamentally causing the issue through therapy its never going to go away and all the self-medication in the world is not going to stop it coming out and biting you in the ass when you least expect it.

PTSD is a form of brain damage that happens at the signal level instead of the physical level--you experience (and learn) a set of extremely high-weight inputs that quickly swamp a lifetime of fine-tuning. The effect is so strong that PTSD can actually be identified in a urine test.

While some people can "work through it" with cognitive therapy (where you spend time re-learning your old response patterns), others are knocked so far out of whack that they need more heavy-handed treatments, like drugs.

On the other hand, the brain actively *tries* to work properly, even when parts of it are broken, and given an extra feedback loop (in the form of self-medication), it will tend to use that to make itself MORE stable and capable of generating the "right answers" more often. This is why psychiatrists will sometimes prescribe drugs to be taken "as needed" instead of specifying the dosage.

[gentlemanly]

I personally don't smoke. I had some stuff that was laced (unknown to me until afterward) one of the last times I smoked and it was a bad experience all around...I decided that I was going to stick with whiskey after that. I have friends and family that are everyday users, and can I ask you everydayers....how much does the marahoonie take from your pockets each week/month. I have no idea, just curious. I got a friend that never seems to have money for anything, yet he smokes everyday...doesn't it get expensive?