Marijuana and Anxiety

I've heard a lot about how marijuana can cause anxiety and panic attacks in long term users. For the longest time I shrugged it off as people just getting paranoid about getting caught. Recently I have experience some anxiety while smoking. While it surely wasn't a fun experience, it got me thinking, and I came up with this idea and wanted to see if anyone else has had similar experiences.

This past month or so I've been having issues with my girlfriend of 3 years. I'd been very stressed out and often felt very uneasy when thinking about how this all might end. So one night I was sitting around and smoked a little. Right away I felt VERY uneasy and anxious. The entire night was miserable and getting to sleep was very difficult. I was scared, I thought people were going to come in my house, I heard this train go by and it made me think I was going insane. overall, bad night.

About a week later I smoked again. I was experiencing the same stressors in life, maybe even more intensely. But this time instead of trying to flee the anxiety I confronted it. I spent a good 20 minutes trying to figure out WHY I was feeling like this. Eventually I was able to work things out in my head and came to peace with myself. It was as if the marijuana made my underlying anxiety more obvious and allowed me to aggressively work on it. after spending time in deep conversation with myself the rest of the experience was wonderful. actually, life in general was wonderful after I worked out some of those issues... Instead of spending evenings feeling sorry for myself, I was now able to confidently tell myself that everything will be ok and that feeling sorry for myself wasn't going to help anything.

So could it be possible that when people are younger they always enjoy marijuana because of the minimal amounts of stressors they have, but as they age and gain more stressors the marijuana experience becomes more uncomfortable because the underlying anxiety in their mind is brought to the surface and they don't know what to do about it (seeing as they thought the point of getting high was to escape).

I've found that marijuana can be one of the most useful tools for dealing with anxiety seeing as it forces me to work out issues that are buried deep within my mind simply to be comfortable. Similarly, I can see how a person who is trying to use marijuana to escape there stress and anxiety might be pulled deeper into anxiety simply because they are made so much more aware of their anxiety and don't choose to work on it while they have the oppurtunity.

I think if you have a negative experience with marijuana it shows that their is something you need to fix. Not only does it show you, but i think it also gives you the tools to fix it.

any thoughts?

Last edited by oldgeezers940; 05-26-2009 at 01:11 AM..

http://www.marijuana.com/medicinal-marijuana/122150-marijuana-anxiety.html