Marijuana

Im just like this now, but I have a problem overeating big time. After smoking a J I just plow through my food and than the local convenience store and Im trying to lose weight so was thinking I should quit as have a few other reasons too, but its something that really helps with my body pain and light depression.

You can get some unbelievably strong pot nowadays. I've seen just over 30% THC by weight. That's absolutely insane. The buds were so dense you couldn't really squeeze them between your fingers. I guarantee you it was grown under CO2 and the like. I don't think it was over $15 a gram either WITH tax. Personally I smoke blends with CBD varieties that end up between 7-15% THC by weight.

Concentrates (hash oil) - also legal. Vaping concentrates can allow finer dosage control and by finer I mean smaller for medical purposes. If I'm going to smoke before 7pm because my mood went south, I want to take as little as possible. But if you think contemporary weed is strong, oh my god... people around here will do dabs, basically hits of hash oil vaporized off superheated glass, and by hits I mean a decent size little blob. I don't understand how people can do that, let alone every day. It's weaponized cannabis. I hadn't had quite such a singular experience with pot in a LONG time, let's put it that way.

I have medical prescription to treat insomnia and severe anxiety. I try to keep it at a strict schedule so that I don’t abuse it. I do it one hour before I go to bed and I always keep the THC level below 14 percent and I never use the sativa strain. It makes anxiety way worse.

I have read somewhere and I may have it bookmarked, not sure. That fear based people have a problem with paranoia if they use pot. I have several phobia's so that hits home for me.

Way back in the dark ages, buds like that were "Thai sticks". Sensimilla was also starting to show up. Hash oil was more like a sludge than a liquid and we put it on foil and used a lighter under it and a straw to get the smoke. One toke of that was plenty for me. It was hard to justify the concentrated stuff because the math was way off; you could smoke a few bowls of Colombian ($25 an oz) and get as high for less money.

Pot can definitely increase anxiety for anyone, whether they have anxiety normally or not. It's like any med we talk about, different for everyone, for some people it reduces anxiety a lot.

HOWEVER, if you have anxiety and want to see if marijuana will help...

Or if you have other ailments that are helped by marijuana but the anxiety is a problem...

If you can pick and choose in your area, I really do recommend looking into products with CBD, where the CBD content is equal to or greater than the THC (up to and including nearly no THC). The effects from a blend are much "friendlier" to people who are a bit jumpy/anxious with normal weed, and CBD itself reduces anxiety for some people, and treats some types of physical ailments differently than the THC that everybody paid attention to for the last 30 years.

Yeah, everything at the store these days that isn't outdoor-grown is sinsemilla basically. And the outdoor farmed stuff is actually pretty decent too, the worst of it is about what I would consider average summer quality that I would see in the mid-90s. I'm pretty surprised whenever I find a seed in something I buy at the store regardless of origin. But all the lower grade stuff gets processed into oil or solid concentrate, so it's not surprising.

Check out the listing I found today when looking online for some weed to help me through irritable hypomania I know is coming today and the next few days due to high stress and disruption.

Critical Mass - 11.15% THC / 17.57% CBD (Indica Dominant Hybrid Cannabis Flower / Indoor Grown in Soil By Green Dragon ) .... $14/g $45/eighth plus tax

Those numbers are almost unheard of for a CBD hybrid as the curing process is difficult. The growers must have put tons of care into cultivating and curing the plant. They are really stepping up their game around here especially at that price.

This link has a fairly technical summary of current research, for those interested. It's not limited to anxiety but that is what the article focuses on. (It's also proven effective against some types of epilepsy, is being investigated as an antipsychotic, etc.)

CBD Oil For Anxiety: Is Cannabidiol An Effective Treatment?

Edit: this is from Mental Health Daily and links to the actual research, it's not a crackpot site, no pun intended.

CBD in therapeutic doses for Multiple Sclerosis, (which I have) is pretty expensive. That is one reason I smoke.

Yes. For pain - I went from opiates to opioids and went through cold-turkey withdrawal but I still had chronic pain. My doctor suggested specific strains of cannabis that were best for pain - one for day use, one for evening - and I am in less pain than ever before. I don’t think that I feel a ‘high’ with either but my daytime strain has a kind of creative, stay-busy cognitive effect whilst my nighttime strain is calming.

I’ve also noticed that I am simply in a better mood. I socialize more readily. I don’t think that my improved mood has a thing to do with the cognitive effects but rather because I am god-damned pain-free for the first time in fifteen years.

Since this is - again - new to me (I dabbled in college, back when Coolidge was president), I don’t smoke a lot, even though I smoke throughout the day. I use bongs and I’ll take three hits upon waking (I awake because I hurt) and another three about 3 p.m. I load my evening strain about 7:30-8:00 p.m. and usually fall asleep around 11:30.

Marijuana has proved to be a miracle drug for me. I thought that it was only for cancer patients.

Just as an FYI: my daytime strain is a Champagne Kush strain while my evening strain is a Purple Kush. I know that there are strains that are said to relieve psychiatric and digestive problems but I’ve no direct knowledge of use for those issues. I do know that what I smoke specifically addresses chronic and neuropathic pain.

Now I’ll read what others have to say...

NY has a medical marijuana program - https://www.health.ny.gov/regulation...ijuana/faq.htm

Hmm. From what I was able to find the scientific/medical communities have had mixed results from major studies. Can you cite some study examples?

I know that it has helped my pain and that my ‘elevated mood’ is not a result of smoking cannabis but rather of being pain-free.

I know they are doing more research about the effects of mj and bipolar. That is another positive thing about legalization.

If they had medical where I am, I probably would just need to take my lumbar MRI in with me to get a scrip. I could have used some the last few days; my spinal stenosis had a nerve or few pinched. I finally moved right and freed them yesterday. But the big question is whether I would still smoke it today, I fear the answer is yes. I would probably justify it with the persistent pain from the herniated discs but the truth is I am pretty much habituated to that.

I've come to the very regrettable conclusion that cannabis is dangerous for me. I have used it for the last decade [since my mid 40s] for chronic pain (which is now much better since I don't sit at a desk all day anymore), for nausea (during and after chemotherapy) but mostly for energy and mood. I'd get a lift and feel alive and can think clearly in a way that seems impossible without it. I get a mental clarity when i have a buzz that I truly miss. It also on the short term reduces anxiety but I think on the long term increases it.

I say regrettable because there is no denying the fact that I have enjoyed smoking weed but all of my psychoses and manic episodes were when I was consuming cannabis. I tended to go for the high THC to get energy while CBD just added to my fatigue so I avoided those strains so that may have something to do with it. In any case CBD doesn't help me feel better so I'm only talking about THC effects not CBD.

I also lose insight when I'm psychotic and dont' believe I'm ill. Lately my episodes lean more to psychosis and less to outright symptoms of mania like pressured speech, lack of sleep etc. just manifest delusions, paranoid beliefs and ideas of reference.

And I don't need antipsychotics necessarily to come back to sanity I just stop the weed and the delusions slowly become less and less believable and recede into the background.

It's been about a week since I quit cannabis for good. It has to be for good. It is just not worth the destruction it has wrecked on my life including 5 hospitalizations and other problems...

The first few days were tough but it is nothing like quitting smoking cigarettes, which I did (finally) in 2015...

There's a very wide spectrum in bipolar disorders. I'm not saying what happens to me on marijuana is what will happen to other people with the disorder.

I have a number of medical conditions and have had bad side effects from medications and have few medications that work which I take only in small doses and only as needed because they all exacerbate ongoing medical problems. I really do think not enough attention is paid to the long term downside of psychiatric meds and one should really just stick with the lowest doses possible.

I had depression already in my teens but not a manic episode until I was put on a dose of an antidepressant for the first time in my life at the same time I was smoking weed. Since then I had other breakdowns without an antidepressant just with weed.

Again i'm not saying this is the normal situation for people with bipolar, just saying
be careful...

I think it depends on the person. It's going to affect everyone differently. There are also different types of weed - some types make you more energized and some types make you more chill.

If I'm feeling depressed and I smoke, I feel the need to clean up and more inspired to create something. Which is a good thing.

Also anything in excess amounts isn't good. You don't want to depend on something to be motivated or to get a good amount of sleep.

People all react differently to pot. Just like psych meds.

tecomsin, I could have written your post myself. My worst episodes have been triggered by pot use. My old psychiatrist had a term for it - marijuana psychosis. I guess it happens in about 5% of weed users. It goes beyond the stereotypical paranoia that some people get and is full-blown mental issues. Mine have also required hospitalization.

I’m with you in “regrettably” putting down the weed, because oh I love it so. Maybe someday they’ll come out with a psychosis-free strain, but that’s not going to happen.

Best of luck finding your high and pain-free zone somewhere else.

That's it. It does have pain relieving and stress relief. Which people need.

Thank you BioChE and also others on this thread. It's been about 3 weeks now since I stopped weed. I have been having a lot of anxiety and loss of appetite and am just dragging myself through the days with little or no motivation. I used to use it as a pick me up to get going with chores and have some enthusiasm for life. Of course I don't know how much is withdrawal from cannabis and how much is coming down from a mania. I actually prefer my delusional beliefs to my real world existence and inevitably fall into a depression whenever I come down from an episode.

Unfortunately after about a decade of trying with my psychiatrist I never found a combination of medications that helped with depression except cannabis, but it leads me to lose my ability to test reality.


I'm not in any way criticizing medical marijuana btw but I just can't escape the fact that all my manic episodes and delusions were when I was using it... And I had an unhealthy dependence on it.

Those pushing the idea that it is always safe for everyone all the time are shooting themselves in the foot. That makes any story of a bad result invalidate your whole argument. It's okay for meds to have bad results with some patients; prozac gives me irritable hypomania and AFAIK, it's still on the market.

When I get the chance to legally do so, I will see if it helps me. I tolerated it almost daily for several years roughly 40 years ago but haven't had any in almost 30 years. And thrown in to the mix with other meds, who knows?

I used to smoke everyday from age 17-24. Then I quit. It makes me super paranoid now. I don’t think it mixes well with my medications.

Here's an article that supports the idea that people who have had psychoses do better, statistically, if they stop using cannabis (I am referring to THC not CBD, which is an antipsychotic according to google...) compared to people who continue. By do better I mean they have fewer, less severe episodes than people who continue.

https://news.vice.com/article/this-i...e-in-psychosis

It really sucks to say this since i have loved smoking weed, for the energy, pain relief and sense of personal freedom from my depressed bipolar brain.

Tecomsin, you’re definitely in the stages of grief/mourning the loss of something that helped you. For me, it helps to try to remember the fact that for me there is more harm than good wrapped up in using it.

I️ love feeling high. I will never give up the fact that I’m a native-built Pot smoker. Whatever that means; I️ imagine you understand. However there’s also this little built-in devil called psychosis that lurks among the good feelings. When he strikes (and he always does), it’s hospital time for me. And I️ hate the hospital.

I’ve been stable for over two years. And I’ve been off pot for over two years. I️ can’t help but believe there is a correlation here.

bioChE,

I feel like I found my soul mate regarding marijuana. We are just at different stages... There's a side that is only unveiled when I get a buzz. I also feel like I was born to smoke pot... You're right, I am in a state of mourning.

I totally agree with what you wrote and congratulations on 2 years of stability. Let's support each other in our goal to be free of the menace of delusions and hospitals.

I quit smoking cigarettes over 2 years ago and have stuck with it so I know I can do this. I also didn't smoke pot for over 25 years and had no episodes during that time. I quit weed when I was 19 or 20 after having what was called at the time a 'nervous breakdown'. Somehow I got my act together after a week or two and managed not to flunk out of university that term and went on to a successful career for those 25 years.

Maybe it is a coincidence that all my breakdowns were when i was smoking weed, but that seems unlikely. Thank you for your understanding. It means a lot to me.

i don't plan on quitting. As of now, i just don't smoke if I am manic.