Marijuana=Panic attacks and Anxiety?

[jd401]

Hi, first time poster looking for some help and answers. Im a 19 year old male who has used the drug marijuana for the past two years heavily( 2-4 times a day). I would experience a very good time from and it would help me relax and chill out form a long day of work ect. Then one night i used the drug and started to experience a rapid heart beat, hot flashes, it was hard to breathe, which i then found out was a panic attack after visiting the ER. I didnt think much of it untill a week later when i smoked again and expereinced another panic attack which was like the first one but a little more intense with a since of losing control i ended up falling a sleep while trying to control my breathing. It has been two months since having a panic attack because i have stopped smoking. However, i think i am experiencing some anxiety. For example, headaches, tingling sensations, feelings that i might have a panic attack, always thinking somethings wrong with me, and their has been some problems with my bowel movements which i heard can be cause by anxiety. so any answers, help, or support would be wonderful. Thanks.

[bladerunner2000]

Just adding my 2 cents to the debate.  In my personal experience, weed as been the most useful aid through all my anxiety problems.  I've smoked daily for the past 10 years, and never had a panic attack b/c of smoking,  but I am also of the strong opinion that "WEED IS NOT FOR EVERYONE".  My anxiety and stress always triggers stomach problems first.  I get sick to my stomach real easy, and that normally makes me feel like crap and I lose my appetite completely. Pot is the only thing that seems to mellow me out and get my appetite back, otherwise I dont eat which leads to way worse problems.  Certain strains will also give you completely different highs.  Some have a real strong high and others will just make you hungry. I make cookies for my mom, that just seem to help her sleep at night, and she gets panic attacks once in awhile when she tries to smoke. So everyone has there limit.  
My biggest worry with the pot was getting caught with it,  which would lead to anxiety for me. But now I live in BC canada, where I can carry like 15 grams with no criminal charges, just a fine,  so that takes away the anxiety about it for me.

I do know that if I start getting panic attacks and blacking out like some of you state,  I would quit smoking for sure. That sounds pretty scary to me, and I hope to never experience it.  I guess what im trying to say is that weed is like any other drug out there......if your getting bad side effects from a certain drug, you dont keep taking it, you try something else.  I know that some of these anxiety pills ive tried make me feel like crap, so i've recently got off effexor. Its only been a month so far with its ups and downs, but i know that without the pot, there would be alot more down times. Anyway, only you know how you feel, so you be the judge.
Cheers

[SammyCxxx]

This is exactly how my panic attacks started. Im a 23 year old female + when i was 18 i experienced my first panic attack after smokin weed + it went on for about 3 hours. I had been smokin it on a fairly regular basis 4 about 2 1/2 years before it happened. I thought i was gonna die and had all the same symtoms. I was tellin myself if it just stops now i will never touch a spliff again. True 2 my word i never did until the end of september this year. I desided 2 have a few drags off a friend + straight away i felt it startin all over again. I realized that weed was the clear trigger but over the past 2 weeks i have been experiencing them every few days with no reason or trigger 4 them. They are not as bad or last as long as when i was smokin but terrifing all the same.

[sigalig]

Well maybe my story will also help you feel not so alone. i smoked weed for my first time when i turned 16. i only took a few hits and nothing happened. i tried it a couple more times and until about the 4th time nothing happened. this 4th time, i had bought my own sack for the first time because i have always had problems with insomnia and wanted to see if i could get weed to help me out with that. so i smoked a couple bowls, and when i got in bed, i started feeling the most bizarre tingling hot feeling in my whole body. it scared me which caused my heart beat to raise and i started panicking. i eventually calmed myself down to the point where i could sleep it off but it was definitely not enjoyable.
i eventually shook that time off, and tried getting high again about a week later when sleeping over at my buddys house. i smoked 3 or 4 bowls with my friend, and about 15 minutes after i had started smoking, i walked over to my friends bed, and the best way i can describe it is i just think i blacked out for about a minute. i remember blabbering some nonsense that was really bizarre during that minute but nothing visual comes to mind when im trying to remember. when i came out of the blackout i realized what just happened and it scared the crap out of me. i sat on my friends bed and i started rambling to my friends that i was starting to freak out, and slowly things started turning worse and worse. it seemed as if i was looking through a dark hallway, and everything i saw was going frame by frame very slowly, almost like a strobe light effect. after mumbling a bunch of nervous nonsense to my annoyed friends, i told myself i just had to sleep it off so i tried lying down. i couldnt fall asleep because i just couldnt shake the intensely odd tingling and heat flashes i was having throughout my body. this rambling nonsense and body freakout went on for about a couple hours till i passed out.
i really wanted to get to the bottom of this, because i thought maybe i just got too high to agree with my body, so i smoked again a couple weeks later. i smoked a bowl by myself, got in bed, and got a crazy tingling feeling that i couldnt shake, and basically it was the same exact thing as my first high but way worse. it felt like a body part falling asleep, except it was my face and my throat. i felt like i couldnt breathe correctly and i was scared i would have a heart attack. i then told myself i would never smoke again.
abstinence is probably your best bet kid.

[AM3Z3R]

I'm 15 and I just started smoking a couple months ago. Sometimes I smoke alot, sometimes I don't. One night me and my boyfriend decided to go smoke weed, it was probably my 10th time smoking it. I did 5 or 6 hits and I felt really high, so I told my boyfriend he could have the rest of the bowl. I felt really good, then we had to walk back to his house. I started feeling really weird, everything looked blurred, my boyfriend was talking to him but it sounded like i was in a tunnel, then i passed out and landed in a puddle, i got up seconds later and everything looked green and i could barely function. After I got inside my heart started racing, I couldn't stop shaking, and I kept saying I was going to die. I was sooo scared. I know how you all feel. I smoked after that and nothing happend.
BUT then i smoked again and it happend again.
just not as bad, I didn't pass out or anything. but I did end up having a really bad panic attack.
My boyfriend helped calm me down and tell me i was going to be fine. When i started concentrating on other things I calmed down but my heart was still racing.
Both times this happend to me i took excederin during the day for a headache. I don't know if it has anything to do with it but both times i had a panic attack excederin was in my system. But just remember you have to tell yourself you'll be fine. and redcue the amount you smoke to 2-3 hits =] thats what i did.
and i felt the same old good high i remembered.
I'm thinking about going to a psych though for anxiety.
Well, yeah just don't worry.

[notable_resident]

I thought I was having a heart attack or something.  It was so damn scary.  But at the ER, one shot of Ativan, and within minutes I was totally FINE.  

[Cannahelp]

I've been a daily user for 25 years and hit on a problem patch a couple of years ago with anxiety attacks on use. I followed the advice here and have not had any since.

Cannabis & Anxiety
The causes of cannabis anxiety and paranoia are both mental and chemical.

Changes in blood sugar levels can be responsible for pretty extreme effects (both good and bad) when you're high, so you have to pay real attention to it if you want to get, and keep, a good high. Too much blood sugar, from eating a lot of candy for example, and you get a rush as the cannabis high and the sugar high combine – but the sugar high is short-lived, and will make you want to fall asleep as soon as your system burns off the excess insulin that all the sugar has forced the release of. Too little blood sugar, and things go from uncomfortable to extremely unpleasant very quickly. As you first start to get high, your metabolism may hike up a notch and cause a sudden dip in blood sugar. That's no problem if you've just eaten, but if you're already on the edge of being hungry without realising it, that first toke can make you feel pretty nasty in less than ten minutes. Never take the chance of getting high when you're somewhere without access to the right kinds of food and drink, just in case. If you have the added 'pleasure' of being a borderline diabetic and you don't know it, you could get into quite a state from just that one first high, if you're not careful.

Many regular cannabis users begin their day's session in the late afternoon as work is winding down, and maybe an hour or two before their evening meal – just at the very time when their blood sugar is already on the wane. If this is you, you'll more than likely feel a lot of the symptoms below within ten minutes or so of getting high. Eat! Better still, make sure that you've eaten well in advance of getting high. Look out for any of the following as indicators of low blood sugar:

Sweating, shaking, anxiety, hunger, dizziness, faintness, pounding heart, personality changes, confused thinking, impatience, numbness of lips and tongue, headache, nausea, blurred vision, slurred or slow speech, convulsions, coldness, white hands and face. Eventually, if it is not attended to, it can lead to unconsciousness.

Adrenaline & Cannabis
A second cause of dope-anxiety is something I term here the 'Adrenaline Cascade'; really a mild form of 'shock'. After any event that has made you anxious, the anxiety causes your system to dump adrenaline (also called epinephrine) into your blood-stream, creating a rapid heart-beat, a growing demand on your BSL, and thus deeper and deeper feelings of anxiety as your BSL levels drop. Of course, you'll usually find these effects uncomfortable or worrying, thus causing the release of even more adrenaline and a worsening of symptoms. This vicious circle of adrenaline release will be increasingly hard to overcome, and the deeper it gets the more likely it is to lead to a 'white-out' due to its depressive effects on your blood sugar.

Many things trigger the release of adrenaline:

Apprehension about potentially bad highs
Stress
Anxiety
Fatigue
Stimulants, such as alcohol, caffeine, cocaine, and heroin.
Bright lights
Loud noises
Exercise
Sugar sensitivity
Abnormal glucose metabolism

Again, do not underestimate the mental effects that adrenaline can cause by itself - irregular heart-beat, palpitations, abnormal behaviour, anxiety and headaches - even before it starts reducing our BSL to a point where it can no longer support full brain function (about 60% of our blood sugar is used by our brains).

Unfortunately, there's very little you can do to remove excess adrenaline from your system once it's in there, and it can only really be counteracted by 'nor-adrenaline', something that usually only our bodies can provide. It can be burned off by exercise, but if adrenaline has caused a very deep dip in your BSL then that may not be a viable option. The only things you can truly do are: eat to get rid of some of the more unpleasant symptoms; or, simply wait it out, knowing that it is a brief physiological effect.

I've seen a number of people offering advice to 'just suck it up and it'll go away' on this particular kind of anxiety and, to some extent that is helpful, as relaxing and trying to be calm will help break the cycle of adrenaline release. On the other hand, if someone is having an intense version of this then relaxing is far easier said than done and, if you should experience the above yourself, then you need to treat yourself as you would for low BSL and remove yourself from any strong stimuli - lights, noises, etc. - that might help promote the effects of the high and further adrenaline release.

If we look at the actions of adrenaline in this respect then the mechanism that prevents this rise becomes obvious (remember that this same effect will be present in anyone who has a burst of adrenaline in their systems, not just diabetics): adrenaline prepares the body for 'fight or flight' in an emergency by increasing the supply of glucose and oxygen to the brain and muscles, whilst at the same time suppressing other less-important processes, digestion in particular. This means that the initial elevation in blood-sugar (through increased catabolism) may be short-lived, and whether it then leads to a later dip and anxiety is dependent on the amount of adrenaline present in the blood at the time. Not only does it reduce the bodies ability to take in new blood sugar to redress the balance, but it increases speedier depletion of stored blood sugar, preventing restoration.

Some people, particularly those with bad diets or who are subjected regularly to stress, may have semi-permanent hypoglycemia (a deficiency of glucose in the blood), resulting in adverse reactions to cannabis through their bodies inability to control adrenaline and/or cortisol through 'adrenal fatigue'.

The Answer
In light of the above, those who know they're already at risk from fluctuating BSL will find that their symptoms of anxiety during cannabis use will be significantly reduced if they can pay full attention not only to those levels before use, but also setting and mood.

Excerpted from 'Cannabis & Meditation – An Explorer's Guide', by Simon Jackson.