How My Safety Net Became My Worst Enemy.
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With all the recent discoveries made over the benefits of cannabis and its legalization in several countries, it has been pointed out that crime rates have successfully dropped.
Furthermore, the stigmatization of its users and dealers has been reduced. Whilst this is all good and jolly, we must somehow strive to keep things in balance, and not go overboard on the matter.
If you happen to be the sort of person that suffers from some sort of anxiety disorder, or you simply find yourself to be stressed from time to time, which most people are, you might have looked upon the use of cannabis as a way of alleviating your symptoms. Smoking pot gives you the means to put all of that behind you for a while, go inward, sleep better, or simply be in the present moment.
This is the positive short-term effect.
However, the more you do it, the more alienated you tend to become, and in time, this can turn into a vicious circle which can prove difficult to get out of.
You keep going inward, and focus on enjoying only the things that give you some sort of pleasure, whilst putting aside the responsibilities which you don’t really get a kick out of, but still must be done, and doing them annoys you so much, that you end up making a very strong case for how you just want to be yourself, how you may not really fit into this society and how you want everybody to just leave you alone, so you can live your life in peace and harmony, on your own terms.
We all procrastinate from time to time, we all need to take time out from our busy schedules and instead, focus on relaxing and rejuvenating — this is why weekends and parties were invented. The danger lies in it becoming a pattern. Once you start puffing several times a day, turning it into a habit, it stops being an escape route and slowly becomes part of who you are.
Now, what are you going to do the next time you’re going to feel anxious? You’re going to have to look for a new safety net, because as being stoned is already part of your daily routine, it’s not going to be able to help you escape your anxiety anymore.
I can tell you, from my own personal experience, that during the times when I’ve had my share of abusing pot, the more frequently I got stoned, the more I ended up procrastinating and thus, the more stressed I became, up until the point where I started developing my first ever horrifying panic attacks.
A panic attack happens when your fear level increases for no apparent reason and nothing you do helps in calming you down. At some point, you may feel that you’re fainting or dying, or are about to. Your vision may get blurred. Forgetting to breathe makes it even worse.
If the process repeats itself over several days, or perhaps even several times per day, you might finally take the brave decision of contacting your doctor, however terrifying the possibility of being diagnosed with psychosis or schizophrenia, or any other mental disease you might have done your own research about on Google.
And so, you end up taking prescription pills for panic attacks, because nothing is worse than the total lack of energy you feel after each event, and the horror of having to reach such high levels of fear so often.
The prescription pills work like magic, though in some cases, they may take their time. But now you start going through a phase of watching out for even the slightest chance of having yet another anxiety attack, at any given moment. The more you seek control over yourself, the more fearful you become and thus, the more it eludes you. Having the help of a psychologist is really beneficial in times like these.
And so, as a means of following advice, you start doing sports, which you hate waking up for but end up loving eventually, with regards to the way it makes your body feel, after you’re done with it. It also helps you sleep better, release negative feelings such as anger, and gradually stop overthinking.
Was quitting weed hard to accomplish? Not at all, considering the state in which I was. It’s not the same as smoking cigarettes, where even the thought of having none left to be enjoyed together with a cup of coffee in the morning makes you not want to get out of bed, or even worse, not be able to sleep. It was more of a “I’m going to stop because I can see how it makes it easier for me to panic.”
And that was that — no mood swings and no feelings of needing it.
With that said, I’m not against the legalization of medical or recreational marijuana. Studies have shown that it works wonders in the case of epileptic people, and so on. The aim of this article is to shed light upon the dangers of overdoing it and the importance of keeping everything in balance. Whatever we run from, we’ll have to face up to later anyway, so why delay?
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Larisa Sevcencu is an introvert with a BA in Sales & Marketing Management. She enjoys reading books written by psychologists, has always had an interest in films, and is a member of the Motorheadbangers community. She recently got into blogging, and regards Content Writing as the next step in her career.
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