Do I need to quit marijuana?

[zorakspg]

Dear forum,

I have a friend who has been smoking pot since high school (or even earlier). She had trouble with concentration and responsibility to the point that it was affecting her personal and professional life. She has quit and it has been very very positive for her.

Now, my story is rather different. I was a sober, straight-edge kid all the way till college. I had had friends who smoked pot and drank, but I never was tempted to partake. In college though, I decided for myself after research on it, that it would be fun to try.

I should say that I've always been rather antisocial. I'm pretty sure I qualify as having a social anxiety disorder. I'm more comfortable in small groups or alone, etc.

I was not too fond of the effects of alcohol in college, but when I tried the drug I loved it. Getting high calmed me down and helped to quiet the nagging in the back of my head. I could party and be social!

Now its years after college. I smoke daily, usually starting in the late afternoon when I get home from work.

I am productive and responsible for the most part, and even now don't let pot smoking affect my work... I don't think.

I don't go to work high. But sometimes, I work at home and I can't help but smoke a bowl while I plod through computer- and statistics-related stuff I have to do!

I've been having some increased anxiety attack activity lately. I'm having difficulty figuring out whether I'm smoking more to calm down from anxiety, or I'm having more anxiety because I'm smoking more. In the media you frequently hear propaganda about smoking pot causing all sorts of problems, but that in fact, this is just correlation. In other words, people who are stressed smoke pot but pot does not necessarily cause stress, despite what the DEA and such would tell you.

So my real question is, what do you folks on CannabisRehab.org think?

Do I need to quit? Or cut down? I like pot, why should I give it up? More importantly, how to I really decide what the causes and what the effects are regarding the problems in my life?

Thanks to anyone patient enough to read my rather long exposition!

~Z

[Cannabis Rehab Admin]

Hi Zorakspg and welcome to the forum.

I think we all like or liked pot, the question is does it like us, personally I would not be so sure that every single thing that the government boogie men type people say about pot is automatically wrong, I am not saying that everything they say is right, although with pot from what I have learned the answer is usually yes for some and no for others, it’s the kind of drug we can all react to very differently, yes people who don’t smoke pot suffer from anxiety too, people who don’t smoke cigarettes get cancer but that doesn’t mean that cigarettes can’t cause cancer, it doesn’t mean that pot can’t cause anxiety, if you read the posts here you will find that there are a good many people who are experiencing a direct link between their anxiety and their dope use and they are not all members of the DEA. Personally I think it is possible to tell if you pot use is making your anxiety worse, I am pretty sure I was, it was making me extremely paranoid, but if you really don’t think you are able to, then I suppose the only way to tell for sure is to stop doing it for a significant period of time, long enough to get past any anxiety which may be a result of discontinuing it as that can happen too and see how you feel. Anyway that’s just my take on it.

Take care thanks for posting and please keep us posted on how it goes.

All the best

[Cannabis Rehab Guest]

im attempting to give up the drug so i think a rehab group like this is the best place to air my views as we have all smoked it so know wat its like. theres a lot i read that i cannot relate to. for example people say that when they smoke their life is in a haze, implying that it goes quick and they cant remember anything. when i smoke it time seems to go slower, things that i do and my thoughts seem better. i dont think id have ever got a taste for it if i couldnt remember things, that would be no fun. do people get to the stage where they enjoy it so much that they do it 24/7 thats gotta cause a problem. ill smoke it in the evening but if i had to have it the minute i woke up id know i was in deep s##t

[Cannabis Rehab Admin]

Hi unregistered guest and welcome to the forum.

Not everybody will be able to identify with the kind of problems that some of the people here are experiencing, it is my belief that not everybody who smokes the drug necessarily has a problem with it, it can depend on how they are using it, how much for how long and how they are reacting to it, however there are some who do experience these kind of things, a lot of the problems people are experiencing here may be by those who are using heavily and or have done so for a long time, I was fine for a long time but then when it started to take its toll it hit me hard, but we can all be different types of users and react to it differently.

Take care