Cannabis Anxiety

Anxiety is an emotion or mental state which feels like extreme nervousness. Sometimes people also feel nauseated, sweat a lot, have racing thoughts or have horrible negative thoughts which scare and upset them. Because people have different minds, anxiety manifests differently in different people, so it comes in many forms.
A variety of things have the potential to cause Cannabis anxiety.

• How you feel about the experience. Your apprehensiveness or nervousness.
• Your personality. How prone to anxiety or paranoia you are as a person.
• People you use with. Whether your social environment is friendly and relaxed, or competitive, hostile or negative in any way.
• What you do when high. Whether you're just chilling watching TV or going out and doing intense potentially anxiety causing activities.
• Using too high a dose.
• It can happen for no apparent reason.

Most users will experience some cannabis anxiety at some point during their lives. If it is infrequent then it is not usually something to worry about. If cannabis anxiety occurs frequently, then that is cause for concern because it is not something that can be simply 'powered through'. Just continuing habitual dosages and frequency of use and expecting or hoping anxiety to go away is much more likely to have the opposite effect, and exacerbate that anxiety.
However, if you use very infrequently, you can actually be more prone to anxiety because your mind is not familiar with or used to the cannabis experience. If a user starts to use more, they might find anxiety decreases as the cannabis experience becomes more familiar and habitual.

Cannabis Anxiety in long term users

"After a long period of heavy use, I am unable to enjoy cannabis anymore"
​

One of the most frequently reported issues people have with cannabis is that after a period of time, their cannabis experiences become less enjoyable even to the point of difficult or painful because of anxiety. This is a roadblock which many users experience. Cannabis use can go well for a long period of time, but then suddenly anxiety starts to emerge. At this point, something has to change. If the user just continues to use cannabis, the anxiety could get worse. Every time you experience anxiety, it is like opening a door in your mind to experiencing more and more anxiety. The more you open that door, the harder it is to close it.

Every time you experience anxiety, the psychological association your mind makes between the cannabis experience and anxiety strengthens. Often, users simply get to the point where they have to give up cannabis use altogether because of how much suffering anxiety can cause. This happens to a significant amount of users. It is more likely to happen to frequent users.

Cannabis bad trips

"I had a horrible experience, I thought I was dying"
​

Another way for anxiety to ruin your cannabis experience is a cannabis bad trip (sometimes called a whitey). This is in some ways similar, and in some ways different to regular cannabis anxiety. What is different is the bad trip itself. A bad trip is a single experience which is severely negative. It's not just a background hum of anxiety, it's an experience which is totally infected by anxiety. This can be so intense and extreme that people think they are having a heart attack or hallucinate that they are seeing the devil, though this is very rare. Sometimes it can cause a trance/catatonic like state where a person just stares into space while feeling awful, as if very ill. Vomiting, tachycardia, sweating & increased body temperature are all common. Often it can simply be strong anxiety which won't go away and is very uncomfortable. So a cannabis 'bad trip' covers a range of experiences and reactions which, though different, all have anxiety at their core.

Although this type of anxiety is very different then, what is similar is the consequence of it. A single bad trip can completely cement the negative psychological association between cannabis and anxiety in your mind. After a bad trip, some people might never be able to use cannabis again without re-experiencing their bad trip. That is rare, but it does happen.

You can think of a bad trip as what would happen if the anxiety in multiple of the 'common' anxiety cannabis experiences was all concentrated into one experience. The severity of the bad trip is often linked to the severity of resulting lingering psychological issues, including Cannabis anxiety, but it is not a necessary link. So, after a moderately bad trip or a moderately long series of anxiety-tinged experiences, if it causes lingering issues, it is likely to cause a moderate case of Cannabis anxiety, though it might have more, less, or no such effect.

Anxiety on cannabis after a bad trip on another drug

"After a bad trip on LSD, I get anxiety on cannabis"
​

You can get anxiety problems on Cannabis from a bad trip on any drug. LSD, Magic Mushrooms, MDMA, Ketamine, it doesn't matter.
If you have an anxiety reaction on any drug, then this could affect your cannabis experiences in exactly the same way a Cannabis bad trip would.
For this reason, after having a bad trip on any drug, to err on the side of caution you should assume you have cannabis anxiety and abstain + re-acclimatise accordingly.

Your Options

Whatever your situation, however you came to have a problem with Cannabis anxiety, you have to change something. These are your options, ranked best-worst. How bad your situation is depends on the severity and frequency of your Cannabis anxiety. This should be used to give you an indication of which option you need to go with. If you situation isn't that bad, perhaps option 2 or 3. If your situation is very bad - option 1 may be your best bet.
1 - Stop using for a while. This is the best option because stopping use stops the strengthening of the negative psychological association. It also gives your mind time to reset, breaks your particular habit of use, and allows your mind to make an (at least somewhat) fresh interpretation of cannabis again in the future. The hope is that this fresh interpretation won't include the negative association of anxiety with the cannabis experience. It is difficult to put a number on how long you should stop for. Perhaps a good frame of reference would be your tolerance level. If you have smoked heavily for several years, it may take as long as one year of total abstinence for your tolerance levels to return to zero. Divide the amount of time you used cannabis for by 1/3rd if a heavy user, 1/5th if a moderate user, and 1/10th if an infrequent user if you want an idea. This results in a very crude and unreliable number, but it's something.
The prospect of abstaining is often not what people want to hear. However, it's better than being forced into abstinence by letting the situation degenerate further. Although you may have to abstain for a long time, at least you might be able to use cannabis again which might not be the case if you let the anxiety take too much of a hold.
Take care when beginning use again. It often happens that people experience anxiety because their minds are no longer familiar with the cannabis experience. For this reason you must use a low dose and work your way up. Your goal with these re-acclimatisation experiences should be for them to be anxiety free. Your goal should not be to get high. Use a very small dose, then leave it for that day. That was a success. Next time maybe you can go a bit further, but it's important you have the patience to wait for next time.
2 - Use less, less often. Using less cannabis is not as good as stopping, but it can work. Anxiety is much more likely to occur when using frequently and in large dosages. There is no set amount you can be advised to cut down on/to but basically, the more you cut down, the better. The goal here is to have cannabis experiences where anxiety does not emerge. For many people using less, less often can be enough to reduce anxiety, however there are three problems with this strategy.
i) - It doesn't always work. Some people might still experience anxiety. If that happens, then only option 1 (complete abstinence) will work.
ii) - it can be difficult to control usage, especially if addicted
iii) - If addicted, withdrawals could occur, perhaps including anxiety, which would worsen the cannabis anxiety. If that happens, option 1 is your best bet.
That said, this strategy can work. It functions because experiencing cannabis without anxiety works to weaken the negative psychological association. It really is best to start this with as low a dosage as possible, and then work your way up very slowly. If you experience anxiety, you have to start over - starting as low as possible again. This will be because you had pushed yourself too far, and since you experienced anxiety you will strengthen the negative psychological association, which means you actually take some steps back.
3 - use less OR use less often. If you have a problem giving up as much as option 1 or 2 require, then you can go for option 3. It is less likely to work, but it could work.
4 - Continuing as normal. This is the worst option because, as mentioned earlier, the anxiety could strengthen and take hold to ruin every cannabis experience you might attempt to have. This could make your situation even more difficult to fix, perhaps even irrecoverably so.

General anxiety-reducing tips

Exercise, eat healthily, socialize, improve your overall state of well-being.

Vitamin E deficiency is thought to increase cannabis anxiety[1]

Cannabis Strain

A strain of cannabis is a species of cannabis. Different strains have different levels of the cannabinoid compounds THC and CBD. THC is the compound which gets you high, but CBD is a compound which reduces anxiety. A Cannabis strain with high CBD may be able to help you, whatever option you are going for.

How to psychologically handle Cannabis anxiety

Another thing you can do is psychologically cope better with the anxiety when it arises. This can lessen the anxiety itself which will help reduce the impact of that anxiety on your mind, as well as making you feel better.

Remember that the effects are because of a drug
Remember that the experience will end.
Remember that you cannot be harmed by cannabis - nothing bad can happen.

Tell yourself these things to reassure yourself.

Focusing on breathing, and on keeping breathing slow and steady is effective and can be done by anyone. Direct your entire consciousness on the feeling of slowly breathing in and out, noticing every sensation. Notice the progression of sensation involved, and focus on the expectation of the next particular sensation. This drops your heart rate, and focuses your mind on calmness rather than the perceived negative aspects of the experience. Repeat in your mind that you cannot be harmed as you do this. You will calm down.

The cannabis experience does not last long - the peak lasting 1 hour or so. This is another comforting thought.

If going for option 2 or 3 - using these techniques or other anxiety reducing methods like meditation in conjunction with your limited usage can assist you in keeping anxiety at bay. In this case, use these techniques before you experience anxiety - to preemptively calm your mindset.

References

1. ^https://drugs-forum.com/threads/182802