I've been on a two year drinking binge and have finally (and mostly successfully) weened myself off the hard stuff. But... I still find myself taking a swing here and there. I like it. I can't say anything else than that. I life the elated feeling. I like having the stressors of the day wear off. It's what keeps me sane.
I want to move completely away from booze. I'm able to go at least a week without a small sip, but I always rotate back to a swig,
Now, I'm in California. Recreational weed here is legal. I want to try it, but I'm concerned of the consequences. I have high blood pressure and am prone to anxiety. I hear indica strand is best suited for people in my category, but would like to get recommendations of potential other strains or known flavors which have lower THC quantities and won't effect blood pressure as much.
This is entirely new to me. I maybe smoked a joint or two back in high school, but that's my extent with the substance. I'm really imploring for help here. This will be a large life change to me, and I'm hoping for some serious advice on the matter.
I'm not sure exactly how it works (I can't buy weed where I am) but I'd go to the store and essentially say what you've told us. You've got anxiety and you just want something mellow to take the edge off after work. If the person serving you isn't a tosser they'll probably have a fairly weak strain that'll be perfect for you since you have no tolerance.
That said, don't be surprised if you find you don't like weed. Lots of people don't, while loving to drink.
Grayson Ortiz
Why do you want to move away from alcohol completely?
Jace Hernandez
> I like having the stressors of the day wear off
Get a hot tub. There's usually a free one on Craigslist. For a few more dollars you can get it up and running. You'll sleep like a baby without any drugs :)
Camden Martin
don't replace one drug/bad habit with another
Levi Young
But that's how detox centers do it. When you're getting off booze, they give you a lesser addictive substance in order to get over the greater one--smoking cigarettes is acceptable when coming off booze because cigarettes are easier to quit than alcohol is.
Easton Nguyen
> Stopped smoking the herb everyday > Started drinking everyday
9 days sober for the first time in 3-4 years here. Weed is not better, nor is it worse, if you have an addictive personality you will find either drug to have quite adverse effects on you over time When I'm stoned I cannot even go grocery shopping out of anxiety, I fear for losing my drivers licence (which I need for my job), I get fuzzy-headed all day and I actually have a stronger drive to smoke than drink. I'll even smoke 3-4 hours before work even though it drags me down, always kept the drinking to the night before.
Just try to stay clean bro, find some other hobbies or interests to pass the time with and unwind with (I just started training a little again, haven't done a pushup in 3 years, chest hurts like a bitch), cook some good food, read some books etc etc
Fill out the time
Jace Garcia
Just take CBD oil
Carter Nelson
That stuff is garbage and wasted money.
Ryan Price
It costs less than a dollar a day if you use it right, and it has worked very well for me.
Gavin Jenkins
Placebo effect. Congratulations on being a sheep.
Caleb Perry
>I have high blood pressure and am prone to anxiety Weed is a very bad idea, my man. I had a friend have a panic attack so bad he fainted while smoking with me in highschool. Then again, people have severe anxiety attacks when they're hungover too, as I well know. That said, in terms of health effects, there is nothing about weed that isn't worse with alcohol. So if you were to choose a vice, I guess weed would be the best. You're a lot less likely to get arrrested, fall and get a concussion, or accidentally murder someone behind the wheel of your car when smoking weed.
When I had a DUI and was forced to go to AA meetings one thing I took away was that while alcohol is what brought them to their knees, ANY substance they use they'll use as hard and destructively as they hit the bottle. Even something as harmless as weed, because it's not about the substance, it's about their mindset while using.
Ayden Rivera
The difference between weed and alcohol are night and day.
You can smoke not even half a joint and be good and high for hours. With alcohol you have to drink beer after beer after beer after beer to get a little bit of a buzz and keep drinking to keep it going.
There is absolutely no hangover with weed. Depending on how old you are and whatever, if you drink just a little bit too much - the morning after you feel like you are dying from the inside out and you just want to be in a medically induced coma. You'll be lucky to crawl into the tub. The worst that might happen is you get a sore throat from smoking too much but you can also do edibles or oral spray.
Also the way it affects you. Alcohol is very much physical and it reduces your motor skills to that of like a toddler. You can barely walk in a straight line let alone go up and down some stairs, you piss everywhere, you're extremely likely to injure yourself, people also typically get very loud and very aggressive. With weed it's the complete opposite. You become hyper-aware of your surroundings and don't lose any of your motor skills you're not gonna tumble out in the streets and lose a fight with a phone booth, you're not gonna wake up with shit in your pants, etc.
Paranoia/anxiety can happen, but in my experience 99.99% of that happened because weed was illegal here. I was afraid that people would pick up the smell for miles and that the swat teams would crash through the door and ruin my family's life etc. Now that it's legal I can smoke no problem.
Gabriel Flores
Also as far as blood pressure goes, there is no real evidence or conclusive studies that I've read.
Smoking it can initially lead to a short spike in heart rate and blood pressure, but then it goes back down. Those who smoke regularly have shown that they no longer have that short spike in blood pressure and in fact it may decrease it over time. Of course the fact that you're usually -smoking- it isn't perfect, and being high as shit and lead to other lifestyle choices like eating an entire stick of butter as if it were a banana, so there are other factors to consider when talking marijuana vs blood pressure. but like I said, I haven't seen any real studies.
You get massive brain-fog comparable to a hangover's the day after toking up (if you get well stoned)
> Sore throat
How about coughing like a chainsmoker
And everyday smoking makes you dumb as a brick with memory losses almost as bad as an alcoholic
Gavin Taylor
this is so true. I used to think weed was completely harmless. (which it is in short bursts) but its definitely made me way more self conscious and anxious.
Gavin Long
>You get massive brain-fog >makes you dumb as a brick with memory losses almost as bad as an alcoholic
This sounds like you've never even smelled weed, let alone smoked it, and you've gotten all the information that you want to hear from some Mothers Against Marihuana bumper sticker.
Colton Thompson
Go to a shop and ask for vape cartridges with a high cbd content. Marijuana gave me TERRIBLE anxiety, no matter what strain, method of ingestion, or amount. It always gave me really bad paranoia. I just tried a cartridge that has a 3:1 ratio of cbd:thc so there’s way more cbd than thc. And now I can actually get high without anxiety, it’s kind of nice. The brand name is Select btw. Good luck user
Jacob Powell
OP, if you decide to buy/try weed, tell the worker there you are pretty new, anxious, and want weak weed. Then just take a hit and see how it unfolds.
My suggestion, if you're too anxious to ask the budtender, is get a 1:1 CBD:THC product, preferably actual weed (not concentrate). The CBD helps minimize the paranoia/anxiety.
Andrew Edwards
As I know you can get CBD oil without any THC in it too, at least in germany.
Jaxson Collins
I’ve tried that and it didn’t do much other than give me the munchies. But everyone is different. The girl at the shop told me she quit smoking cigarettes by switching to a cbd pen. Everyone has different results
Mason Hughes
You need to be in a recovery program. Switching to marijuana is just swapping one vice for another. Admittedly, marijuana is less harmful than alcohol addiction but it does nothing to address your greater disease of addiction. Sobriety without a recovery program will not last. Getting off the booze is the easiest step of the process but without structure and support you will get back on it, almost 100% guaranteed.
t. Mental health professional who has counseled and treated hundreds of people with addiction issues.
Logan Walker
Solid advice. If it's not weed then it could just as well be fuckin loootboxes in video games or F2P japanese gacha games, or cheesecake. Addiction is addiction
Easton James
Weed got legalized in out country late last year and the first thing I bought was a tub of CBD weed because it was one of the only things they had left at the time and oh boy,
I wasn't paranoid, I wasn't anxious, but I also wasn't calm and I certainly wasn't high. I just kept waiting for a high that never happened, I just felt extremely disappointed. No wonder CBD is legal in places when otherwise marijuana is still illegal. It does pretty much nothing.