What Happens When You Stop Smoking Weed?
Marijuana today is stronger than ever. After the hybridization of cannabis plants and the creation of edibles and “dabs,” people can consume mass quantities of THC in comparison to the weed of years ago. In 1995, smoking weed with your friends was different. You passed around a bowl or a joint filled with mid-grade weed with fairly low THC content (comparatively), you giggled for a while, got the “munchies,” and passed out. Weed was considered a pretty harmless drug that had a low addictive potential and you didn’t hear of anyone getting “strung out” on it and needing to go to rehab because of it. But now, times have changed. With THC being consumed in much larger doses, not only do rehabilitation center’s phones ring with requests for help for marijuana addiction, but THC is proving to be addictive, not only mentally, but also physically. So, with today’s ultra-strong marijuana, what should a person expect once they stop smoking weed?
One of the first things a marijuana user will experience when they quit are intense cravings for the drug. Marijuana is very fat-soluble, meaning residues of the drug get stored in the fatty tissues of the body and don’t come out on their own. Every time a person burns fat, they re-release the drug residues into the bloodstream which then travel to the brain and trigger cravings. The cravings themselves also lead to the ex-user experiencing anxiety. If they feel like they can’t have the drug, but really need it, anxiety sets in and causes the user to feel “on edge” and they may have trouble sleeping at night. They can feel jittery and relatively unhappy, overall.
Drugs are commonly used to deal with emotions and emotional problems. A lot of the time, people will pick up their first drug in a time of unhappiness or relative discomfort and maybe hear from a friend that certain drugs will help. Marijuana has an “emotion dulling” effect and when a person stops smoking weed they will feel their emotions turn back on and bring back up all the problems they were numbing away for so long. So, the problem or problems that marijuana was being used to fix are still there and completely unhandled. The most unfortunate part of marijuana withdrawal is that it could last for months and up to a year. Marijuana is very slow to leave the body and leaves a person feeling miserable for quite a while after they quit. Since marijuana is considered both a depressant and a hallucinogenic substance, after a person’s mind has been altered for months or even years, the recovery process can be slow as a person’s distorted perceptions slowly change back to the way they were before a person habitually used marijuana.
It’s not all bad news. The answer to all this, as with any drug, is long-term drug rehabilitation that can not only detox out all the residues the drug(s) have left behind, but also get to the root cause of a person’s addiction. The recovery process can be arduous if done on your own. Call Narconon Suncoast today to get help to stop smoking weed.
