Dbanfiel wrote:I started smoking marijuana habitually in 2008. I smoked just about everyday and a lot on the weekends. I never smoked before or during work. Pretty much any time I wasn't working. Then my girlfri be and I got engaged. The wedding planning was beginning to stress me out to I decided to quit. 2 weeks after quitting I experience some sort of anxiety attack but it went away. After that I didn't give it much though and I continued to be clean for 8 months. Then we got married. I felt such a huge weight of pressure off my shoulders that I started smoking the next day and on our honeymoon. Then I proceeded to start smoking heavily again for the next 5 months. Once I got to the end of my 2nd ounce over those 5 months I decided to quit. I guess at 34 I just felt it was time to grow up and I wanted to start having a family. A week after quitting I woke up at 230 in the middle of the night to sever panic attack. I went to walk outside in the middle of the night to cool off and I didn't go back to sleep until 7. The next week I experienced anxiety which tapered off throughout the week. Then, for the next 4 weeks, I felt just fine; normal. Then one Saturday night over dinner, 5 weeks from when I quit for good, the anxiety started to set in. Not a full blown panic attack but just terrible. I felt like I was also losing myself and my grip on reality. I didn't know what was going on and I'm scared to death. Now I'm in week 6 of abstinence. I'm still petrified. The anxiety and feelings of dread come and go but when they come on it's the worst thing in the world. I am deathly afraid I have damaged myself forever and I couldn't imagine living my life this way. I continue to excercise 4 times a week and I eat very clean. I haven't touched alcohol in almost 2 weeks as I'm afraid of how it will make me feel. I feel the lingering uncertainty in the back of my head. I have even started to meditate but when the anxiety is unbearable it didn't seem to serve me much purpose. I am currently working to set up my first appointment with a therapist. I want to find out if I will ever recover. I am reluctant to use drugs and they are the thing that may have gotten me into this mess in the first place. I also don't want to become addicted to something else. Does anyone have any advice or similar circumstances. Feeling fine the 8 months before my wedding when I first quit has certainly kept me guessing. I wouldn't wish this feeling on my worst enemy.
Dbanfiel