Just thought I’d add my story here, since I’m an avid reader of this forum especially when I’m feeling low. I’m hoping that by sharing my story, that maybe somebody else can relate and feel less alone in their progress.
I’m 2 years and 5 months sober from marijuana. I began smoking at 30 years old, and only smoked on weekends for maybe about 6 months tops. Nearing the end of the 6 month “addiction”, I felt the need and urge to smoke almost every day. My husband and I fell into the trap of believing that marijuana wasn’t addictive, since it was was natural, blah blah blah. I no longer believe this to be true, not in the slightest.
One day I decided I didn’t want to smoke anymore because it made me feel lazy. So I quit cold turkey, and never even realized that my body may have become dependent on it.... This is when the craziness hit. I started to feel strange, and began to grow more and more paranoid. It felt as though my brain just stopped functioning. Mind you, I had never dealt with depression or anxiety before in my life.
The first year was total sh**, as other have described, and I felt as though I was trapped in a prison with no way out. But still, I somehow gathered the strength to push through one day at a time.
At the beginning, my senses were completely off. The best way for me to describe it, is that my body was not providing the proper feedback. One time, I helped my husband pick up a move a large television, and could not feel the weight of it, nor could I feel the strain of my muscles. This freaked me out big time, and was kind of traumatizing. I felt like I was no longer attached to my body and was having major derealization.
One of the first things I noticed, was that my vision began to distort, the world seemed flat, and colors were no longer the right shade. Trees limbs were tinted a foggy haze of blue, and other shadows look very off. Lights at night turned into starburst, then after a few months turned into halos. My depth perception was shot. My vision has been my biggest struggle and rritation through this slow and brutal recovery.
Every night I was having very vivid dreams, and for a little while I become an insomniac. My husband would rub me to try to relax me and put me to sleep, but I would wake up over and over every night and could not stay asleep. It was so irritating, as I still had to wake up early and go to work every day. I work in a highly technical field, so this combination was excruciating.
One night during when I managed to fall asleep, I even had a very vivid out of body experience and saw the bright white light. I felt as though I floated out of my body and at the time thought I felt to heaven. I felt at peace, and my body officially hit rock bottom from the withdrawal. It was terrifying, and I bawled my eyes out upon waking up because I had no idea what had happened.
My husband and I had nobody to talk to, and for months we didn’t even know I was experiencing marijuana withdrawals. I thought I had a nervous breakdown of some type of awakening. We had zero resources. That was one of our loneliest times, but I am grateful that he stuck by me and helped me every step of the way.
When it came to trying to boost my recovery, I tried literally everything. Natural supplements, walking in nature, meditating, yoga, and even explored various religions. I was desperate for relief, but nothing helped.
One day, I finally gave up, and decided to just live my life, try to eat healthy, and let time pass. Slowly but surely, each symptom lifted. The progress was slow, but was noticeable. Month by month, something else lifted.
The ringing in my ears went away. My sensations returned, my sleep came back. I was smiling again. My personality came back, and I could crack jokes again. I enjoyed food again, and began to feel my emotions deeply again. And finally, I made new friendships, and began to socialize in a much healthier way than I ever had before. Unfortunately my socialization died during my deepest of lows, and I did not want to leave the house with such high anxiety.
So here I am, 2 years and 5 months later, still not completely symptom free. My vision is still slightly off, but I’m still having noticeable improvements every month or so. My depression is not fully under control and still hits me in waves, but I am able to tell myself to ignore it, and press on. The waves have stabilized a ton and have almost completely gone away granted that I get my 8 hours of sleep.
The most important advice I can give from my personal recovery is to eat right, take a multivitamin, fishoil, exercise, respect that you need good sleep, and do not drink alcohol or take any other substances. I am also completely off caffeine, and this helps a ton. Sugary drinks have been tossed out as well.
This is my story, it sucked going through it. But I now value my life so much more. I have gained a type of self confidence that I didn’t have before, and have taught myself a ton about psychology which has helped me deal with stress management and gain a ton of emotions intelligence. Life is definitely a lot more fun now, and I can’t wait for what the future holds.
Thank you for reading.