Hi all
I hope everyone is well.
I was a chronic daily user of weed for over 15 years (started at the age of 15) with a few 6 month breaks in between. I had never experienced any severe withdrawal symptoms from those half year breaks, just the typical ones (insomnia, irritability, low mood, etc) however, I'm now 1month and 10 days clean from the substance, and it's been the worst period of my life to date.
In the past I've had 2 tumours removed, my gallbladder removed, suffered with pancreatitis, yet none of those come close to what I'm currently experiencing.
I had decided to give up weed and tobacco (still vape nicotine) after being diagnosed with pleurisy, and having experienced a severe panic attack after vaping a miniscule amount of weed after the diagnosis.
The first week wasn't so bad, I was able to eat and sleep just fine (I was also using cbd at the time, which may have helped) but the hell started for me in week 2.
I would constantly experience heart palpations, high blood pressure, dizzyness, blurred vision, muscles that would cramp, brain fog, diarrhea, vomiting, basically every withdraw symptom you could think of.
My GERD also seemed to become active after abstaining from weed (never had any issues prior to me quitting) and would result in me being unable to swallow for a few hours.
I developed quite a severe health anxiety, as I didn't know if the chest pains were related to Gerd, pleurisy, increased blood pressure or simply by me quitting weed cold turkey.
I've made numerous visits to A and E (ER) had multiple ECGs, bloods, and one heart ultrasound. I'm also waiting to have a 24 hour ecg fitted, as one of the ECGs showed a slight arrhythmia. As a result of my anxiety regarding my heart, I decided to purchase an oximeter.. Which in hindsight was probably another mistake on my behalf, as I find myself somewhat obsessing over my heart now (I feel as though I've become hypersensitive to my heartbeat) which at times have shown my heart rate to fluctuate from 62-130bpm.
All of my other tests have come back as normal, bar that one ecg which showed an arrhythmia and the Dr's put it down to anxiety.. The thing is that at times I'll wake up and feel my heart racing, I'll go to check it and it's at 135-140bpm at rest as I've just literally just woken up and haven't even had a chance to conjure any negative thoughts. Having said that, I don't know if my anxiety is somewhat subconscious, as I'm not actively engaging with those thoughts, but my body will just react and display panic/anxiety symptoms.
I hear that exercise can help with the symptoms however, my last walk resulted in me nearly fainting from a panic attack after getting heart palpations. I've also experienced anxiety the other day whilst I was on a train (cold sweats, feeling agitated) even though I love trains, and have never experienced any anxiety/panic before I quit weed.
Apologies for the long post, I just want to talk to others who have gone through the same as many people downplay/are ignorant of the issues weed can cause.
Thank you