u/LackSignificant7442

As the title suggests, I cant look at my material without feeling like drowning. When I wake up in the morning to a day where I know I must study my heart just sinks and the whole day turns into a stretched anxiety loop. This has been happening for about 2 years now. Somehow I managed to do 10 out of 16 exams over the 2 years and now I have 20 something days to prepare for the remaining 6. Im a fast learner, Ive always been bright and achieved honors before. It feels like a switch flipped. I have no faith in my ability to do the work and so much fear surrounding the whole thing. Ive tried everything from making schedules to “just do it for 5 minutes”, moving eating drinking water breath work quitting trying again. Non has been successful so far.

I need advice. I have opted for professional support before but “just do it/ the right setting/ calm down” are not really good advice. I have 15 days before 3 of my exams. I know I can manage the material. I just need to manage the anxiety and fear responses.

I have been using almost daily for the past year or so. I think that I have tried to quit every single time my stash ran out hehe. Over the past few months, my munchies turned into nausea. I started feeling like vomiting as soon as I wake up and the only thing to fix it was smoking a J upon waking up. Most of the days I’d self isolate and stay indoors smoking my heart away and binge watching something. It helped me lot. There were times where I felt pure happiness for like a month, an experience Ive never had before. That has completely changed for me about 4 months ago when I decided to break the cycle and start moving! I traveled around for 3 months, volunteering and trying to learn more about my emotional life and my triggers. Somehow out of all of those 3 months I was sober for one (not even consecutive). Even in that last month I met other stoners who were living with me in the same place and we bonded over that and were reinforcing each other’s delusions and bullshit.

Though Ive been using during my time moving, I wasn’t feeling too bad, at times I was feeling great even! It wasn’t stopping me from doing what I had to do, and Ive learned to meditate under the influence and loved it.
All cool until I finish this adventure and come back to my town! Yo, a a freaking nightmare. Ive been here a month and I so far have had 3 major breakdowns where I couldn’t stop crying for hours. 2/3 happened when I wasn’t smoking. The fact that my social life doesn’t exist at the moment didn’t help. I have no contact with family, keep poor touch with a couple of friends online the couple of friends I had are all home for vacations and I ve just recently broken up with my partner. So my support system is non existent, along my self worth and esteem.

When I smoke I’d feel anxious and restless. I gave quitting another attempt about 2 weeks ago, managed to stop ciggerattes but I somehow relapsed after 5 days. Now Im on day 2, I had a few hours yesterday where I felt like Im being eaten alive by the monsters in my head, thoughts as dark as shit can get and zero faith in myself or anything around me. Also mind you that I have developed a case of anhedonia that is on its peak now (smoking or not), I lack the ability to enjoy 99% of life. Now, I feel good. I walked and moved and meditated. I couldnt at all sleep but thats expected.

I want to keep going! I have a lot of motivation, and I think I hit rock bottom emotionally, I have exams and graduation coming up soon and really if I don’t stick this one out it will be a disaster. Im just worried that just like all the times before I will come back to it..

Hey all, I (F26), have been in a bad place for about 3 years now, I left my country to pursue my education abroad 3 years ago, ever since I have been through a wild journey of changes. My life before leaving wasnt great as well, but I had some stability and what I thought was community. One of the major trends over the 3 years for me has been incapability to form deep and authentic connections with people. There has been a point where I felt like all the connections I had in life were a response to something I was going through, and that I have always made those wrong choices and that its now just becoming clear because Im starting to discover my true needs. Friends I have had for years I dont want to be around anymore, still love them and all but unable to feel any sort of joy in my time with them.
I just really cant tolerate anything that isnt serving me anymore and Im torn apart between the guilt and my true need to let them all go and make space for connections that bring joy, connections that feel right.

My real dilemma is that my mental status is very bad now, I cant socialize, even when I push myself it makes things worse, like the other day I visited my friend in another city and had to leave the day after because I had a major drop in mood that I couldn’t engage anymore. All I ever do is smoke joints and be on my own, whether reading or meditating or cooking or walking or watching something. Dont get me wormg I do find joy in doing things on my own. But I crave connection so much and I feel it no more, and I fear making choices now that I would regret later. But all of my needs and my prospects are changing those days. All I have been doing recently is avoiding and ghosting everyone. Including the man I have been seeing for 1.5 years, also with him I no longer am willing ti tokerate things I thought were solvable. I just want this to be over, I don’t even want the big conversation or to explain things because I have no words for this!