5 months sober in my 3rd round of PAWs
So this is my third time going through PAWS. As stupid as it sounds, I didn’t really put the dots together until I was this far into the process. I did a deep dive educating myself on the endocannabinoid system and PAWs and a lot came to light and I was just so shook that I didn’t realize it until I was this far along. It could’ve solved a lot of my problems way earlier if I would’ve known this stuff.
About three years ago there was a switch that was flipped and I could never tolerate cannabis again after that. I started having a lot of panic, rapid heart rate, DPDR and just feeling like my whole equilibrium was off every time I smoked so I quit that first time for eight months, to my surprise I never got better for months and months and months, so I thought that I had an illness of some kind ( I already have one autoimmune disease called Hashimoto’s so I thought it was something to do with that, I am wondering if having preexisting immune issues could make these withdrawals WAY worse? 🤔) but I was going to all sorts of doctors, ending up in the ER several times and yet pretty much all my tests were normal, other than my test for my autonomic nervous system functions came back abnormal and I also went to a functional medicine doctor and paid out of pocket for special hormone testing and it came back with super high levels of cortisol, all which now I know could be explained being secondary to PAWs. The PAWs was awful. I just didn’t even know it was related to the weed so after eight months, I started smoking again same thing happened. I couldn’t tolerate it but yet my addiction overrode the signals and just kept me smoking even though I didn’t enjoy it anymore. I smoked for about six months and then I stopped again for about six months and went into PAWs again still didn’t know what was happening. Still went into a frantic state going to the ER and going to 1 million doctors trying to figure out what was wrong with me. After the six months of sobriety the second time quitting, I was starting to turn a corner for better, which seemed to be about the timeline 6 to 8 months where things would just begin to settle down some, even just a little , the very first glimmers, and that’s when I would always start up smoking again this last and final time I smoked for 10 months straight again 😵💫😵💫😵💫, and I absolutely hated it entirely, thankfully I really started to come out of denial and realize that I was in fact reacting poorly to the cannabis and that I didn’t enjoy it AT ALL. It made me stop and think maybe there’s something going on with this cannabis and this whole health crisis I’ve been in for 3 years, maybe it’s connected 🧐 it was getting so bad, it seemed like my tolerance was going in reverse. I could not handle even a couple hits without plunging into a reaction of tensing up , feeling my heart race, my mind would start speeding up panicking, I would get twitches everywhere and feel all dizzy and disoriented brain fog, off balance like my coordination was being impaired and felt like I was glitching, super slow reaction time, and shakey and my chest and air ways tightening up like I couldn’t breathe, my jaw clenching, getting all flushed and feeling so weak in my body and feeling froze up like I didn’t want to move an inch, quite literally paralyzed in fear, I’d get stomach aches sometimes too and I’d just have the worst time, EVERYTIME, contemplating on everything negative and getting literally suicidal and telling myself I’m never gonna smoke again I need to stop I need to stop I need to stop but yet I kept smoking multiple times a day and I felt out of control like I wanted to stop so badly and I kept attempting to quit, but I kept failing, and I kept going back to it and it was getting so out of hand, it was just draining the life out of me. I felt sick and fatigued all the time. I’m pretty sure that I was in the beginning phase of CHS before the vomiting starts. Anyway, I’ve made it five months clean now and I’m still going through it. I don’t know if my recovery is gonna be a lot harder this time and long lasting because I’ve cycled on and off so many times.
The symptoms I’m still having fluctuating but still present : insomnia, I have times that I’ll stay awake for like say 33 hours straight and then crash for 15 hours and then the next night I’m thrown back into the insomnia loop and I’m just trying to get a grip and then I’ll have stretches where my sleep is actually getting back on track but even if I’m sleeping, I’m still waking up exhausted , and when another wave hits, everything gets super choppy and dysregulated all other again, anxiety, depression, no motivation, no interest, anhedonia, trouble staying on task or starting tasks, trouble focusing, a lot of autonomic issues like heart flutters, trouble breathing, random heat waves or flushing, dizziness, lightheadedness, pressure in my head, headaches, random nausea, twitches all over my body still , buzzy, internal vibrating sensations, EXTREME FATIGUE, feeling super lethargic, like my limbs are made of lead, I get out of breathe so easily, generally feeling extremely depleted, chronic pain, and feeling inflamed, my skin is so sensitive I get little rashes or breakouts , my hair seems super dry and unhealthy now, I’m super sensitive to meds, I got desperate and my doctor prescribed me gabapentin but sent me into a really big flareup especially the days following, i’ve tried a number of medications and even over-the-counter supplements, I can’t tolerate anything. I can’t even tolerate melatonin or magnesium glycinate. I’m really sensitive to heat, food, exercise, my luteal phase and menstrual cycles also play a big role in symptom severity, but some months it’s just the whole damn month sucks. I feel disabled. It’s so confusing because I feel like some of my withdrawal symptoms actually mimic some of the symptoms that the weed was causing me when I was still smoking it and I think it has something to do with my endocannabinoid system being downregulated in withdrawal, but it was already downregulated and burnt out while I was still using and the reason it felt so bad to smoke was because I was basically pouring fuel on the fire, over saturated myself with THC with a system that was far gone already , my whole ECS was offline for literally years before I even quit smoking this time.
Does anyone else relate to this ?