Weed isn’t an anti-anxiety drug for everyone. I know people who have tried smoking weed to calm their nerves and the most it has done for them is reduce them to a ball of nerves while they cry listening to Taylor Swift. It did, however, eventually start working for me. The sensation was new, though, owing to the fact that before weed I had been on every antidepressant you could think of and all they did was make me feel like a shell of a human.
When I moved to LA and started smoking weed regularly for the first time in my life without vomiting over everyone I was with, it changed my life for the better. I started to feel less nervous in social situations, and finally I started to feel like myself. Prior to smoking weed everything was about me. I was a nonfiction writer who constantly was examining my feelings on feelings and how I felt about even the most banal shit. There is something to be said about living in your head at all times because every movement someone makes feels like it someone revolves around you. Some call it self-absorption, at the time I chalked it up to being a highly functional person with OCD.
I understand that weed isn’t for everyone. Sometimes it makes you feel anything but relaxed, but so far for me it has worked. I stopped worrying that the world was going to crash down around me at every moment. I took chances. I started asking boy’s for their numbers when I went out the bars with my friends. I began to be able to laugh at things in the way you laugh so hard it makes your belly ache.
Going out with friends started seeming like an adventure instead of a chore. My life stopped feeling one long day stretched into years and started feeling like every moment was in vibrant colors. When I smoke weed, I forget everything about myself that makes me feel unworthy of love and respect. I am able to finally start to see myself clearly.
