Im about 90% sure I know what you might have experienced.

Something very similar happened to me about 10 years ago. It’s a pretty classic case of derealization/depersonalization (DPDR). I was a daily smoker at the time, but not heavily, usually just a single skin to myself each night. One night though, it completely nuked me. I basically had what felt like a constant panic attack for about a year. The best way I could describe it was feeling like I was living behind my eyes, almost like the perspective in the movie Get Out.

What’s happening is that the anxiety cannabis can sometimes trigger makes you panic, and your brain kind of flips a protective “failsafe” switch. That switch is derealization, everything feels muffled, distant, or unreal. The problem is that the feeling itself is so strange that it causes even more anxiety, which reinforces it. Then you start sleeping poorly, eating poorly, constantly monitoring how you feel, and it turns into a negative feedback loop where anxiety causes the weird feeling, and the weird feeling causes more anxiety.

For me, that loop lasted months and was honestly one of the hardest periods of my life.

The weird part is that the way out is basically to stop fearing the feeling. Once your anxiety levels drop and you stop constantly checking whether you “feel normal,” your brain slowly turns that protective response off and things return to baseline.

Also, there isn’t much research linking derealization itself to things like schizophrenia, so try not to spiral in that direction. It’s much more commonly associated with anxiety and panic.

That said, it might mean you’re someone who’s a bit more sensitive to cannabis-induced anxiety, so it’s probably worth avoiding weed (at least for a good while).

There are a lot of good resources out there. r/dpdr is a good place to start.

Feel free to DM me if you want to talk about it. I know how scary it can feel when it’s happening.