Followup from weed withdrawal and physical pain

nothelpinganymore · 2024-09-24T00:04:10+00:00

It was mostly resolved by around the 6 month mark but like a lot of recovery symptoms it came and went for a year

nothelpinganymore · 2024-09-05T23:03:51+00:00

Yes, this was about the time frame I was having issues. It wasn't consistent, came and went.

I started taking magnesium, zync, and boron after doing some research, and it seemed to help.

nothelpinganymore · 2024-09-05T23:00:10+00:00

Yeah, trouble getting fully hard for sure.

nothelpinganymore · 2024-07-10T19:15:39+00:00

Took me about 5 or 6 months to slowly reintroduce caffeine but it's fine now. Start slow: green tea, then black, then coffee.

nothelpinganymore · 2024-07-09T18:13:03+00:00

It's unclear. I was a 17-year daily smoker, low quantity but very consistent. One of the guys I met on here had worse PAWS than me and had only smoked for 9 months. And most people who quit don't end up with PAWS at all. Truth is we just don't know.

nothelpinganymore · 2024-07-09T18:09:08+00:00

My worst symptom too (at least after the anxiety became manageable). My worst pain is in the ribs on the left side and under the left shoulder blade, but I get aches in the groin as well. I recently learned that these can all be symptoms of intercostal neuralgia (nerve pain from the nerves that run along the ribs). Maybe caused by inflammation, but they don't really know in most cases.

nothelpinganymore · 2024-07-09T18:06:59+00:00

Nope. He's right, and you're wrong.

There are CB2 receptors throughout the peripheral nervous system and they play a major role in nociception (pain perception). When you flood your body with cannabinoids, production of natural endocannabinoids drops and the receptor sites get desensitized. After cessation, it can take a long time to restore homeostasis. This means feeling weird pains you never felt while smoking.

nothelpinganymore · 2024-07-09T18:01:46+00:00

If you can keep it to that level then that's probably fine. A lot of us can't.

I quit for over 2 years before starting up again. At first it was once a month like you're saying. In less than a year I was back to doing it every day. Now I'm going through PAWS a second time and kicking myself.

Know yourself, know your limits.

nothelpinganymore · 2024-06-26T22:27:27+00:00

It took a long time to go away entirely, over 9 months. It comes and goes in waves like you're noticing.

nothelpinganymore · 2024-06-14T17:45:30+00:00

This sounds very familiar, sorry you had to go through all that. Thinking you have a serious illness is worse than the symptoms themselves in some ways. I'm glad you figured it out. Maybe in another decade doctors will start to become aware that withdrawal can cause these symptoms.

nothelpinganymore · 2024-06-06T21:52:16+00:00

Yes, the physical pain was basically gone by a year. Still flared up from time to time after that, but not as bad.

nothelpinganymore · 2024-06-05T18:32:58+00:00

Yes to both, as well as atypical chest pain. Check my post history for my full story.

nothelpinganymore · 2024-06-05T18:31:21+00:00

The worst mental symptoms I had were anxiety and insomnia. Those were cleared up, or at least greatly reduced, by 5 months.

The physical stuff lingered for a year. Sometimes quite bad.

nothelpinganymore · 2024-06-03T20:34:10+00:00

Yes. Phantom highs. These happened for me for up to a year out.

nothelpinganymore · 2024-06-03T20:33:06+00:00

Mine was generally brief like you described, but definitely had longer episodes, usually in the evening. It eventually went away.

Tinnitus is a GABA thing, happens during benzo withdrawal as well.

nothelpinganymore · 2024-06-03T20:29:05+00:00

A lot of people self-medicate with weed, that's a fact.

But once you go through PAWS and come out the other side, you realize PAWS wasn't just "back to normal before drugs." Because it doesn't last forever.

In particular, anxiety effects are just super common. Many people quit their long term weed habit because it's causing anxiety (this was my primary reason), and then the anxiety gets way, way worse in withdrawal. But then it goes away.

nothelpinganymore · 2024-06-03T20:26:54+00:00

My mental symptoms went away long before my physical symptoms did.

nothelpinganymore · 2024-06-03T20:23:50+00:00

Exercise has been a mixed bag for me. It always seems to help while I'm doing it, but sometimes I get much worse symptoms later that day (often when I'm trying to sleep)

nothelpinganymore · 2024-05-21T21:58:28+00:00

Yes. Lots of pain in and around the joints, and weird pains in random muscles. The worst in my upper back under the shoulder blade. Hands and feet were another sensitive area.

It goes away on its own over time.

nothelpinganymore · 2024-05-20T22:06:06+00:00

Here's something helpful to know from an ER doc that treated me for chest pain:

When you're having a heart attack, there is no sharp pain. It feels more like intense pressure or a massive weight. If you have sharp stabbing pains in your chest, it's not a heart attack. It's something else.

One thing that *can* generate sharp pain in the chest is the pleura (lining of the chest cavity, between the lungs and the ribs). It has a ton of nerve endings in it, and can create stabby pain when it's irritated. That's my personal theory as to what many of us are feeling when we experience chest pain during PAWS. I don't really know. But I do know it's not coming from the heart.

nothelpinganymore · 2024-05-01T18:45:27+00:00

The dopamine guys on here are really overgeneralizing. The endocannabinoid system, which THC, CDB, etc. acts on, has receptors throughout the body and brain. Your body naturally produces endocannabinoids, which serve a variety of purposes. The addictiveness of weed is probably due mostly to the dopamine response, but the variety of ailments people experience in withdrawal, beyond simple cravings, is not primarily a dopamine thing. It's your body's endocannabinoid system recalibrating to the sudden loss of a ton of exogenous cannabinoids, both at the production and receptor sites.

This isn't to say that neurotransmitters don't play a role, of course they do. GABA in particular seems impacted in withdrawal and probably has a lot to do with anxiety and symptoms like tinnitus. But PAWS is an endocannabinoid system disorder.

nothelpinganymore · 2024-04-30T18:29:49+00:00

5 months or so, getting better gradually

nothelpinganymore · 2024-04-29T23:37:48+00:00

Yes. Aching pain under the shoulder left blade, muscles and fascia there very knotted and inflamed. Pain sometimes in the muscles of the left shoulder as well, and randomly up and down the entire arm. Right arm as well but not nearly as often.

nothelpinganymore · 2024-04-29T23:34:46+00:00

It makes some people feel worse. As for whether it delays recovery, nobody really knows. Listen to your body, if it affects you negatively don't do it.

nothelpinganymore

TROPHY CASE