Two possible reasons for the Cannabis "fear" (and yes, I often get it too)

1) You are not in an environment that is truly comfortable, one where you can really experience what the plant has to show you. For myself, I find a calm environment in nature, and maybe by myself, is the best to really relax into the high. I don't usually get "the fear" from smoking if I am out camping somewhere.

2) Most marijuana these days is bred for high THC content. More ancestral forms of marijuana had a more balanced ratio of THC to CBD, and we know that CBD helps reduce the anxious, paranoid and fearful feelings that marijuana can bring.

I've noticed that when I smoke marijuana, it tends to amplify my internal thought processes. All the doubts and fears about my life and the future often come to the surface, screaming actually. When I first started smoking weed as a teenager, it was incredibly euphoric and pleasant, these days it can be a crap shoot, and I am much more cautious about where and when I smoke. Listen to your intuition - is this a good time to enjoy the herb?

Thanks for sharing this. I can imagine how difficult a thing this can be to admit to one's self. It's one thing to be told this by nagging loved ones, but to admit it to yourself and share the news is brave. Kudos to you!

For me, it's like having an extra wheel in the gyroscope of internal thinking. Weed spins it up, and if you're not mindful of how it shifts balance and response to emotional stimuli, it can drive thinking into unpredictable death spirals--not obsessed with death, per se, but the kind of thinking that makes you say things out loud that can have destructive consequences to adult relationships. It's almost like you can see certain consequences before they happen, and then by matter of simply having mindful awareness of the fear and related outcome, it all comes true because you put the wrong emotions forward (fear shines through). It's as if all the good things in life turn out to be a house of cards you've built, and if you blow on it just right it all falls down. But if you avoid thinking of it that way and are not afraid, it is as solid as anything we know and understand in life. It morphs from concrete to smoke and back again in the blink of an eye.

I've always been prone to 'decoupled' manners of thinking. Cannabis did not come first for me. I was an independent kid, and I always enjoyed magical thinking. I was the kid that would wander off into the woods and fall asleep if the weather was just right, and I've felt more comfortable in nature than congested cityscapes all my life. I believe there are some forms of thinking that are better suited to natural environment/setting, and they are NOT helpful if you find yourself dependent on complex social interactions.

Keep in mind we've only been doing this modern western thing for a very short period of time. A specialist in one environment is an awkward outsider in another.


I'll go a step further out on the limb with a working hypothesis. I think 'the fear' is a reaction to manipulating insight shamans know as dreamweaving. I believe insight is malleable just like memory is. I know it's a weird concept, and I make no claims. Emotional impressions of events to come shape our experience of them; this part we know for sure. Why not then extend it one step further as a paradox, like Schrödinger's cat? Both outcomes of love and fear are possible, with a spectrum between. Both outcomes of resistance and flow are possible, with a full spectrum between. And what if this idea of dreamweaving shaped where on the continuum your consensus reality fell?

Wouldn't that be an interesting personal discovery?

Well said Warrior. I fully believe everything you just said. Except for the dreamweaving theory. Although I do like it. But it just sounds like you WANT me to be schizophrenic..

Nah, just kidding. I like being schizoid. Makes life way more interesting. Do you think you can fit my theory of a Cryogenic form of energy attraction into your workable hypothesis? Warmth being the complete opposite of crygenic attraction in which warmth travels the other way and pushes you into a direction rather than attracting something to ur direction.

Really is interesting. Wow! I'm keeping ur idea with me and see if it works



Thanks for linking. Turned out to be very interesting indeed. Wonder how it affects Vaped DMT. And what role Adrenaline plays in IV methods. So many factors to consider, really. I have seen speculation on Adrenaline as a possible factor for Ego-death. Why not? It activates so much subconscious processes that the Ego really is not anymore necessary. Perhaps the vapor particles is also the reason why I get chest pains from smoking MJ.

On another note. There's quite a learning curve for smoking MJ in a GVG. The vapor is extremely painful most of the times when I have tried to smoke it in the past. Not an ideal machine. It sometimes works though. Guess I'll just have to keep trying.



There was definitely fear from the first time where I have tried it. High strain THC that is for sure. I think I agree with Warrior and I actually think the natural THC and CBD content of the plant are there to balance each other out naturally.

This plant is turning out to be more and more psychedelic the more I think about it.
What do you guys mean with loops though? I know them from mushrooms but I have never experienced loops on MJ.

I'm a light weight. In my earlier years when I first started smoking I would get extremely high very easily. I would be slightly panicked until I came down. Once my tolerance was built up it no longer did this.

I ended up quitting after several years of constant all day everyday smoking. Since then if I smoke it takes an insanely small amount to get me ripped hard. I tried to lightly get back into not too long ago but I get fairly strong anxiety. If I'm drinking it seems the anxiety is nonexistent unless I smoke quite a bit.

I have smoked a couple strains where the anxiety was much less. I found edibles are sometimes doable, although my last few I had fairly strong anxiety.

It would be nice to be able to smoke a little bit without any anxiety but I find weed to be extremely strong for me.

Paranoid, like me. I do focus meditation. Something I have learned in a mushroom trip seems to save me each and every time. I think of myself as a ball of consciousness. A tiny vibrant particle. This helps me relax in pretty much every situation. Well.. Especially psychedelic situations. It has less of an effect when people are giving me anxiety.

I am now trying to control energy in the stomach and feel warmth across the entirety of my being rather than have it stuck in the upper area of my chest and causing hypertense breathing. Slow rythmic breathing. A rythem is good either way as long as i'm not around people! haha. Well, not around the wrong people

It's a fun way to approach it if you are willing to play with it and have fun. If you take it too seriously you'll drive yourself looney. I like it because it promotes a way of life that makes me very mindful of my emotional response to everything, and it promotes a Taoist-like approach to life; that is, thinking of life as a gently flowing river. Flow with the river, not against it. Future events (and insight) can then come to you as ripples on a surface of something we don't understand. Then you guide yourself emotionally. Emotions are the rudder. This way of thinking works well for me socially because I find that when I am open minded with people I encounter, and if I am not attached to any outcome, the state of mind has a magnetic quality. People see me as 'cool' about stuff, for lack of a better term. People are drawn to me when I can embody that state for periods of time. Combine that with good intentions, and suddenly doors in life open where you didn't know there were doors.

On the contrary, if I walk around acting paranoid and fearful of things, people detect that like kryptonite to superman. It's amazing how quickly and effectively body language portrays your internal state. The only way to have any 'control' over it is to genuinely feel good on the inside. Even if they can't put a finger on it and describe it, people can tell how you are feeling. It's uncanny. We can attract or repel social encounters simply by walking into a room and feeling good or bad.

I firmly believe that emotional states have way more impact on the course of our lives than consensus reality would have us believe.


Edit: Sorry, I forgot to address your question.

It's an interesting idea. I like to think of sentient beings as entropy stabilizing forces that which enable an encapsulation of consciousness and ego. Entropy is higher in the surrounding system, and lower within the organism. Therefore all enzymatic processes and biochemistry have low activation energies compared to the same reactions outside of the body. I can see how heat and cryogenics would then relate back to entropy. Cool idea!