Edibles Vs Anxiety Disorder

Okay, so if you are reading this, you are not against the plant known as Marijuana. It also means my title has caught your attention, so hello and thank you for stopping by. This short story is less of a story and maybe more of a heads up to others so that they don't have to go through what I did.

I have mild to severe Anxiety Disorder which just basically depends on the day. On a recent camping trip, I was offered edibles in the form of brownies and cookies. I had a piece of each. This was my first mistake. I should have said no and now on in my life, I will be saying no. About an hour had passed and I felt nothing, absolutely nothing, so I thought maybe the two alcoholic beverages that I had had were blocking the effects. Another hour or so passed and I was sitting on my camp chair and then all of a sudden, I started to feel strange, but the feeling was also a little familiar. I was having a mild panic attack. I knew it was mild and I knew it was a panic attack because that is basically me on the daily. A mild panic attack for me just involves an elevated heart rate and a sickly feeling in my head, heart and stomach. I turned to my sister-in-law and told her that I wasn't feeling well and that I was going to lay down in my tent.

All hell now started to break loose. I tried so hard to lay down and sleep it off but laying on my back the world was spinning and then laying on my sides just wasn't helping either. Now the paranoia has hit me!! It was such an internal battle because I knew that it was the edible making me paranoid but my paranoia was telling me that it was instinct. I had convinced myself well and truly that the men that gave us the edibles were going to kill us all (we were a group of only women camping). I called over my sister-in-law and told her what I had "figured out". She tried her best to convince me that it was just the paranoia but I WAS SO SCARED!! I was absolutely TERRIFIED! I have never been so scared in my life. Two of the men tried to calm me down as well, telling me that they weren't going to hurt us, but the voices in my head just told me, "Yeah, of course they are going to tell you they won't hurt you, that's what a murderer would say".

The voices in my head were BAD and even all the real voices around me of my friends and family, I was wondering whether or not the words I was hearing were actually what they were saying or whether my brain was hearing what it wanted to hear. It was the most conflicting feelings I have ever had. Then I had a little epiphany. My father has Schizophrenia and he hears voices and has paranoia and I just thought to myself, "My god, this must be how my dad feels every single day, this is horrible". Then I started to cry because I am a very empathetic person and in that moment, I felt my father's pain. Then after crying about my dad for probably 10min, my brain was back onto the fact that I was convinced that the edibles were laced with something other than Marijuana and that it was going to put me to sleep soon. No one would listen to me. I must have sounded like a lunatic. I didn't feel safe, the only person that could make me feel safe was my partner, so I called him. Crying I explained to him what I had done and how I was feeling. He tried to calm me down, reassure me that everything was going to be okay. While on the phone to my partner one of the men at the camp said, "Yeah I'm going to rape you". This made the situation so much worse. Still crying on the phone to my partner, I begged him to come pick me up, to save me. I was an hour and a half drive away from home, but you know what, he came for me. He may not have saved my life because no one got murdered that night, but he saved me mentally and emotionally. He wasn't angry at me, he didn't yell at me, he just saved me. As soon as I was in the car with him, my anxiety started to ease, I felt safe, the paranoia started to leave my brain and I could breathe easily again.

Moral of my story is that if you have Anxiety Disorder of any kind and have never tried edibles, I DO NOT recommend them. If my story can save even one person from going through what I did, then my story was worth writing. If you read this and decide you want to try it for yourself, well, I warned you.

Peace and Love always,

Eva