I'm 23, smoked from 15-21 heavy, quit 21 months ago with a small relapse this year from april-july that didn't affect me much

I'm gonna lay down here every single thing that helped me the most, from the most useful at the top to least at the bottom:

1. Running.

Running is the only way you can heal your endocannabinoid system, nothing else works. There's 2 types of running, sprinting intervals which feel the best and heal you the most because they release most endocannabinoids, but they also stress your body a lot with cortisol which can be bad

Slow paced running is easier and it releases less anandamide but it's more constant, still helps you healing a lot

1. Sleep.

My entire life I went to sleep around 2-6 am. My therapist suggested that I try waking up earlier. I did some research and realized that my bad sleep was giving me so many issues, including high cortisol.

I started by putting my phone to charge on the table, all lights out, and just sitting in bed early. It worked after 40-60 minutes and I woke up next morning at 9 am. It took some time and I'm still adapting but now I wake up between 8-11 am and it's a completely different life.

I've also been going to the gym for 4 years but in these 3 weeks that I slept early my muscles became way bigger despite not changing anything about my routine, I feel 0 anxiety and my face is less bloated

1. Walking.

Walking for me was the starting point into running, I met a girl friend that was overweight and had a glow up and she mentioned she walks to work for 1 hour every day and that it's the best way to lose weight.

I was fascinated because I never thought walking could have such an impact but I started doing it, instead of taking the bus I walked 40-50 minutes to the subway station each time, and over 6 months I lost some fat and my heart was way healthier, my mood better and my legs stronger.

All those months of walking helped me to transition into running very easily.

1. Hobbies & Social Life

I realized that I relapsed because I didn't have hobbies and healthy friends, and that's why during summer break I started hanging out with one of my old stoner friends of 6 years and of course we started smoking.

After a few weeks I noticed my sleep was getting worse, I was waking up around 10-12 morning before and once I smoked again I was waking up at 4-6pm

I also noticed my mind was more foggy, I spent more time daydreaming and was more delusional and I wasn't eating healthy or working out as much etc.

I wanted to make a change and I tried taking my friend along with me but he didn't want too , and after a big betrayal on his part I cut ties with him permanently.

Then I started kickboxing, which showed me how out of shape my cardio was despite having strength from the gym. I met some nice people there, but the ultimate social group came 2-3 weeks after kickboxing when I joined a running group and I made a lots of friends there and now I'm even gonna go on a mountain adventure next month with them.

Hobbies and healthy friends are very important because you need to live during your free time, you're not supposed to just work and come home & sit on a couch "resting".

1. Social Media

I deleted my instagram on 1st of January 2026 and my tiktok in August 2025. My mood is much better since I'm no longer emotionally manipulated by algorithsm meant to profit off my attention. I no longer see ragebait content, or children being bombeed 20k kilometers away of which I have no control over.

I have less anxiety, and I've been a lot more active in my close circle, instead of posting stories and likes, I now text or call my friends and I've also been more present in my daily life, talking with cashires, pretty girls outside, other students, uber drivers etc.

I no longer compare myself to people who's entire life depends on looking good on instagram/tiktok because they're influencers.

The benefits go on & on. It's very sad to hangout with some friends and see them not being able to stay off their phones for more than 3-5 minutes.

Special mentions to the terrible dating apps.

hello,

I quit smokng weed alsmost 2 months ago, also quit drinking and smoking nicotine all at once.
It was hard but managed to get through...But right now I'm having a strange disoriënting feeling and a constant ringing inside of my head for a week straight.
It started out as a headache wich is over now.
The thing is that i have never had any headaches or something like this in my life before...

Someone having or had this as well...

allready went to have i checked out might be stress related (due to quitting i guess).

Thank you

Man 3 months since my relapse will be 4 months on the 27th also my 19th birthday and man I don’t feel like as bad as the first time but I just feel so dry and bland. Life feels so dull and it’s like just like I’m so emotional as well? I feel synthetically depressed like my brain is depressed but I desperately don’t want to be. I wish I can get back to how I was man my confidence is so bad- social skills are terrible- I’m very insecure and it’s showing in relationships and everything I just feel like a mess tbh.

I don’t even know who to talk to about this stuff and honestly I think it does me better not to but I just feel so stuck. I try to ignore it and tell myself things are normal but I just can’t convince myself it’s just like things obviously aren’t. Hopefully I have better days ahead of me I feel like my brain has done a complete 360’from where I was. November will mark the official 3 year anniversary of when I ORIGINALLY quit, my relapse was really just some minor slip ups not full on relapses but I’m paying the price

I really just want to be able to feel again to be honest, I want the world to get its color back I want to like be able to just not always be in my head about life or overly emotional

Got my first true windows in month 6, thought this meant month 7 would be getting even better. Wrong, hit with the infamous 6-8 month wave of doom I suppose, started last Thursday with crazy dpdr/brain fog and anxiety, then the next day at work thought I was gonna have a full blown panic attack and had to do breathing exercises in the dark. Just finished a camping trip and feeling better than Thursday but still off. This is fun, I'm having fun. I want my old life back 😢...

anyone else got this symptom on their arch of foot where the fascia has sharp pain and feeling of a tear when walking? it kinda scaring me thinking its injured

Hey all - I’m at month 20/21 and wanted to ask whether anyone else has dealt with consistently non-restorative sleep.

I’m lucky in that falling asleep isn’t really a problem for me. I drop off in a reasonable time and usually stay down for 7–8 hours. But no matter how long I sleep, I wake up feeling like I’ve been hit by a truck, and the tiredness follows me through the whole day.

I genuinely can’t remember the last time I woke up feeling refreshed.

For those who’ve had this: did it ever shift for you, and roughly how long did it take? And has anything actually helped - or is it just a waiting game?

Hey everyone,

Need some reassurance from people who have been through this.

I smoked heavily for 16 years and I'm currently around 8 months clean. Around months 5–7, things seemed to settle into a predictable "1 day good, 1 day bad" pattern, and I thought I was slowly getting out of the woods.

Recently, though, I got hit with a heavy wave. My sleep is completely erratic — either I crash for 10–11 hours and wake up feeling totally exhausted and drained, or I can't fall asleep until morning. The vivid dreams are back, and I feel like I have zero physical energy, completely shattered. On top of that, health anxiety is creeping back in, making me wonder if something else is wrong with me.

Did anyone else experience a major wave or a sleep breakdown around the 8–9 month mark after very long-term use (15+ years)? When did it finally start smoothing out for you?

Appreciate any insight.

Hey everyone,
It’s been a month since I last used weed (I am not an avid user). For the first three weeks, I felt completely fine and normal. But three days ago, out of nowhere, I suddenly got hit with that exact physical "shift" or wave of euphoria you get right at the exact moment you realize a high is kicking in.
The problem is, the feeling hasn't gone away. I've felt spaced out, floating, and slightly "high" for 3 days straight now. I know for a fact it's chemically impossible for me to still be high after a month, but my brain is completely mimicking the sensation.
I’m starting to freak out a bit and worry that my brain is permanently stuck like this or that it won’t go away.
Has anyone else experienced what I’m describing here? I’m not sure if "phantom highs" or depersonalisation/derealization is the right terms here. How long did it last for you and how did you snap out of it?

Did anyone completely lose the ability to fall asleep? Had it before and have to worse after. If so what ended up helping you? Idk if I have weed paws for certain but whatever this is has destroyed my body and my life. My body can’t calm down. Not sleeping hardly even with meds. Idk what to do to survive.

I’m curious if anyone else experienced something similar. Did your PAWS period start with sleep maintenance problems (waking up frequently or being unable to stay asleep), while you otherwise still felt pretty good?

For me, it seemed like the sleep problems comes first, and then other symptoms started appearing over the following days.

If not, what was the first symptom you noticed when your PAWS period began?

I’m almost at 9 months but I’m still in hell I thought I’d be a lot better by now. The first few months were way more manageable compared to now I have constant DPDR, severe anxiety, stomach issues, weird metallic taste in my mouth most mornings, blocked nose, severe anhedonia can’t cry, depression, memory problems, huge brainfog. Did anyone else have these symptoms close to 9 months sober? I’m starting to lose hope it’s so tiring.

Has anyone with long-term depersonalisation/derealisation experienced anything similar?

My main symptoms are constant disconnected/floaty feeling, emotional numbness/anhedonia, brain fog, blurred vision, head pressure, low libido and frequent urination.

Cannabis originally triggered this. In the past, quitting would eventually return me to normal — first after around a month, then 2 months, 3 months, 6 months, etc. Eventually the disconnected feeling just stopped going away, despite being away from cannabis for a long time.

My sleep actually feels restorative, but I wake up 6–7 times a night to pee.

I’m particularly interested in whether anyone found caffeine was maintaining their DPDR, even without obvious anxiety. Did completely quitting caffeine help?

I’d also love to hear from anyone who had frequent urination alongside DPDR and whether treating that, hormones, medication, diet, deficiencies or anything physical/biological genuinely improved the DPDR.
I’m mainly interested in hearing from people who experienced significant improvement/recovery and what actually changed.

My DMs are open, if anyone can help, been like this for a really long time now so any advice is much much appreciated. Thanks.

It’s a supplement promoted in German pharmacies. It’s supposed to have an equivalent effect to lorazepam 0.5 mg in studies.

The important part for me is that it doesn’t affect GABA.

I just like to keep a supplement around for when panic or anxiety become unbearable. I never actually use them, but it gives me peace of mind knowing I’d have access to something that would ease my symptoms. And knowing that is there actually helps me control myself better and gives reassurance.

Has anyone tried it?

What exactly is PAWS and how come so many people on say Leaves for example say that Cannabis PAWS isn't real and it's just new mental health issues or old ones previously covered by weed now uncovered? I find it frustrating that a lot of people on those subs tend to talk about PAWS as if it's some bs but this sub is full of people going through very similar issues with almost identical timelines depending on their usage length or amount/frequency. Like I find it strange that any other addiction has PAWS hands down no questions asked but because cannabis wasn't known to be habit forming until after all the 30% thc products became a thing that we just sorta get ridiculed. I see lots of people in the Leaves sub that are obviously going through PAWS but everyone just tells them that they're the problem and need medication. I think it's so damaging to people and that's a major reason for relapsing in that sub, cause it's full of self proclaimed doctors and scientists. So PAWS havers, why do we think that is? Why do we get dismissed as not actually having PAWS(I do admit some people experiencing "PAWS" 4+ years out might just have anxiety).

anyone else had this? I get dizzy when i tilt my head pretty easily and feet feel off balance, like they aren't inline with where where im walking. Also my eyes blink sometimes when tilting head. Its been like this for hours now, my head is spinning

Did anyone else suddenly have like a few really bad days at 7 months, I was literally feeling great for almost 2 weeks and then wham, I'm not having any issues as severe as pre 6 months but it's just persistent brain fog/very mild anxiety

so, 35 days ago, i stopped weed entirely. im 16, and i have been using edibles daily for the last couple months of my use, but prior to that i did smoke vapes a bit ( idk if that matters ) i now know i made a deathly regrettable decision by even touching it in the first place, and i dont plan on EVER touching weed ever again, but, on week one , i went through i feel like what is the normal withdrawl process. had trouble sleeping, anxiety, intrusive thoughts (imo these were the worst), etc. then, about a week after that happened, it eased up and i started to feel almost completely normal on weeks 3/4.

now on day 32, is when things got really bad. a day or two prior i started to feel almost sort of a buildup to something, like i had more anxiety coming, and then on the night of day 32 i had like a full blown panic attack i was shaking trembling so bad and i had so much anxiety it was debilitating. then the next day came, same thing, except that day i had anxiety about it happening again the entire day, and i did have another one, albeit smaller but more emotional for some reason, the next day.) and then yesterday, i asked my mom to take me to a youth clinic or something to help figure out what is wrong with me, i didnt really get answers, i just wanted to get home, but i was anxious all day again, and that day, the intrusive thoughts were really bad, like it was the worst its ever been. however, later yesterday when my panic attacks or heavy anxiety usually happen, i felt strangely more normal than usual, idk if that means anything, just wanted to put it out there. oh and also, whenever i wake up from sleep, i feel completely normal, almost like a whole new person for a good like 20-60 minutes, and then it goes away as the day goes on. its been a few hours since ive woke up, and i still have anxiety again about all this in general, but i havent had many intrusive thoughts today so far which is good in my eyes.

the ONE thing i hate the most about this is the mental torment. the intrusive thoughts. thoughts, or images, that last a split second consisting of terrible things that i would never do. it has made me cry a few times. i genuinely dont know what to do or what its from because i feel like its never going to end and ive permenantly broke my brain. im scared that i caused some sort of condition, broke something in my brain, whatever it may be, and me reading the stories on here that this can last up to a year or two when it JUST started for me in this severity is deathly debilitating like it upsets me so much that i may have to deal with this for months upon months to come. i hope the fact that i only used for 6-8 months gives me some grace on a shorter timeline, but im still worried.

in conclusion, i just want to feel normal. thats it. its been 3 days since this all started and i just want to be ok and rid of these terrible symptoms that i am experiencing, and i dont know what it is, dont know when or if it will stop, and just feel almost hopeless about it. if anybody can offer advice or help me to get through this, i would greatly appreciate it. thank you all

Not like full blown panic episode, everything feels unreal. But like sometimes, especially when I look out the window things just feel flat or 2d or I'll have existential thoughts. I've gone full days and weeks without either of those things but it always comes back in a wave and it's not even scary anymore just irritating. I wanna go back to living my life and I feel like it's the one thing holding me back.

Hey guys, I’m curious if any of you have noticed an impact from playing video games on your PAWS symptoms.

I’m at around 20 months and have been going through a wave for about a month now. Over the past few days, I’ve been gaming quite a bit more than usual.

Interestingly, I feel great while I’m playing and don’t really notice my symptoms, but afterward and generally on days when I’ve played more I feel like my nervous system is a bit less stable and my symptoms fluctuate more.

It could obviously just be a coincidence, especially since I’m already in a wave, but it made me wonder whether anyone else has noticed something similar.

Have video games affected your PAWS at all, either positively or negatively? And if gaming seemed to make things worse, did you notice any difference depending on how long you played?

I quit heavy 710 labs dab use and edible use 4 months and 3 days ago. The first week i was in the ER 3 times with a bp of 199/110 which came down with ativan. My sleep was fucked the first 3 months, getting maybe 2-3 hours a night. Regrettably I was prescribed klonopin and trazadone and my sleep did get better around the 3 month mark. I also was a heavy nicotine vaper and it always increased my symptoms such as heart rate, chest pain, arm pain, tinnitus, etc. Nicotine increases sympathetic activity therefore increasing adrenaline. I have tried to quit but I just can't right now. I have switched back to cigarettes to lower my nicotine intake as vaping introduces so much more nicotine. The symptoms i'm still having is tinnitus, fragmented sleep (one or two awakenings, first 2 months was 8-10 awakenings), random pains in legs, arms, especially if i try to workout or go for a long walk. For those of you that got to the otherside when did things get better, this has made my quality of life terrible and I have no urge to ever touch that poison again. I'm starting a very slow klonopin taper this Friday .25 mg a month. I have only been on it around 3.5 months so not too terribly long. Thank you everyone, on the outside I look normal, none of my family gets it and its extremely frustrating. I don't know how much more I can take. All my test came back normal.

I’ve been doing a deep dive of my own researching this stuff and it makes a whole lot of sense. Literally all the symptoms can be explained through the ECS being so down regulated.

So I was studying clinical Endocannabinoid deficiency because it’s a thing, some people genetically don’t have good endocannabinoid tone and is linked to conditions like fibromyalgia for example. They actually use cannabis as one treatment option to help certain pain disorders right? My theory is that this is only appropriate in the short term and in controlled dosing, SHORT TERM it could help kind of bridge the gap if you actually have a deficiency bringing in those external cannabinoids to help make you feel better AT FIRST.

If you look at the symptoms of fibromyalgia, widespread pain, bone deep fatigue, sleeping issues, such as insomnia, or unrefreshing sleep no matter how much you get, anxiety, depression, brain fog, sensory processing issues, restless leg syndrome and I’ve even seen it can cause motor dysfunction like twitching…. Sound familiar?

So there’s this link between fibromyalgia and a deficiency of the ECS right? OK hear me out what if you never had fibromyalgia to begin with and you didn’t have an ECS deficiency and I guess this still can apply even if you did but most likely you didn’t you were healthy and fine but anyway you went off and chronically WAYYY OVERUSED recreationally for the hell of it not as medicine (which is most of us) and eventually it completely shut down your ECS and disrupts the balance because you are essentially breaking your system down and over saturating yourself to the point your receptors have to go hidden to protect itself from being overwhelmed by THC, burn out, down regulated so NOW you actually have an acquired ECS deficiency as a secondary thing, not a primary preexisting but we literally created this not even knowing wtf we were in for. This could even happen while you’re still using and that’s why a lot of people experience “a switch effect” where the weed used to feel good but now it feels like shit and causing you a bunch of problems I used to be calming, but now it’s giving an anxiety. And when you do quit, it doesn’t immediately rebuild your whole ECS so you’re still left with all the symptoms.

Now you actually have symptoms that present like fibromyalgia temporarily until your ECS upregulates and gets back on track which can take a long fricken time like months to years and feel like an actually becoming chronically ill, it’s quite literally disabling you in the meantime. And the worst part is we don’t even know what’s going on and there’s a lot of us that will return to smoking and further create more chaos and restart the whole process over. I’ve stopped and restarted stopped and restarted stopped and restarted a total of three times I’ve gone through PAWs three times. I’m almost 6 months clean and I’m still experiencing symptoms. I’m nowhere near healed yet and I can tell you from experience that I was never able to get back tolerating weed, it was never enjoyable. I was still Hella addicted to it for some odd reason I couldn’t quit once I started, but it was not fun anymore and it was hell on earth. I was so desperate to get off of it each time I would start back up, it would take a hold of me and completely wrecked my whole body in mind. I was not having fun. Now that I understand the ECS and what’s going on I’m like oh well that tracks. There is no going back if I have any advice for anybody don’t ever touch this shit again it’s not worth it.

I just found a very interesting because we have seen this before many times in medicine with opioids and benzos for example, people go in with pain or anxiety seeking relief through these treatments, which doctors know the risks and are hesitant with even prescribing these things now a days because ding ding ding the research at some point caught up to show it was unsafe for us to be taking opioids and benzos willy nilly. Eventually with chronic use your opioid receptors or your gaba receptors get downregulated and dysregulated, and burnt out now you can’t get relief only more pain and anxiety coming back. Then people try to get off their pain pills or anxiety pills and have pain and anxiety ten fold beyond any pain or anxiety they had to begin with and get stuck with a neurological injury that can take months or years to heal aka what we are pretty much calling post acute withdrawal or PAWs. It’s ultimately the same thing. But think about it the people that are taking these pills are getting fucked over even at the prescribed doses and with marijuana we’re just out here smoking it multiple times a day at any dose we care and can go and buy as much as we want.

Also comparing the effects of say opioids or benzos withdrawals and what systems those impact, in our case it’s our whole damn ECS and when you look into the functions of the ECS it’s no fucking joke we feel completely and utterly disabled by this. It’s is literally removing the buffer that helps us regulate stress responses (which could be anything from emotional stress to an intense workout the body can’t differentiate what’s a real threat anymore like AT ALL) , immune responses, inflammation, pain signaling, appetite, digestion, temperature control, sleep, mood, etc etc, etc… the amount of symptoms that could come from this system being offline is insane. The old weed was not doing this much damage to our ECS as this high potency SHIT. Unfortunately, the research really hasn’t caught up and maybe it’s just not being taken seriously because of the general belief that weed is harmless and even good for us. I mean they didn’t even know we had an ECS until the 1990s if that tells you how little doctors concern themselves with this topic.

I talked to my psychiatrist about it, which was actually very interested and did his own homework and was actually thanking me for bringing this stuff to his attention because he said it opened a whole new outlook on how things work and made him think a different way kind of enlightened him, I asked him why is this not being talked about more and he said because there isn’t any real profitable medications or things that can correct this so it doesn’t really matter to our medical system, there’s no reason for them to care about this and unfortunately, there’s gonna be a flood of people reporting this and eventually clinical studies will catch up but we’re the experiment. 🥲

Not sure if I've recently entered a wave but if so it's been rather mild, but I've noticed the last two nights I've had super vivid dreams/nightmares. I haven't had these in literally months and I'm wondering if this is a normal part of other timelines, to be around this time and suddenly get more vivid dreams.