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Hi, I just had a thought about my cannabis usage over the past 5 years (with a 1 year break) that I began in my journal. I wanted to share it with you Cannabis can relieve anxiety in the moment, but if it breaks through, it will be more present. It will be more uncomfortable, and at times nearly unbearable. It will be a physical experience of anxiety without any limitation or method of managing it. What does this remind me of? My mother. I was not able to control my mother's anxiety. I was able to master this anxiety I felt by recreating my own mother in my head, and adhering to what I thought would make her more anxious, and by facilitating what I thought would make her less anxious. Many people experience uncontrollable anxiety when they first use cannabis. I did. Even now I sometimes do - often, in fact. Every smoking experience I've had over the past year has involved at least some anxiety while I've smoked. I think this is a sign of relative health compared to when I was able to smoke without any anxiety. What is the effect of cannabis overall on anxiety? It increases anxiety. This is because if cannabis is being used to manage anxiety, the user will not have to manage their anxiety with their foresight and frontal lobes, or an "inner parent" (not to be confused with an inner abuser). And the body will create more anxiety in response. When the body is then without cannabis, the person is left off unpracticed in managing their anxiety without cannabis. The more the cannabis use, the more frequent, the more well-timed, the more the person loses the ability to manage their anxiety without it. I think I used cannabis despite it making me more uncomfortable in my first uses because I felt insecure that there was not an uncontrollable source of anxiety in my life. I had spent my whole life managing anxiety from my mother, from the fact that I was afraid of being rejected and abandoned (another way of saying from my mother), from public school; that when I was living on my own at 19, doing well in a philosophy college course, I felt insecure by the relative lack of anxiety in my life, and I sought to create more. It was trauma-recreation to create an uncontrollable anxiety in my life that I would have to learn to master, and find ill-found joys in. It is no coincidence that my cannabis use began when I moved out of my mom's at 19, and that my anxiety management (in terms of alleviating it without cannabis) has worsened the more I've used weed. Thank you for reading and I hope this encourages you go avoid becoming addicted to cannabis, and to work to quit (with professional guidance if possible) if you are already addicted.