Gemma Speck

Now, one of the main reasons is that and one of the main reasons it has such a different effect is simply because we have different brains and therefore different cannabinoid systems and

Different sensitivities to substances, different psychological profiles that impact how we interpret the physical and emotional sensations of weed.

This is all affected by things like personality, genetics, stress, even the setting that we are in when we use it currently, when we first used it.

THC changes how the brain filters attention, filters reward and emotion differently.

But it can also feel very different depending on what is already going on internally or the state of your CB2 or CB1 receptors.

Despite a lot of research suggesting that there is a casual link between cannabis and anxiety, a large 2024 review from researchers based at UCLA said,

actually suggests that this association can be best explained by the fact that anxiety predisposing individuals tend to use cannabis more as a method of self-medication compared to people who don't have an anxiety disorder.

So this suggests that it's not necessarily cannabis usage overall that makes you anxious, makes everybody anxious.

But it's just that when people with a certain anxiety profile or a certain personality do use cannabis, the effect of that on their anxiety is huge.

a lot worse but also they may be more likely to try it in the first place or lean on it in order to self-soothe because of this promise initially that it's this calming chill out really dopey kind of feeling

Now, how our anxiety presents beyond cannabis use just in general is also different from person to person.

Some people feel anxious when they feel out of control.

Some people feel anxious when they feel like they have too much control and they're too overstimulated.

They're too alert.

They're too aware.

You can kind of guess which person is going to have a worse reaction.

Two people might both think that they're anxious, but for somebody, weed is really calming.

For others, it's not.

For the person for whom their anxiety really manifests as needing to be alert, wanting to be on top of things, consuming weed might not always give them the break from time, memory, and place and sensations that they want.

It just feels like dissociation.