Brain Fog from Marijuana Use

[Unregistered]

A friend of mine convinced me to try marijuana 1 time. I do not use it, and did not use it previously. I had a severe reaction to it and my "high" was rather terrible feeling and lasted around 1 full day even after I went to sleep and woke up- but more concerning to me now is that since then I have been experiencing a brain fog that has persisted for around 2-3 weeks.
I am actually uncertain if I was like this before or if the marijuana use triggered a reaction. I know that my mind has been much more clear before. I have looked online and I might try magnesium supplements to address any metal imbalances in my system. And possibly Apple Cider Vinegar to address any possible bacteria/yeast. It is a little better if I sleep a full night. But my mind is not as clear as it used to be. My vision is suddenly fuzzier than it used to be, but I suspect it is due to my brain, not my eyes. I also seem to be less capable of seeing multiple things all at once- my focus doesn't 'scan' over my vision as much as it did before the incident with the marijuana. Right after the 'high' I could barely focus on things in smaller areas as far as reading or focusing goes- it is better than that now but a less severe(but still bothersome and uncomfortable) impairment seems to remain. This also feels like the same thing is effecting my general awareness of the space around me. Whereas my awareness used to be clearer, now it feels as though it is surrounded by a fuzz or a fog, I might even describe it as feeling 'seams' around my general awareness of space. I think it may have effected my memory slightly, but not to a very large degree. It is mostly just my present awareness that has been effected.



Are there any suggestions dealing with this specific case of brain fog that I might be able to use for a 'cure'? I am 22 years old, I do not do any drugs at all (except for the occasional social drinking) I couldn't believe that a single use of marijuana would have such a huge impact on my mental health. Much appreciation for any responses.

[Unregistered]

Me again- I went for a walk around the neigborhood for around 20ish minutes and I made sure to breathe in deeply to get a good dose of oxygen, seems to have helped a little bit. But the fog is still there. I deeply regret trying the marijuana and just wish I had known that this would have happened! The experience itself was probably the worst experience I have ever had to go through. If it is any indication of the effect it had on me, during the 'high' it felt as though time started skipping for a really long time- like I would only experience half or less of each second and my heartbeat started feeling rapid because I would only be conscious of the part of each second where it would beat. I also became aware of my blood in an odd way that made it feel very hot and was aware of my throat going deep into my chest. I am saying all of this because maybe the high I had damaged part of my brain, even though it was just a single use. I VERY MUCH hope that I can get it corrected because my quality of life is being affected by the after-effects.

[registered]

I deeply regret trying the marijuana and just wish I had known that this would have happened!

Hi,

Unfortunately it's very hard to say to someone "if you have this it will do x" as everybody is different and will react differently.

One thing I would try and find out is if your family has a history of mental health problems? It's nothing to freak out over just something to be considered.

I can remember the first time I actually got a real 'high' and what you're describing:

it felt as though time started skipping for a really long time

was what I can *remember*, we were watching a movie and I can only remember one scene from it

[BFB]

Hi and welcome,

It probably doesn’t seem that likely that using marijuana just one time would create such a reaction, some people can have very bad reactions to all kinds of different drugs including marijuana even if it is a relatively small percent, but these sort of reactions from what I have heard are probably more likely to be things like acute anxiety, panic attacks, etc. Marijuana is known for causing brain fog, it did with me, you can read more about my experience here:

http://www.forummatters.com/forums/s...osis-treatment

But I was a heavy user for quite a long time and most the people I have heard of experiencing this sort of effect usually are too, if experiencing this from just using the once is possible then I would imagine it is very rare indeed, but obviously rare does not mean impossible, maybe it can trigger these sort of symptoms from just using once who knows? Who can say for certain that it can’t, maybe it has triggered some kind of dissociative disorder or something. At the end of the day it all comes down to how you were before and what you have experienced since, only you can know the difference between the two regardless of what anyone else tells you, although it sounds like even you are a bit confused as to when what exactly happened, but unfortunately confusion can go hand in hand with the condition.

Anyway even if marijuana has triggered it I am sure it will pass in time, unless there is something else going on which may need looking into which could be a distinct possibility, my advice would probably be to go and get yourself checked out by a doctor just to make sure there isn’t anything else going on.

Take care and please keep us posted on how it goes.

All the best,

[BFB]

Great advice registered, if you can find out if anybody else in the family has mental health problems that may shed a good deal of light on as to how likely it is you may have triggered something for which you have a underlying predisposition for experiencing, if someone has a vulnerability for mental health problems there are usually others in the family with similar problems.

All the best,

[registered]

unfortunately confusion can go hand in hand with the condition.

my advice would probably be to go and get yourself checked out by a doctor just to make sure there isn't anything else going on.

I totally agree with these. If you're still unsure or worried, go and see your doctor, it's strictly confidential too.

Great advice registered

Thanks and Hi

[Unregistered]

Hey again- thank you for the responses.

I was diagnosed with ADHD as a child and was forced to take ritalin for a short period of time (1 year), they took me off because it 'zombified' my personality. I have read my reports and I was marked as being seriously emotionally disturbed as well as having an issue with anxiety and motivation that effected my work at school. But I don't know that it was very serious, the teachers and counselors in the report stated that my performance was based on if I wanted to do the work or not- my ability lagged behind my willingness/motivation to work.

That is the only thing I know about for myself, I do believe that I have a problem with anxiety and it has effected me in multiple areas, but thus far I have been able to live just fine as though there wasn't an issue. And I have had several emotional disturbances due to emotional internalization but I have gotten much better with that from the time when the reports were made, which was generally from elementary-9th grade or so. They stopped taking reports after that, it may be because I was moving and switched schools or because I was deemed to have gotten sufficiently better, I don't know.

Board Forum Blogger- I had been reading your thread and I looked up on derealization and depersonalization. From the descriptions, I have experienced both derealization and depersonalization during being high but I still feel as though the world is 'real' and I feel like I am a part of my body afterwards- my awareness is just strangely fuzzy. I do not not seem to have a very positive reaction and it is probably best that I avoid trying it again (I don't really need substances to feel mellow anyways, I was just trying it experimentally)

I do meditate and have meditated regularly- (not while under the influence of anything)- a standard 'acceptable' length for meditation would generally be around 1 hour and the effects are fet. After feeling this brain fog I meditated and focused my attention and spirit onto the areas of my awareness that felt foggy, especially around my vision, and it caused my entire awareness to become a bit 'loopy' in an effect that meditation does not typically produce. By loopy I mean.. it was almost as though I was re-experiencing part of the high, but only the part that made me slow down mentally, not the parts that made me feel terrible. And since it was the result of focused meditation I was able to have a degree of control over the feeling based on how I chose to focus my attention. I did not continue meditating this way as I do not know what the actual effect on my mind would be, but I have been meditating regularly for years and this was an isolated experience as far as the particular kind of results that I got.

I do feel the effects of the brain fog have been lessoning over time, so I am hopeful that, at least after a couple more weeks pass (I hope at worst) then I should be mentally functioning as normal. The reason I was confused about it is because I wasn't sure if maybe I always felt foggy but the 'high' just made me aware of it, but the more I think about it now the more I remember how it felt to be less foggy and I'm pretty sure it wasn't always like this. Also the less foggy I feel the closer I come to fully realizing the feeling of being almost normal again. My diet has been pretty aweful for the past few months and I'm sure that it has contributed to the negative effects that I felt.

To expound on my experience with the time skipping- I would best compare ittyo the feeling of laying down, and getting a 'falling sensation', especially coupled with dizziness. But, while experiencing this, also experiencing a 'shuttering' in my entire consciousness, whereas I am not aware of parts of seconds, and each time I 'skip' part of a second, in rapid succession, it feels like a hard 'thump' in my whole awareness. It was very, very unpleasant to say the least. I was desperate for it to stop and felt like it never would. I also experienced feeling my blood in my veins being very hot and feeling the liquid swish around, which after reading about it may be because the marijuana lessoned the lining on my arteries- I had read that it can have that effect because it is a narcotic. I felt like I was shaking at first when I wasn't because I was feeling my heartbeat very strongly, and I thought my heart really was racing until I had someone feel my pulse and they told me it was normal. After paying closer attention I realised that my perception of time was skipping quickly- I would have never have even believed that this sort of thing could happen the way it did until I felt it myself. I tried going to sleep but the feeling was too powerful and kept me awake. I had a large degree of de-personalization as this point, it felt as though my awareness was at an odd off-center point. But not due to any spiritual phenomena, it seemed to be entirely biological- I have gone through spiritual experiences including astral projection, and this was not like that. I was drinking water to quicken the high and eating some spinach bread- I could feel the spinach bread all the way down my throat and felt all the food in my throat, down to the bottom where I could feel fluid and food moving around underneath the end point of the throat. At one point I also started having muscle spasms in my shoulder and in my head. Throughout all of this I had a heavy fog and I was not fully aware of my body or of the space around me. I also seemed to almost completely lose my sense of depth perception.

I thought it was strange because some of the things that I experienced have been associated with people with severe mental illnesses- I also noted that moving around seemed to make me feel just slightly better while I was moving. I have seen people who are mentally ill keep moving without stopping, such as rocking back and forth, etc. And I thought- what if they have to endure an experience like this on a continual basis and they are just trying to make it feel somewhat better? If I have the capability to be disabled myself I would rather not trigger it.

I have read some more about the brain fog, I am going to try to get more Omega-3 as that may help, as well as some soy milk as I think that should help too. It may be a number of things, but what I understand is that the chemicals in the brain that work with the neuro-transmitters are both inhibited and depleted by marijuana use. One of these is Dopamine and it also effects things like motivation etc- I have noticed that I have been less motivated to do some things I enjoy, and feel less 'rewarded' from recreational activities. I also feel that thinking about complex situations that require energy is unenjoyable for me and there is a degree of mental strain in pushing myself to do so that was not previously there.

It does make me at least feel somewhat emotionally better for being able to share my experience somewhere where people know what I am talking about.

Thank you all for reading this, I appreciate the support.

[BFB]

No probs we are happy to help, well at least you don’t have the other symptoms of DR/DP, to be honest although brain fog is something which is associated with dissociative disorders it isn’t by any means the only cause, I suppose I am using it as an example of the kind of thing cannabis can trigger rather than it being the most likely diagnosis or in your case at least, one of the things you find yourself doing in this situation is considering all kinds of different causes especially when your doctors are no use at diagnosing it, I don’t know if you read the whole of the thread I posted the link for but in the end I wrote about how my insulin resistance which is one of the things we have since been able to confirm as definitely happening, if this is the cause for my situation as it too can be responsible for many of my symptoms I have suffered from, but as you can tell the problem with diagnosing things like brain fog is that it can be a symptom of so many different things.

Anyway good luck with getting to the bottom of it, although if it is just a side effect of the marijuana and there is no other underlying problem, then I am fairly sure it will pass by its self in another couple of weeks.

All the best,

[Unregistered]

Its me again,

I took two ginger root supplement pills (usually meant to help with motion sickness-I read on a hollistic website that it helps with brain fog), a generic multivitamin/multimineral, a couple of bananas which are supposed to help brain fog, a bunch of peanuts which contains magnesium which is supposed to balance out the metals in the system which can help clear brain fog, I eat hersheys milk chocolate kisses fairly regularly (dark chocolate contains antioxidants which help brain fog, milk chocolate may at least contain enough amount in comparison, though less, to help a bit), a lot of water (at least 6-8 cups or more when eating all of this), 1 cup of coffee which helps with dopamine levels in the brain(which may effect brain fog, or at least help re-supply what marijuana depletes in the brain) --this all was consumed after talking a brisk walk outside and I got a LOT of sleep as I had been unusually sleepy during all of this. I went to bed much sooner than usual and slept for full 8-10 hours each time I slept. Any form of stress at all expedited my need to sleep by a lot, as well. Before sleep I meditated on positive energy focused on the areas of my mind that felt foggy in order to help quicken recovery.

After all of this, and then sleeping until fully rested afterwards I felt fine. I do not feel a fog and my mind seems to be working clearly. I cannot say, obviously as this was an isolated incident, that any of the things I did were the cause of my brain fog passing- but I hope that what I have reported may still help someone who reads this if someone needs it. Keep in mind also that I did all of this after having already suffered from a fog for at least 2-3 weeks. If any of the things I did helped, there is a chance that something I consumed or did might help someone else experiencing brain fog as well.

[Unregistered]

Its me again,

I took two ginger root supplement pills (usually meant to help with motion sickness-I read on a hollistic website that it helps with brain fog), a generic multivitamin/multimineral, a couple of bananas which are supposed to help brain fog, a bunch of peanuts which contains magnesium which is supposed to balance out the metals in the system which can help clear brain fog, I eat hersheys milk chocolate kisses fairly regularly (dark chocolate contains antioxidants which help brain fog, milk chocolate may at least contain enough amount in comparison, though less, to help a bit), a lot of water (at least 6-8 cups or more when eating all of this), 1 cup of coffee which helps with dopamine levels in the brain(which may effect brain fog, or at least help re-supply what marijuana depletes in the brain) --this all was consumed after talking a brisk walk outside and I got a LOT of sleep as I had been unusually sleepy during all of this. I went to bed much sooner than usual and slept for full 8-10 hours each time I slept. Any form of stress at all expedited my need to sleep by a lot, as well. Before sleep I meditated on positive energy focused on the areas of my mind that felt foggy in order to help quicken recovery.

After all of this, and then sleeping until fully rested afterwards I felt fine. I do not feel a fog and my mind seems to be working clearly. I cannot say, obviously as this was an isolated incident, that any of the things I did were the cause of my brain fog passing- but I hope that what I have reported may still help someone who reads this if someone needs it. Keep in mind also that I did all of this after having already suffered from a fog for at least 2-3 weeks. If any of the things I did helped, there is a chance that something I consumed or did might help someone else experiencing brain fog as well.

Here is the background of my story, im a 22 year old student, I am a professional muay thai fighter so train 6 days a week and love it, my diet when im training is flawless and drink rarely, when I do its execessive as is the culture! Anyway in thr summer (2011) I had sent a text what I call the "russian roulette text" to a girl I could tell was maybe going a bit cold so it was to just get a straight answer as to what the **** was going on. I used to smoke weed when I was around 15 to 17 then started training and lost interest so enjoyed getting stoned and the munchies and never had a bad experience. Before I sent the text I decided to go to my mates where there was no signal and thought I would get stoned for the first time in years but got extremely stoned I had a proper panic attack, i remember trying to descirbe it to my other freaked out stoned mates that my subconcious, personality basically me was on a raft in my head that was slowly floating away from what i descrbed as my concious self. i also said it was like my head was in a box of paranioa and that if it was just me being so stoned and thinking this that I could decide to trap my self in my mind like this.....completely ****ed up im sure you'll agree!!! The funny ending to the night was I got home and discovered a loaf of bread and honey which was gone in minutes with the paranioa! I remember though back then that I felt almost stoned for the next 3 days until i shook it off. Of course I would say I was just extremely stoned (about a 3 skinner to myself with fresh, untouched, trained lungs of 2 years) and that coupled with the emotional stress (I had completely fallen for this girl after sleeping with her for 2 weeks) that triggered this absolutely horrible experience.

So after all this everything was fine and back to normal, never experienced any other stoned feeling or brain fog and unfortunately stuff had happened in the girls family and so it was bad timing yada yada or she was being nice etc. which kind of ruined my summer until i finally got closure in feb 2012 and had already been seeing a new girl but she was crazy and so was just having fun. i went on a snowboarding holiday in fance with an immense amount of heavy drinking, never banged my head significantly while on the trip and wore a helmet anyway. About maybe 3 days after coming back around the first week january 2012 I felt this brain fog.

It did sort of come on as if overnight and was extremely worrying, i immediatley felt like those few days after being so stoned and had a bit of a freak out when I thought that might be the cause. I began googling everything and that made it worse as people with close to what i could describe seemed to have it for years. For me its been 2 months, this is by far the closest I would have said to how I feel and how I would describe it myself. My brain function, memory or emotions are not affected directly by this or feeding it (conciously anyway) as I have had stressful interviews I managed to get through (successfully i might add) even though it felt like I my head was in a fish bowl and i worried that the fog would affect my memory which it doesnt but if you have experienced this it is just like having physical cut on your hand; if you think about the cut its more painful, if you move your hand you are aware of it and if you are distracted by whatever work or social etc. the pain can disappear but when you realise its still there its sore again. Thats what it feels like to me and i use my head a lot, im a very thoughtful and deep thinking person so im usign my head constantly and i can try and mentally fight it by ignoring/ accepting it but its still there. I was treated for vertigo with tablets and that was unsuccessful but i admitedly just felt better that I was being treated or looked into instead of my first visit and being told it wa all stress and to relax. As i say it only stresses me out if i let it and if i worry about my health and im sure people would to if they woke up with a "silent/ painless headache" that is constantly there!

In my case I exercise regularly and my diet is good, i have stopped drinking for a while and had massages where i felt relaxed but it was still there, same goes for exercise, i still enjoy everything i do, i just know it would be more fun if i didnt have this feeling in my head, I also have absolutley no trouble sleeping. I think a good description for people who have never felt it before is the baroreflex feeling when you have sat down for too long and you stand up fast and get that "whoozy" head feeling and then shake it off....its like that except I cant shake it off but thats not to be confused with dizziness.

I would say that i do feel its not going to go away anytime soon and ive not ruled out stress but its just a coincidence the i only really have felt this alien feeling after being stoned the next day or 2. Both the girl i was seeing, the one i was hung up on the whole summer told me nothing could happen that she was seeing someone else, in a nice way cause i just asked for point blank honesty cause it was unhealthy adn i feel i am getting over her now although she is now in my uni class but that helped me realise the sun didnt shine out her arse and she wasnt that hot! the point is the second girl i was seeing, even though i didnt get attached i did really like her and i knew she liked me but she was nuts and one day we had an "arguement" (we werent going out!) and she deleted on fb without telling me. I remember i had that sort of hurt feeling you get the same place you get "butterflies" but it seemed to go up into my head if I remember and if that makes any sense at all. I also remember thinking well I have to much work to care about this shit right now and that I didnt really care about her anyway (which I maybe must have). It was about a day or 2 after this the brain fog came on and hasnt ****ed off! I am a happy, easy going guy and even with this head fog have just sort of accepted it and not down or anything just sometimes it can overwhelm me and I get angry but thats where training comes in but i honestly just want to get rid of it.

So I mean can emotional stress really have transferred into my head to cause this (and maybe it was the weed that first now triggered this affect to happen when I get emotional stress/ hurt) and if that is the case is it just going to eventually heal, and if so will it reoccur. I lost my brother when I was 16 and he was only 23 and I am now 23 this year and I was able to handle that shittness so im no stranger to stress or handling my emotions in fact it is one of the things i pride myself on and my mental health is extremely important to me. Admittedly losing that girl i loved may have triggered feelings from before but i gues im just wondering how and when do I get rid of this! (not really expecting an answer!)

Anyway my whole speel was unneccessary but thought I should share cause I have been on so many forums of similar symptomed people but you appear to have had similar circumstances and description of symptoms but i was really just going to ask how many days did you start your supplement/ brain food diet and walking and after how many days did you find you felt better?

Cheers!