Wow what a difference! THC gone wrong

Well, I have been off of dabs for about 6 weeks now. There is so much to say about the road over the last 6 weeks. Let me start off by saying a few things about THC, weed, and dabs.

What are DABS?

Wikipedia page which contains a lot of information on dabbing.

I was dabbing up to 7 times a day for about a year and a half. In my mind, I was convinced it was helping with the pain and anxiety I was dealing with. Then about 8 weeks ago, I found an article that literally changed everything from then till now. I’ll try and find the link again, but I’ve search about 2 hours, still not finding it. Anyways, the article talked about all of the symptoms that I was having.

Symptoms:

• Unable to eat much (feeling full all the time)
  • Limited diet to stuff that helped my reflux
• Constipation (or diarrhea)
  • Seemed to go from one extreme to another.
• Constant pain in the intestines
• severe acid reflux
  • resulted in esophagitis
• Among a few others……

**How can I be certain that these symptoms are from the dabbing? **

The day I stopped dabbing, I stopped taking Gaviscon and Pepcid AC the day I stopped dabbing. I was taking on average 12 Gaviscon and 6 Pepcid ACs a day. My general intestinal pain stopped about a week later. As the events played out, it made it more evident that the THC concentration I was doing was causing the symptoms.

Why did I turn to THC?

When all of this started, I went to several doctors and they just said I had anxiety. All of the doctors I went to, prior my mental stay, minimized the problem. I figure they thought I was making it up to get medicine. I knew that most people benefitted from THC use, so I figured it should be able to help me too.

THC Withdrawals

When I decided to see if it was the THC, I stopped it cold turkey. This was extremely hard on my system. Thankfully, I have good support from my doctors to help me through all of this. The day after I stopped, I went to my general doctor for a check in to see if I could get some help for the pain I was experiencing, they put me on Gabapentin 3 times a day. This helped most of the time, but there were still some break through anxiety and pain. My body was handling the THC withdrawals horribly. My heart rate stayed around 150-160 for at least 2 days. My blood pressure was in the range of 140-160/100-120, which is in the heart attack range. Needless to say, I had a few hell days dealing with the withdrawals. The good news was, this didn’t last over a week or so.

Post THC withdrawals

At my 2 week check up, my vitals were back to normal, which range from 110-120/70-85. Also I lined up some other things to verify I didn’t damage things. Future appointments were a heart stress test and some physical therapy. Why did I want these done? The heart stress test was to ensure my heart was ‘OK’ from a medical standpoint since it had been so stressed. The physical therapy was because I was basically bed ridden for 1.5 years.

The heart stress test wasn’t hard, it was scary to me though. The anxiety leading up to it was worse than the test itself. During the test, they did a lot of ultra sound images prior to walking. Then during the walking they had me hooked up to all sorts of probes to measure the heart. They wanted my heart rate to go up above 160 for as long as I could hold it. Once I was tiring out, they pumped me full of some meds to help the images of the ultrasound to get stressed images of the hearts walls, valves, and blood flow to and from the heart. The great news I got immediately, the nurses didn’t see anything wrong that they could tell. I still don’t have the results from the rest of the doctor reviews, but I expect them fairly soon.


Physical therapy was interesting. I was actually looking forward to it. When I went the first time, they did some baselines to get a sense of where I was at. Then they used a percussion device to help message my muscles. Similar to the one to the right. This felt good except when he used it on my lower back on both sides of my spine. When they got to those areas, I felt like I wanted to jump out of my skin due to the anxiety spikes. Which turned out it was my body’s response to what was happening internally.

The day after physical therapy, I woke up from a horrible nightmare in tears. The day continued to get worse for me. My anxiety was not really under- control, and my pain level was extremely high. Around 5pm, it turned for the worse even further; I was vomiting and had severe nausea. By 7pm, I had called 911 to get help. Luckily my dad had come out when I started vomiting, and was able to help me get ahold of 911. This was the worst shape I had been in since I had another blockage about 8 months prior. The main difference was, they couldn’t find the pulse in my feet, and I was severely dehydrated. They ran the sirens all the way to the hospital, which is one of my fears now, and everything they did was very quick. I think it was because they were afraid that I was having a heart attack or something similar. I ended up having another NG-tube, and then the next day, I was pissing blood. I’m talking it looked like I murdered someone in the bathroom. The blood cleared up in a few days, as well as my blockage.

Since the hospital stay, I have been continuing to research about Gastroparesis. They (multiple GI doctors) think I have this condition. It will be nice to finally have a diagnosis instead of idiopathic diagnosis. I’m suppose to have more procedures done to confirm I have it or not.

What have I been doing since I have been off of the THC, outside of medical stuff?

I have had some of the best days. Every morning, I try to start it off right; I go out on the porch and find something that amazes me in nature. It can be anything from seeing Turkeys, deer, or my cats playing. I try to remember that each moment that I see, will never be repeated. So I try to take each moment for granted, as I’m not guaranteed the next.

For my health, I have been more active lately, and that’s one of the reasons I haven’t posted stuff before today. I’ve been finding more joy in cleaning, mowing, weed eating, and just general house work. It’s super nice to have that feeling back. The only problem I’m fighting from the THC now, is my memory has a severe case of CRS (can’t remember shit). I’ve been trying to reconnect with old friends, and making new ones. There are a few people I want to call out. Ryan, my boss when I go back to work, he’s been very supportive through this whole ordeal. Carolyn, someone I meet in a support group, she’s been a wonderful resource of GI knowledge and great support. Dan, someone else I met in a support group, he’s been a good support person. My biggest call outs are to my brother and dad, I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for them. My cats are also a huge support to me; they have been great at sensing when I needed help.