Recovering from a bad high

February 7, 2021 1:24 PM

I got way too high last night and today I still don't feel okay. Please help

Before bed last night, I had a couple of marijuana gummies that aren't strong at all. I made them and I've had them before. They typically make me kind of dreamy and sleepy, but overall don't affect me much.

Last night I had three then went to bed feeling normal. I woke up in one of the strangest states I've ever been in, and proceeded to live out a real-life nightmare for the next several hours. My entire body felt almost numb. I would touch my arm and not really feel it. Everything was intensely tingling, and it felt like I was in some kind of bizarre loop. I would do things and a few seconds later they would feel like a vague memory and I would be like wait..... did that really happen? I am totally alone in a state where I know almost no one for the time being, so I spent the next few hours actively freaking out alone, trying to figure out if the gummies did that when they normally don't affect me much at all. It felt like I was in a weird loop and nothing felt real and I basically totally dissociated from my surroundings.

Okay, so I got really high, but I was truly convinced that I was having some kind of neurological event and nearly died. It was horrible.

And now, today, I'm largely better but my body still feels weird and my sensation doesn't feel totally normal. I'm shaken up and feeling honestly really depressed when I don't normally get depressed. Being in my studio apartment here is honestly just making me feel like I'm reliving the nightmare from last night. I want to just feel normal again, but I still feel hazy and weird and very tired and my head is killing me.

So if you've ever had a bad high, from weed or something else, how do you recover? I know this may sound dramatic but I almost feel traumatized from the experience. I never want to touch the stuff again, that's for damn sure, and I kind of feel scared to go to sleep tonight because being here at night will just remind me of how awful it was. I can't have anyone come over because I'm alone here. What can I do to feel better? Do I just need to give it time? All I want is to be with my family but that's not an option.

Thanks in advance

posted by Amy93 to Health & Fitness (23 answers total)

Hi I have totally been there, it's no fun. Edibles take a while to work their way out of your system so yeah, you're probably still feeling some effects. That's normal and will totally pass. Make sure you've a) eaten food b) drunk water c) done whatever else you need to do to feel good (take your usual meds, etc) because it can be easy to forget to do those things when you feel super weird. Then, what I would do is put on some comforting, familiar TV show or movie, in a physical place with whatever feels good (warm blankets, etc) and just... ride it out.

Sorry this happened! It sucks. But it's not forever and it won't do any lasting harm.
posted by restless_nomad at 1:28 PM on February 7, 2021 [16 favorites]

To start, can you:
Put your feet flat on the floor
Take a few slow breaths
Name your feelings out loud: “I feel ____ because _____.”
Drink a glass of water
Eat a fruit or veggie (apple, carrots, etc)

Then, see if you feel up to calling a calm friend - text them and ask if you can have a low key convo where they just follow your lead and try to keep you calm?

Or else watch something soothing, familiar, or predictable (tabitha brown on tik tok is great).
posted by nouvelle-personne at 1:29 PM on February 7, 2021 [4 favorites]

Okay, so I got really high, but I was truly convinced that I was having some kind of neurological event and nearly died. It was horrible.

I know this feeling well. It's awful. You're just stuck there until it ends. Lying down and listening to music might help (it gives your brain something to do.)

Anyway, regarding the depressed feeling today -- one, you had a traumatizing experience with a substance you normally trust. Maybe you ate less than normal, maybe you had a couple of beers, maybe you had Nyquil, maybe you had been taking less than normal and your tolerance is down or maybe it's just one of those things....it sucks, but it happens sometimes and the best thing I've found is to say to myself 'however weird I feel, I am actually okay. I am on earth. I am here. Everything is okay. Everything is steady. This is a feeling that will pass. No need to panic on top of it. It will pass. I am safe.' Or soothing words to that affect. Repeated for a good hour or so.

Two, today sucks. I don't know where you are but we are in the midst of a truly insipid snowstorm after nearly a year of quarantine. It's grey, it's dark, and anything we could do to make ourselves feel better (go to a restaurant!) is impossible or something we've done a thousand times (make a fancy dinner).

So those two might be combining for you.

Anyway a nap might help (you probably slept like shit) and go low and slow on edibles if you do it again.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 1:45 PM on February 7, 2021 [7 favorites]

Sleep as much as you can so you experience as little of this as possible.
posted by Jubey at 2:05 PM on February 7, 2021 [10 favorites]

You will be fine.
This sucks, but it will pass.

The upside is, this was cannabis. Ain’t no one ever died of a cannabis overdose. Ain’t no one ever got so high they didn’t come back down.

Alcohol, heroin, cocaine, LSD, these are all drugs that have a lot of potential to kill you , or do you permanent harm. But you had some gummies, and ingesting cannabis through the stomach lining is a different uptake from smoking or vaping. But the essentail fact is that no matter how you consume it, cannabis doesn’t have receptors that match the “Switch off the breathing” button on your central nervous system like alcohol and depressants do.

In order to do yourself any kind of permanent harm with weed you would have to smoke so much you’d suffocate on the smoke well before any kind of toxicity happened. You would have to eat more than your stomach could hold.

Now, you buy that ticket you’re gonna take the ride. But ain’t nobody ever died from it.

You’re having what is essentially a hangover. And this will pass with close to zero lasting effects.

If you have some herbal tea or something pleasant like that, make some and have a biscuit and keep reminding yourself:

That bartender from AskMeFi, the one with lots pf experience regarding hangovers of various kinds from various sources, promises me this will pass because this is basically just weed, and ain’t nobody ever died from weed.

posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 2:06 PM on February 7, 2021 [27 favorites]

I keep a couple of high CBD, no THC gummies on hand, CBD helps counter the too-high feeling.
posted by The otter lady at 2:07 PM on February 7, 2021 [7 favorites]

As far as going foreward, check to dosage on the gummies. Most come in 10mg doses, but some come in 5mg so you can adjust your dosage to a finer degree.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 2:21 PM on February 7, 2021 [1 favorite]

Hello, I relate.

I've intended to smoke to about a 3, but accidentally went to 11. It's awful and if you feel traumatized I think that's completely fair. What you describe with the time loops and the numbness, both physically and emotionally is all spot on with my experience. Also, the fear that something is going wrong with you medically is a classic panic attack symptom.

You will feel OK again. I promise. Your experience isn't even all that unusual. Have patience with yourself, be gentle with yourself, your body and mind are recovering from a shock. Give yourself plenty of time to return to equilibrium. The feelings you have right now are not the feelings you'll have forever.

Having said that, I feel obligated to share how I handled this very badly long term.

CW: drugs and feelings

I had my first few panic attacks this way in 1995, and it put me off weed forever. Every time I used it I got the dysphoria and it was a miserable experience. I remember some day-afters where even the particular slant of the light coming in the window shade made the earth seem like some desolate Mad Max hellscape. Woo-boy that's a lonely feeling. Even though I kept having a bad time I still somehow spent the next 20 years trying to find some drug, or way of using drugs that would let me recapture something I thought I'd lost, and I ended up agoraphobic and alcoholic. But that was not the result of one bad experience, it was the result of my continuing decision to refuse to accept what my body and my mind were telling me.

That is not necessarily your truth. I've also known plenty of people who've had bad experiences and then went back to perfectly normal relationships with their drugs.
posted by Horkus at 2:24 PM on February 7, 2021 [11 favorites]

Just echoing that this is a really traumatic experience AND you haven't had any normal sleep AND you're real chemical-stew-y today. When this has happened to me (bc I am a ultra lightweight and it happens by accident now and then) I treat the next day like a severe hangover/flu day: rest, self-care, as many hot showers as you need, lots of water, a little caffeine if you normally use it, some comfort food, soft media.

This feeling will pass. You will feel significantly better tomorrow, and probably just about 100% the day after that. You may continue to feel traumatized but it will be without the background of the hangover and it will be much easier to contextualize. The way you feel today is not the way you will feel forever.

You will be okay tonight and you will likely sleep like you haven't slept in two days.
posted by Lyn Never at 2:40 PM on February 7, 2021 [9 favorites]

I think you should take a substantial amount of vitamin D — but no more than 4000 IU per day.

I'd say even order some if you don’t have any on hand (all this sheltering inside has probably made vitamin D deficiency endemic anyway).
posted by jamjam at 2:47 PM on February 7, 2021

I don't know about weed. But I always expect a harsh day-after with other psychedelics. I treat it with lots of water, a nice big plate of tasty breakfast food with lots of fat and protein (I like a big scramble with plenty of eggs and cheese), a vitamin pill, some 5-HTP and a reminder not to beat myself up.
posted by fingersandtoes at 3:01 PM on February 7, 2021 [2 favorites]

This happened to me. I took a long long shower and focused very intently on being in that space, feeling the water, smelling the shampoo. It really helped ground me.
posted by ChristineSings at 3:07 PM on February 7, 2021 [4 favorites]

Just chiming in to say that depression is a *totally* normal aftereffect of having a really stressful experience, and I’ve experienced that many times. It’s possible the depression is caused by the edibles but it may also just be an aftereffect of the stress itself. It’s very unpleasant but it will pass.
posted by mekily at 3:28 PM on February 7, 2021 [4 favorites]

I bet you're still stoned and it's doing a number on your mood in a non-police paranoia way. Edibles do this to me WAY more reliably than smoking. Back in the prohibition days I didn't like edibles hardly at all because the high ended up unpleasant often enough to be a warning, and even now I'm pretty conservative with them.

I'd treat it like the flu or something: sleep, easy food, easy TV like "Frasier" or whatever, pajamas, lots of water. Stay away from Noah Baumbach movies. I know it's easy to say "you'll be fine," but my strategy is to just distract myself or nap as much as possible until my metabolism filters enough of it out of my waking life.
posted by rhizome at 3:32 PM on February 7, 2021 [4 favorites]

I've long had a occasional sleep problem where I wake up convinced I'm dead, and then within the pandemic timeline I did some experimenting that unfortunately interacted with that original problem to make life worse for a while. The exacerbation did pass. I want to validate that being scared to go to sleep is tough--it's dark which feels worse, there's less social support available at night, your brain is already too tired to re-regulate, and then many people get sleep performance anxiety.

The #1 helpful thing for me is talking to someone whenever the dread attacks and the phone works every bit as well as face-to-face (texting is a distant 3rd, but can help too). The best chats are with someone kind and accepting of me admitting what's up, but not disclosing it and just focusing on generating a pleasant catch-up with someone still works. I allowed my desperation to drive me to get over my customary shyness, because recruiting social support is one of the healthy things we can ideally do to process trauma. I don't mean that I exploit people, just that I tried harder for a while to question my narrative that I'm a burden. If someone is willing to agree to be "on-call" overnight for a night or two, that lifeline can be so calming that the odds of actually needing to disturb them are low.

Other things that helped the most of all the things I tried while I waited for the transient increase in my vulnerability to derealization to subside:
-finding media that I could expect to make me laugh out loud, such as comedy specials or a podcast that does it for me;
-borrowing a dog to befriend (outside, due to Covid-19--if my neighbor judged me she hid it well and this relationship was enhanced overall);
-playing music unusually loudly into headphones when I was especially scared to sleep, which does something useful to confound my sensory vigilance;
-spending time outside in general, because inside simply felt darker for a while.
posted by zizania at 5:09 PM on February 7, 2021 [1 favorite]

Lots of good advice here. Because it hasn't been mentioned yet, consuming black peppercorns is a Neil Young endorsed way of helping with pot paranoia. Smell for immediate relief and chew/swallow some for longer lasting, delayed relief.
posted by saveyoursanity at 6:10 PM on February 7, 2021 [5 favorites]

My entire body felt almost numb. I would touch my arm and not really feel it. Everything was intensely tingling, and it felt like I was in some kind of bizarre loop. I would do things and a few seconds later they would feel like a vague memory and I would be like wait..... did that really happen? I am totally alone in a state where I know almost no one for the time being, so I spent the next few hours actively freaking out alone, trying to figure out if the gummies did that when they normally don't affect me much at all.

I had almost exactly this experience after eating pot butter many years ago. I thought I was going to scratch a hole in my arm because I was tingly and couldn't remember if I had already scratched my arm, and so I scratched it again, and... ugh. I thought I was losing my mind and called a friend who kindly talked to me for hours until I came down. The next day I felt odd, but going for a long brisk walk really helped. I didn't eat cannabis again for a few years, and I still have to be cautious about not overdoing it. If I do music and/or dancing always help. I think for some people with monthly hormone cycles eating cannabis can suddenly be way more potent than it is at other times- this is just a theory and I have no proof, but I know I can occasionally take a normal dose, and things just get far more intense than they have at other times. I try to do physical or distracting things, like watching a comfort-food type movie that I've seen a zillion times.
posted by oneirodynia at 6:51 PM on February 7, 2021 [4 favorites]

Since no one has mentioned it... drink plenty of water, eat healthy, try to get plenty of rest, and be gentle with yourself, even for a few days after your think you've over this, just in case this is a early sign you're coming down sick.
posted by stormyteal at 8:21 PM on February 7, 2021 [1 favorite]

I casually smoked pot in my late teens and early twenties, then started to have dissociative reactions like what you describe when I was about 23. I blamed it on shitty pot a couple of times but pretty quickly determined that something about the way my brain processes pot had CHANGED. It's a thing that happens. It is not pleasant.

You're going to feel okay again, I promise. Think of it like a bad hangover for now and treat yourself kindly. Hydrate, take some vitamins, get outside for a walk and breathe some fresh air.
posted by desuetude at 9:30 PM on February 7, 2021 [2 favorites]

I have been to over 150 grateful dead concerts. Suffice it to say that not all went smoothly. I have had three letter psychedelics followed by a lot of Valium to mellow out. I know what you went through. The thing that helped the most was waking up and working out. Whenever I road trip to see music or a sporting event or friends that party like it is 1980,I get up, shower, chug water and get on a treadmill and lift weights. Sweat it out. Psychologically, it was a clean break from the night before. Feeling good about doing something productive. You're in a studio apartment during Covid times, so, if you cannot or will not go to a gym, go for a vigorous long walk and get some protein breakfast such as bacon and eggs.

Also, I would not quit eddies bc of one bad experience. It sounded like you made the gummies. Sounds like you did not mix them well enough. Some had smaller doses than you thought and some had bigger. I have had homemade cookies that varied wildly even among the same cookie cut into pieces. Quit if you want to quit, but if you enjoy(ed) the buzz, wait a bit, get dispensary eddies that have consistent known doses and try again slowly.

Know that you are not alone nor unique. Over time many people have at least one experience similar to what you just endured.
posted by AugustWest at 10:49 PM on February 7, 2021 [3 favorites]

I have had very severe and scary reactions to pot a few times. My last time was after some gummies that were supposedly low thc and high cbd/unlikely to give me a reaction. I spent 6 hours having a very physical, terrifying high that reminds me a lot of what you are describing. My body felt crazy and disassociated, the entire world felt like it was endlessly spinning, i was alternating between sweating and cold....honestly it's hard to even encapsulate into words how bad it was. It was easily one of the worst nights of my life and I would love to go back in time and have never gone though it. However, even though it was the most extreme bad reaction I've had, it was not the only one. Having something to compare it to helped me recover from it a bit more quickly than I might have if it was my first bad time, though I do remember pretty clearly my first bad reaction as well. That one was less intense, but it hung with me for a while and honestly it colored my relationship with marijuana forever for the worse. It went from being unequivocally positive to unpredictable, and I don't know if that's the result of my emotions or something bio-chemical. I expect it's some combo of both for me, though everyone is different - i know others who have gone through similar and have had no issues long term.

There's no silver bullet for feeling better, but hopefully hearing more stories of others who have gone through this takes the edge off. Take it easy for a few days, do things that are super comforting like watching your favorite old tv shows and take a break from anything that screws with your chemistry for a second, including alcohol and caffeine. That should take the edge off. Also, ease back into everything, including things like coffee, because you may be off-balance and more sensitive to any substances for a bit. That may help lessen the likelihood of developing a phobia.
posted by amycup at 9:24 AM on February 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Hello everyone, thank you for the answer. I feel normal again today.

I will say that the bizarre sensations persisted all day yesterday, though the worst of it was overnight. My lips weren't numb but they didn't have great sensation in them, either, which made me keep scratching them thinking wtf which became an odd cycle. It's all so strange because I know that these gummies aren't that strong (again, I made them) but I guess three was just too much, or maybe the last gummy just absorbed all of the THC. The two times before when I had them I didn't feel a thing, which I think made my panic worse because I was like wtf is happening these NEVER fuck me up. I'm just saying this for if/when a similarly panicked stone person finds this thread; you'll be fine, but man it took me almost 48 hours to get there.

Thanks again.
posted by Amy93 at 2:46 PM on February 8, 2021 [12 favorites]

Thank you for updating us Amy93. I've been checking in on this thread about once a day and I'm super glad you're feeling better!
posted by Horkus at 12:02 PM on February 9, 2021