Social Anxiety to Social Confidence

“Drugs did not cause my problems with social anxiety – I had social anxiety from a very early age. In fact, as far back as I can remember. But, in my mid to late teens and very early twenties I took recreational drugs. It was mostly cannabis which I smoked almost every day, but later it became ecstasy and occasionally magic mushrooms, amphetamines or cocaine.

The cannabis, I used to be really into that. I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. I used to think everyone should try it. I used to almost worship it because it relaxed you, was non-aggressive, it could be humorous, made you appreciate music more, maybe even made you think more deeply about things, but I didn’t realise what it was slowly doing to me over time. I didn’t realise that I was becoming more and more introverted and my paranoid thoughts were slowly getting stronger. I also didn’t realise that I’d become so passive and didn’t have any ambition or desire to better my life. And it was only when I read that it was bad for social anxiety and completely gave it up and my system cleared over a month or two that I realised just how much it had suppressed me and my life.

One day I was at someone’s house and I’d been smoking cannabis and I had all those paranoid thoughts going around my head about people hating me, not wanting me there and thinking bad things about me. On that day they go so intense that I seriously thought I was going completely crazy. I was really scared and I left and walked to somewhere safe on my own and just freaked out and cried. I had no idea what was happening to me and I was bad enough for a couple of other people to get concerned and come and find me. It was a really scary moment and not one I’d like to repeat.

There are worse things than cannabis you can put in your body, but is cannabis a good thing? At least in my experience, I really don’t think it is, especially if you’re experiencing some kind of mental health problem. You don’t need anything else clouding your thinking and making you think any more paranoid thoughts than you’re already thinking. And you really don’t need anything that will make you more passive and less focused on making progress.

I’ve met a lot of people now, or have read about their experiences, where they’ve told me that they’re fairly certain that cannabis played a significant role in triggering them to become socially anxious in the first place or have other mental health problems or it at least made their social anxiety get much worse.

It can be difficult to give up if you’ve developed a lifestyle around it and what social life you have revolves around it. There may even be motivations pushing against you because you’ve always been an advocate of it. But I think if you’re a sufferer of social anxiety and you really want to overcome it, I’m not sure what chance you have if you continue to smoke cannabis.”