Dissociation and *TW?* marijuana - thoughts and opinions?

Hello! I hope everyone here has been doing well!

I/We have been doing well, but either haven't had a reason to come to this forum (or were completely opposed to doing so) until now, to share some of my experience and hopefully get some feedback. I know I kind of rambled on this post, so please feel free to just skim through, but if you have any kind of comment or answer or question or anything, please share. Thanks!

**Trigger warning* *Marijuana usage**

I've been a habitual user of marijuana for several years now. I use it daily when I can, and haven't gone more than a few months at a time off of it. I've realized recently that the longer I go without it, the worse my alleged symptoms seem to become. By alleged symptoms, I mean racing thoughts, quick, seemingly random changes in personality, speech and behavior, inside voices seeming to be louder and more independent and troublesome, and what I might consider "dissociative symptoms": feeling like a different person, feeling a lack of control over one's own thoughts, speech and actions, experiencing "out-of-body"-like feelings or other feelings like there's something not right with the body. Etc.

(I'm really sorry if all this is poorly worded, confusing, or otherwise just incorrect usage of terminology.)

So that's my "normal experience" without marijuana.

If I go without using marijuana for an extended amount of time, and then use it again, it's actually really terrible. In this case, all of the abovementioned "symptoms" seem to be intensified, so that I can not possibly turn off or ignore the internal voices and am absolutely terrified to move or say or do anything for fear of who would be in control and what they would do. Depersonalization experiences are also amplified, as well as another curious symptom that I only recently noticed, which is that I get confused between other people and myself, even to the point of worrying that I am an alter stuck in the headspace really just watching headmates, or even real people, which I may or may not be, interact (people's faces, including my own, also get confusing).

Using it habitually is a completely different story though. In that case, it's like the valleys separating our peaks of consciousness seem to dissipate, or rather the peaks seem to all move closer together, so that communication between certain parts seems easier, and everyone and everything seems so much more calm and cooperative. Strangely (or predictably?), I seem to notice gaps in memory or other memory issues more often if I've been using regularly (and not using it all day; only in the evening before bed). In this condition, it becomes easy to accept that the internal voices are real and that there is some merit to the dissociative disorder theory, but as everyone is calm and cooperative (or just completely silent), it's also incredibly easy to deny having any sort of dissociative disorder and to just write it all off as being over-imaginative with an overactive brain. Somehow I hold both beliefs and a combination of the two and tend not to worry about it, since everything is calm and working right.

So there's my thoughts. Has anyone else has had similar experiences or can relate to what I have described?

Does it sound like I'm just a dumb stoner making stuff up? Part of me believes that. I think it would be nice, in a way.

-- Wed Dec 06, 2017 10:54 pm --

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Also, this has little to nothing to do with the main topic here, but I just realized that the last words in "our journal" are "I love you," trying to get everyone to calm down and relax. Which I guess that might have helped, possibly in addition to the marijuana usage.

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Nevermind the above. Apparently my memory regarding the journal isn't as reliable as I thought it was.

i didn't expect for this to be my first post on this forum but reading this i could relate, so here i go i guess?
i was dx DID last year, and been habitually using marijuana for about a year and a half now i think. i can report similar findings in that it seems to "calm things down" to the point where i heavily doubt i even had the experiences i had in the first place to get me that diagnosis. but at the same time it also seems to weaken the mechanisms i had put in place to conceal my symptoms if that makes any sense? i am much more prone to speaking outloud to "myself" when i am high. that could just be a totally normal thing though.
for what it's worth, my old therapist mentioned once that several of her dissociative clients had reported marijuana having a more "associative" affect on them. she was kinda sketch tho. but just thought i'd mention it anyways.
also i don't want to sound patronizing but do be careful. i myself am beginning to realize the substance is not as helpful as i once thought. i used to hang around on a lot of DPDR forums and a lot of people seem to have had their disorder triggered by marijuana use. i know that's not the same thing as DID/OSDD but still i'd tread cautiously. take care