It seems absolutely insane to me that our pop culture pushes this stuff as at worse benign, but usually beneficial.
It was (and sometimes is) really bad!!
It took 4+ months of therapy to get back to "manageable", and over 2 years later I felt back to normal and in control. I've now stopped any intoxicants (alcohol included) almost entirely. I sometimes will participate with a good group of friends, but I'm far more cautious of any intoxicant.
I'll admit that I'm not as "plugged in" to what pop culture is pushing these days, so can't speak to that, but my own experience with cannabis puts it in a different light for me (which, given your experience, I bet you're not that eager to hear, but maybe others might be).
For me, cannabis fits between opioids and over the counter pain killers - neither of which I can take for pain that I get from nerve damage from a pretty severe injury from a few years ago. Cannabis is very effective at taking the edge off that pain so I can sleep. It doesn't make it go away, it just makes it less intense. Cannabis is by no means benign - anything that can do what it does to my pain isn't "safe". I treat it with the same respect and responsibility I would with other medications. It's not perfect, and has its own risks, but in my case, it's beneficial.
Again, I really am sorry for you. Not so much because you can't enjoy cannabis, but because of what you have to deal with now.
I'll also point out that:
1. TONS of people have undiagnosed anxiety disorders, and blaming it on smoking a plant years go is neither scientific or productive.
2. If you are consistently experiencing anxiety, there are a TON of resources you can tap into. Even outside of medication, there is CBT and mindfulness that can keep you in the moment and prevent you from spinning out.
Not saying cannabis can't be an issue, however i'd imagine a LOT of these reports of "cannabis made me anxious", are actually "i was anxious, tried cannabis, and now i'm just even more anxious", the fact is a lot of medical especially mental situations are under or NOT diagnosed and people attribute the feels to the last thing they did.
The best I can describe is: pretend there's a murderer right outside of your window, he's coming to kill you and tapping on the glass. Your heart rate is spiked, your body is flooding you with adrenaline, fight or flight is in full kickoff mode; you need to either *run* away, or fight.
But now imagine you get all of those physical sensations, but there is no killer outside and you know it. You feel the fight or flight, but you don't have any idea what it is in response to.
Trying to slow down is difficult, and you can feel sortof uncoordinated when walking around (your body is screaming to run, so walking feels off somehow).
Unfortunately it's hard to describe. It is definitely not psychological concern about something, though, and this is where some frustration when talking about it comes from. There's nothing to reassure yourself of or calm down from, because you're not having the psychological effects of anxiety, just the physical ones.
The problem is, you and tons of folk like you didn't read the fine print, because... who knows, ignorance? Fok ya all attitude of young? Even though all info is few clicks away at most.
It has been said 10 thousand times here and everywhere else, including quite a few posts by me - just don't do any mind altering drugs if you are not balanced +-happy person. There is no clear definition or dividing line, each of us is unique and should know how stable/unstable they are, if they have unresolved long term issues and so on. If folks can't be even honest in such things with themselves, well, life will be a tough walk in many aspects thats for sure.
For all those folks, if you do such things, you take tremendous risk, you may end up off better despite issues, but that's your Russian roulette with your own mind, don't complain that you risked massively and lost a huge gamble. These cases are not reference, unless say 50% of US population is by default anxious.
Healthy people have heart attacks. Healthy people can mistake depression or budding mental issues as "work stress" or the pressures of life.
You're essentially saying "yeah cannabis can cause issues but it's your fault for not knowing your in a 100% happy place" which is dismissive on several levels.
I say this as someone who likes THC edibles and also can see how it causes anxiety for people prone to it. I also think age can be a factor, anecdotally. Alcohol was something easy for me to overconsume, and now my hangovers cause nebulous anxiety the next day which cannot be explained by any specific thing.
Neurodegeneratives be neurodegenerating?
but messing with the nervous system using alcohol can often damage digestion, damaging nutrition, damaging mental health.
This can indeed happen acutely/be experienced in less than a day.