Here's What Happens To Your Body After Quitting Weed: A Timeline

Quitting smoking weed can prove to be a difficult task, especially for heavy users.

Whatever your reason may be for quitting, here’s a timeline of what happens to your body after you quit smoking weed.

The minute you quit to several years

Starting from the minute you quit to several years after, your lungs heal. While there are several ways to use cannabis, one of the most famous ways of ingesting it is by inhaling its vapor. Even though it doesn’t have as many dangerous chemicals compared to other things like cigarettes, cannabis smoke can still damage your lungs in one way or the other.

However, lung damage from smoking weed can be somewhat reversible. It is possible for long-term weed smokers to ease the symptoms of lung damage when they quit, although some issues will still remain. The length of time that it will take your lungs to heal depends on how long you’ve been smoking weed

24-72 hours after quitting

24 to 72 hours after quitting, anxiety may develop. A person doing a cannabis detox will most likely experience some form of anxiety, especially during the first few days after quitting. Additionally, you will probably feel more irritable and angrier than usual. Irritability is a common cannabis withdrawal symptom and typically occurs within the first few days after quitting.

After a week

After a week, you may experience depression. Depression is the second most likely symptom of weed withdrawal. Typically, this fades in about another week or so.

After A Few Weeks

After a few weeks of quitting, you may experience more vivid dreams. According to sleep expert and neurologist, Dr. Hans Hamburger, weed interferes with a person’s ability to obtain REM sleep, which is the period when a person has the most dreams

“If you've been taking a drug that suppresses a certain phenomenon for a while, then that phenomenon will come back stronger when you stop using that drug. That's what we call 'the rebound effect' - which is also noticeable in people who take a lot of sleeping pills. If they stop taking those, they often get very strange and intense dreams. That is also often the reason why people keep taking those sleeping pills - they become dependent on them, which is to say, addicted.” Dr. Hamburger told VICE. “It is a temporary attempt to catch up on all the dreaming you missed when you were smoking weed. It usually goes away after two to three weeks. Your body will know when it's all caught up and ready to go back to business as usual.”

After a few months

After a few months, you will most likely have insomnia. A lot of people use weed to help them sleep, therefore, it should come as no surprise that the most common cannabis withdrawal symptom is insomnia. This proves particularly true for chronic users, however, the length of time that you suffer from insomnia greatly depends on how long you’ve been smoking.

A positive effect that comes after a few months of quitting is that your memory, intelligence, and attention could improve.