Side effects - Odd Cannabis Side-Effects

[bineon]

I decided to post this apart from the other 2 threads currently up top here because it details the actual experiences of someone who is not me.

Dear SWIY,
I am a pretty long-time smoker of cannabis, and in fact the first time I actually got high, it was on some pretty dank stuff, the priciest stuff around here, in fact. The details of my first experience are pretty common: being stuck in the same moment in time continually, tunnel-vision, abstract thoughts, etc. While I didn't find the experience as pleasurable as everyone else apparently did, I continued to smoke irregularly for a good while. The high felt to me not relaxing, instead it was quite the opposite, but I suffered from only very mild external (coming from surroundings, ie. cops, people) paranoia.

I was at a friend's house when I decided to take my first bong-hit (mini-bong, at that). Just rethinking the experience gives me hardcore chills. Put simply, I felt as if I were dying. The feeling cannot be explained but I will try anyway. I felt as if many of normal bodily reflexes were now my responsibility. I had the feeling that I had completely ceased breathing, and had to remind myself to do so. Much like the feeling you get with opioids, but on the latter it's not as alarming; you just breathe and get it over with.

I also felt as if the reflex to swallow the saliva my tongue was producing was gone, and it was instead draining into my lungs. The only way this was possible was if my cough reflex was also gone, which I found easy to believe since all of these things are located within the mouth, where the smoke goes. Furthermore, I felt as if I had something in my throat but had no reflex to cough and made myself do so anyway repeatedly. The friend with whom I was smoking was only slightly concerned, since weed had never killed anyone, leading to me being even more concerned for my well being. (I am still having quite bad anxiety while recalling the experience that I feel could develop into a full-blown panic attack soon).

While still high, I figured I might attribute the feeling of not breathing / swallowing often enough to severe time dilation, but I still had no explanation to feeling as if there was something stuck in my throat that I would cough up if my reflexes were normal. It felt as if the only way to cough up whatever was there would be to lower my mouth below my lungs, effectively bowing down on my knees, and coughing. I don't believe I coughed up anything, but it still felt as if I had inhaled some food I ate earlier while high, and it was in my lungs.

I then picked up my trusty Blackberry in an attempt to see just how THC kills its rodent victims in order to see if it could be doing the same thing to me.

What I found terrified me beyond anything I thought possible

I googled the terms I didn't know.
"dyspnea" (shortness of breath), "prostration" (bowing posture [weird?], and "fighting reflex" (still no definition for that one, but I assume the fighting reflexes include cough, gag, pain, etc.)

The second paragraph was the one that really scared me.
"Pulmonary changes including hemorrhage, edema, emphysema and generalized congestion were found and death resulted from respiratory arrest and subsequent cardiac failure."

Suppression of the cough and gag reflex, and dysphagia (which I felt was happening http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysphagia), could explain pulmonary congestion, leading to the above results.

If I had read this prior to the experience, it could be attributed to simple paranioa, but I certainly voiced what I was feeling to my friend prior to ever picking up my phone.

While this was certainly frightening, I eventually came down and was left with only an aversion to cannabis from then on. I simply attributed it to paranoia and didn't really worry about it.

Paranoia could explain a one-time occurance of this, but each time I smoked that weed (and getting higher than on some other weed), I had and have the same feeling.

I know these are not usual side-effects (apart from the possibility of paranoia), so I'm only posting this to see if anyone else has heard of dysphagia as a result of THC consumption.

I'm obviously still alive after many times of being high on that particular kind of weed, but that doesn't eliminate the possibility that it could still be happening, but since I'm a bit larger than a mouse it isn't proving fatal. I also have quite a few friends that smoke the same weed and have none of those side-effects. I've been told I have a bad case of cotton-mouth, but I believe it would be interesting to see if drymouth is causing my dysphagia or simply pseudodysphagia (the irrational fear of swallowing or choking).