I'm glad to hear you've been sober a day. Keep it up, because you WILL notice relief from your anxiety either today or very shortly.
I feel like weed and psychedelics are actually terrible gateway drugs. I'm not saying that they are, inherently, drugs which will lead to the use of other drugs, but they (and weed especially) occupy positions in our culture which make them into gateway drugs. And, disastrously, weed and psychedelics are a woefully insufficient training ground for the other drugs we humans use, in that they leave brain chemical balances intact, and have unpredictable emotional effects.
Weed and psychedelics are unique in that, even with psychological addiction, we mainly use them for fun or for exploration; they are not explicitly habit-forming, nor do they produce reliable or apparently productive effects. They DO provide lasting opportunities for introspective exploration. They will also get you more loaded than most anything else without any kind of hangover, and this sets you up with a false sense of confidence for experimentation with other drugs. Every other recreational drug under the sun is different; they are not about exploration, they are about manipulation of your brain's chemistry.
Alcohol and benzos can chase away your anxiety and frustration. Opiates can chase away your pain. Stimulants can motivate you. That is all they really do. And unfortunately, they have a rebound effect; coming down from booze will make you anxious and depressed, coming down from opiates will make you HURT, and coming down from stimulants will make you unmotivated. Cause and effect: your brain only has so much juice for any given area of activity, and the type of drugs that we apply to our daily struggles exhaust those juices quite profoundly, only worsening the initial problem.
I know this because I used to drink a lot. I would get wasted every night. It started when I was working, and I was sexually frustrated by all the hot women I'd be around every day who I couldn't fuck. I'd come home disappointed and frustrated because my game sucked, and I'd get drunk, and feel better. Naturally I'd be hung over the next day, but the cycle would continue, I'd go to work, get frustrated, come home, and get drunk again. It got to the point where I'd get trashed seven nights out of the week.
After a few months of this, I began to find myself stricken with unusual emotional problems. I had an anxiety attack. I was always afraid, of a breeze at best, and nothing at worst. I would be incredibly lethargic; I could never sleep properly, and it made me want to stay in my room the whole day. Somehow, I didn't really examine it. I just assumed I was starting to have emotional problems, and drinking seemed to help soften the blow of these emerging emotional problems. I continued this for a while, until I began to realize that I was alienating some very good friends of mine through my regular drunk AIM use in the evening. (I can type fine when I'm drunk, but that makes matters worse because it's my reasoning that leaves something to be desired.) That was the last straw for me, and I took a week off from drinking. I still drink (in fact I've had a few tonight), but the basis is different; I have plenty of sober evenings, and I don't get wasted every time I drink.
And I feel so much better it's insane. For a while there I was drinking to chase off the anxiety that came from drinking. Once I left that pattern, the root of the anxiety vanished. I've come to understand that this is a pattern which can eat you alive unless you come to recognize it on time, and it's the same for any drug (or combination of drugs) which has a profound and predictable effect on the emotions.
Good luck, man. If the pain of sobriety is too much, find help, either from your best and soberest friends, or from professional therapists. Ultimately you will be a far stronger and better person for kicking these habits.
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