HI TO ALL ON THIS THREAD and to JOKER: Yes, I have dealt with anxiety all my life as well. Now it's funny because sativa works really well for me: it lifts me up. I think that cannabis interacts differently with each person's chemistry and emotional frame of mind, so I can only share my own experience.
I see cannabis as therapeutic re: anxiety on various levels. It helps me to "go through" anxiety and walk out the other side; it helps me to see that anxiety is an illusion: it is a reaction in the present to a past long gone. I have come to see it, at the age of 63, as a form of PTSD that's been with me since childhood due to family shit. And similar to combat veterans or other sufferers of PTSD, certain events in my present life will trigger past reactions to stuff that went on when I was a child. I've come to recognize that I REACT AS IF I WERE 6 YEARS OLD AGAIN: but weed has helped me incredibly to recognize that today is today--not 57 years ago. That's what I mean by perceiving anxiety as an illusion. Now I know that anxiety is real--don't get me wrong. When one is in it, it's awful.
What I work on is "bursting the bubble" of anxiety to get back into my entire present life circumstance and release the reaction to events from 50-some years ago.
One final word: sometimes when I get reeeeeeeeeallly high, I imagine that I'm getting ready to surf a huge wave: it's exhilirating, a little scarey, but I can do this, just go up to the top of the wave, let go and surf on down into the full bloom of the high. As a friend said to me a long time ago, sometimes ya gotta get on the bed and embrace that anxiety: that's the "go through" part, as is surfing the big wave...
So glad to know that we on this forum understand each other...