Everyone I know as an weed smoking adult was someone I knew as a young person. We didn’t have a lot of the vocabulary around mental health issues (or neurodiversity) so most articulated that they experienced anxiety only later, maybe in their 30s? But I, as a friend - not a mental health professional - I would say “ah, that makes sense based on the younger version of you I knew!” They were anxious teens in an era when we didn’t have words for anxiety disorder. They would say the same.
This is a tough one. I recall talking to a recovering alcoholic who recalled how much she loved the feeling of her first experience with alcohol at 13. Why did it feel so good for her? Not my experience at all! But maybe it soothed some unnameable, uncomfortable feeling in her.
And at the same time, we know that chronic pain can cause the brain to rewire itself, so why would that not be true of constant exposure to a substantial known to impact the mind?