7 year heavy smoker, had one bad experience, now scared of weed. Need advice

Okay, this is crazy.

Smoked a lot, every day. For 7 years.

One night, I had a panic attack or very close to one, after a joint. Nothing was unusual that day, consciously everything was the same.

I came upstairs and started sweating out of everywhere, couldn’t keep my mind straight, was so close to calling an ambulance (that’s how irrational my state of mind was at the time) as I’ve never experienced anything like it before in my life. I just felt on the verge of a panic attack but tried so hard to not let it happen due to fear.

This is the weird part.

Expecting it just be a pretty bad ‘whitey’, I eventually got to sleep and was hoping we’d be back to normal the following day. However, I was still in a panicked state the next day, still on the verge. And not just the next day, for 4 weeks after, this was my life. I just wouldn’t settle down, I had to take a month or so off work.

I attempted weed once in between to see if it could relax me but it started to heighten my anxiety again.

My only escape was sleep, I listened to the sound of raining as it has always relaxed me and just attempted to sleep the days away. I never nap, ever. I didn’t know what was happening to me, I couldn’t even watch movies for the next couple of weeks.

Eventually, things got about 50% better and I could watch stuff. And after around 5/6 weeks after the initial incident, I went back to work.

Fast forward 18 months later. I’m okay. I haven’t smoked since. I’ve piled on about 10kg (damn you). And I feel like I’m not quite the same, every couple of months, I’m reminded that the anxiety issue is still there and I have like a little couple of minutes of heightened anxiety (like if I dwell on a certain thing at a certain time, I can feel it begin to rise, but thankfully dissipates).

So, my question is this. I don’t want to be a heavy smoker again. But I would really like to just get high every once in a while. Does anyone have any advice or can relate in any way?

If you read all that. Thank you so much.