There’s been a lot of conversation about marijuana as an aid for things like chronic pain and epilepsy, but very few studies on what it does for those who are experiencing mental health issues.
If I had had marijuana growing up, I probably would have found it within myself to be more honest with what was going on, then I had been.
I say that seriously.
I started smoking marijuana about two years ago, full time. Right before I got arrested for having a panic attack, largely because I had learned to take life less seriously, but mostly because I knew I needed something, and drinking wasn’t an option.
It was for me, the healthier of the options, to deal with what I was mentally experiencing, but not yet able to vocalize.
After I got arrested, I started smoking marijuana seriously, like every day, all day, instead of a once in awhile kind of thing.
I started smoking it regularly because I knew that I was about to have a nervous break down, and I needed something to cushion the emotional blow of being humiliated, arrested, and basically just emotionally done with the world.
Smoking pot allowed me to go to my mom and tell her, that something really, really, awful had happened to me, and finally release my truth into the air. It allowed me to speak about what happened to me honestly, clearly, in a way that people were forced to listen.
It also sent me spiraling into a nervous fucking break down filled with fear, paranoia, and the serious belief that I was going absolutely, irrevocably insane.
Had I not realized that something was seriously wrong, I might not have asked my mom to take me back to the hospital. This would be my third visit in under a year. It was also the best decision I could have ever made for myself.
Marijuana is not a cure all, it can’t cure and save you from everything, but what it can do is shine a light on the things that you haven’t been paying attention to, and force you to actually acknowledge the pain you are experiencing. I call it a truth serum, because when I was stoned at parties, people usually found out how I really felt about them.
The same is true about myself – once I started smoking pot, I had to get serious about what was wrong with me. I had to get honest with myself, and I was forced to start acknowledging just how many times I was sexually abused.
If I hadn’t done that, I probably wouldn’t have had the nervous break down that forced me to say and do things I wouldn’t have ordinarily, but I also wouldn’t have been able to tell my mom what had happened to me as a teenager, and a young woman.
Now that the truth is out there, in all it’s twists and turns, I feel honestly better about my life. I can see a future for myself that I really want, filled with good friends, honest relationships and genuine love.
This is not a future that I really thought about a lot growing up, mostly because I didn’t really believe that I had one.
I will say, that if I had it to do over again, I probably would have waited until I had a psychiatrist to help me through the emotional break down that came my way. But to be fair I waited a really, really, long time to say that I needed help. I wasn’t able to before, because I didn’t know the vocabulary that I have now.
I didn’t know how to say that I needed help, because no one ever taught me how to say those words. They just assumed something was wrong with me, instead of asking if I’d been abused. I was abused so much that I had learned early I couldn’t trust adults. So to be fair, I also learned how to hide my secret from a world that just thought I was a brat, anyways.
Now that I am older, I look back to that little girl and I see her for the warrior and the soldier she was. Because of her I learned to grow into the kind of woman that can help others, and through the use of marijuana, I have come to a place where I learned it’s okay for me to help myself too.
Marijuana has absolutely changed my life, and I highly recommend it, that being said I will also say that I highly recommend you have a support system around you that understands you are going to go through changes as the marijuana does it’s thing.
You will have moments of anxiety, depression, and paranoia until you find the right methods and strains that work for you. You will go through moments of fear, and panic, because your body isn’t used to the help that marijuana can provide and it can be scary at first.
Once you get through that however, once you learn what method works for your body, mind and soul, whether it’s a tincture or a joint, you will find that it will help you to peel back the layers of who you were, so you can become the person you were meant to be.
I’ve talked to enough people now, that I know what I am talking about when I say that while it’s a wonderful addition to your mental health regime, you’re also going to still have to do the work.
That means keeping in touch with your support team and your doctor(s), it means being honest about how you are feeling, and it means actually working through the emotional and physical trauma that you’ve experienced in your life.
If you want marijuana to help you, then you have to approach it logically and honestly. Marijuana is like the Tarot, it won’t allow you to lie about what’s going on with you, but it can help you find a sense of peace after the fact.
If you choose to use marijuana I cannot stress this enough – do so after you’ve done your research. I used a dispensary that I swear was mixing something into my marijuana, and it made me really sick for awhile, and I lost a ton of weight really fast. I thought it was a good thing, until I started to notice that I was anxious and paranoid all the time.
Make sure that the people you are buying your pot from knows where it comes from and that it’s a clean supply. There are still a ton of people out there that will take your money and give you a dirty supply of marijuana just because they are fucking evil.
Please be careful, because as with anything, marijuana has it’s good points and it’s bad points.
Wishing you the best of luck, and sending all my love,
Devon J Hall
Loud Mouth Brown Girl 