Loud Mouth Brown Girl

“Cannabis is the only God damned thing on the planet that calms my stress, anxiety, and depression down enough that I can actually fucking function, and the sooner we both acknowledge that, the fucking better.”

Is what I wish I had said. But unfortunately, it is not. Instead, I explained calmly that another doctor who works with cannabis patients prescribed me ten grams a day, and I don’t smoke nearly that much (I smoke about six).

But this is why I had more audacity, if I did, I could advocate for myself until I find a Psychiatrist who is willing to actually listen to me. I thought having a Black doctor would change everything for me, and we had that conversation when we first met. But as it turns out, he has just as much Black women bias as a white or Asian doctor.

In nine years, I’ve had FIVE different Psychiatrists, and the one thing they all agree on is the fact that I am either making it up, lying for attention, or paranoid.

I’m fucking tired.

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, Hunters would use cannabis before a hunt to prepare themselves spiritually for what was to come.

Doctors would give women cannabis before they gave birth as a painkiller.

Cannabis was used as a salve to heal wounds. Cannabis was regularly used until white people decided that they didn’t like white girls mixing with the Black men who carried, bought, and cultivated the plant.

Cannabis is a deep, spiritual part of my life, and I get deeply offended when people accuse me of misusing something that brings so much to my life and helps me become the regular, everyday person I get to be when I am lifted.

I don’t even smoke to get high anymore. Those days are gone. I smoke because it gives me twenty minutes to myself, where I don’t have to be “On” for anyone. I smoke because when I do, all of my anxiety, depression, fear, and misery fade away, and I can be more focused and hella more creative.

When I smoke with my friends S and H, I feel a connection between us that I don’t feel with other people. I feel safe to say “hey, this is on my mind,” and before I know it, I’ve shared with them and thank the Gods, they have shared with me as well.

Balance is key when smoking or using cannabis. And any true stoner will tell you that. For us, however, the idea of balance is a spectrum. What’s too much for someone is very mild for another.

This is what makes cannabis as a whole so difficult to regulate. Cannabis works in so many different ways, for so many different people. But in some people, it either doesn’t work at all, or it makes people sick to their stomach.

In order to truly understand cannabis, we need to study ALL the people who use it, and the reason that we can’t do that is because of racism and gender bias.

Men who smoke weed are considered cool, hippy-type people. Never are men who smoke cannabis considered a problem, because “Cannabis is safe.” So we’re told.

I took his course and learned far more about the plant than the average doctor has access to, and that’s because they do not study the implications of cannabis on medicines such as mental health. They don’t have the funding to do those studies yet, and when they do, they will find that Cannabis, much like Ayawaska and LSD have profound effects on our mental health.

I fully believe that outlawing the plant is part of why we are where we are today. For me, and only for me, I can honestly say that in the early days, ye,s I did go crazy, but that’s not because of the cannabis. It’s because I’d had enough of the shit that men were willing to offer me, and I decided I deserved better.

It took everything out of me to release the shit I had been fed all those years, and cannabis was the only thing that kept me from doing serious, life-altering harm to myself.

I fully believe that cannabis, in small and large doses, changes the game for mental health patients. But what do I know, I’ve only been studying it for the last ten fucking years.

XOXO

Devon J Hall,

The Original Loud Mouth Brown Girl