Why Do You Consume Cannabis?

[Team Microbe]

I am classified as "emotionally disturbed" due to life long mental illness (diagnosed pre teen). Some of it is of biological influence (bipolar adhd) and others are environmental (BPD, PTSD) above and beyond other nifty diagnosis.

The bottom line is, even after a year of institutionalization my prognosis was bleak, 6 months before suicide or permanent institutionalization)

This is a tip of the iceberg summary, but the bottom line is I am functional and mentally sound, not due to modern medicine but due to marijuana.

I have spent years in professional care and then years experimenting with alternative treatments and I can articulate the effects from a psychological view point.

Our minds are programmed by our experiences, our actual biology is effected by the input of our senses.

This programming can lead to very unproductive mindsets.

I believe we intuitively know this on a subliminal level but often don't have an understanding of the underlying causation to allow us to see it consciously.

Marijuana is a vehicle that allows us to escape this influence of experience, both biological and environmental (which still expresses biologically as well).

PTSD is an excellent example.

I would often have very traumatic memories triggered that would paralysis me or change my mood drastically, putting me in such bad places it would debilitate me.

Just leaving the house made this almost unavoidable.

If I smoked and got high enough, those memories didn't come when I experienced things, or at least the emotion that would be associated with them was not.

It gave me the capacity to create new pleasant memories around the same stimulus which then allowed my mind in the future to go to a different place when recalling memories triggered by the same stimulus.

It is proven marijuana creates new neuro pathways so there is even scientific basis for this observation as well as anecdotal evidence from others that suffer from PTSD.

Marijuana saved my life, quite literally. To me it is a civic duty to disobey immoral laws such as marijuana prohibition based on its medicinal effect on our species.

God damn you hit that on the head my friend. Beautifully said. My condition doesn't sound as severe as yours but I can relate in a way, and can say for sure that cannabis helps dull traumatic memories or any sounds/visuals associated with them.

I went through a couple violent home invasions in my late teens... kids broke into my apartment and robbed me at gun point for everything I had; it was violating and I realized how vulnerable I was at the time even with the doors locked during the middle of the night. That was the first incident that triggered the onset of the PTSD.

Then my girlfriend turned on me (young love type shit) and set up a 2nd robbery not too far down the road from there. Talk about bad judgement. Long story short, I cannot fall asleep at night unless I'm heavily medicated due to my brain being wired to be on high alert during the hours 1am-5am. This is brutal when I don't have medicine (in between harvests) because I literally stay up until the sun rises, and then I get my sleep and wake up later in the day around 3pm. It's terrible, and I've had to quit jobs in the past because the hours were simply too early for my condition. The worst part about it is the fact that I know it's due to this pre-wiring from those armed robberies - I know it's a very slim chance that it happens where I'm at now, but my instinct is to stay on guard during late night hours. I guess that's what PTSD is, when past events creep back and haunt your present day life in ways like this. I can't even begin to imagine what war vets go through... Jesus Christ

Anyways, when I smoke, I can clear my mind and relax my nerves without listening for someone tinkering with a window or a door lock. I find that strains high in THC and low in CBD actually make the anxiety worse though, I have to save these for day time medicine lol

I remember mushrooms having a positive effect on me before the robberies ever happened in the sense of ridding associations from past events, but I haven't taken them since the robberies so I don't know if they'll have the same effect on the PTSD or if it'll only make it worse

 

[Crusader Rabbit]

Wow T.M., talk about violation of trust and what should have been a sanctuary. To never again feel safe in one's own bed and home is pretty harsh. My cousin spent a year living in a barracks in which the previous occupants had all had their throats slit in their sleep by the Viet Cong. He said that none of his crew ever got any sleep, and he has trouble still. I have OCD and PTSD which have a synergistic effect together. Hard to trust anybody now after a number of life experiences. My nephew is in the same situation. He researches the subject and sends me links. There is good evidence that psilocybin has a repairative effect upon PTSD modified brains. Sub-dosage level amounts are enough to have the effect. Do a web search on "psilocybin PTSD".

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I smoke for the calm it brings to me. In mind and body. And growing it and working in my small garden does the same so when I do both at once it is like a mini vacation.

Working in the garden without smoking anything, well it just isn't the same is it? Outside in the sunshine tending my water lilies while high is just magic. Total magic. I think there's a good reason for that. For centuries now, cannabis that has the effect of making people want to nurture plants does a lot better and has more success in reproduction than cannabis which doesn't have that effect. So those plant nurturing genes have been selected for in cannabis. You could even say that the plants have enslaved us.

 

[Team Microbe]

Damn I thought I had it bad... I feel for your cousin now lol. That had to be insanely stressful over there, I can totally see how he would carry that back with him to The States. Trust is definitely easy to lose, and hard to regain - that's for sure. Thanks for the reference too btw, I'll check into that. Then I'll have to learn how to cultivate them because I don't trust anything out on the street (kind of like weed) lol