Cannabis Should be A Part of Your Recovery Program
Yes I Fucking Said it I’m Calling Out Recovery Programs Everywhere
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Cannabis. Weed. Smoke. Herb. Ganja. Wank. Pot. The Green Stuff. Purple Goddess. White Widow.
Big dirty words for weed. Big word for healing. A big umbrella, helps with lots of shit, but did you know it also helps with addiction? Neither did I until I fucking witnessed it.
I’ve seen people in the worst addiction of their lives come back from the brink of insanity with the aid of a joint and stay in bliss because of more joints, and build big beautiful lives, because of cannabis.
So it’s time that NA, AA, CA, and other recovery organizations start making room for cannabis in their system.
Cannabis works in a variety of ways to help heal the body, but let me break this down in a few different ways so that I don’t lose you.
Mental Health
A lot of people suffer from memory problems due to trauma. I didn’t know this until I started to speaking people around me who openly live with PTSD and have no problem sharing their stories with me. (Thank you for that.)
Without sharing details, I will say that for the majority of people I’ve spoken to, cannabis helps with PTSD, Anxiety, Depression, and Isolation.
It helps calm the nerves so that we’re not dialed up to 100 all the time, and helps relax the emotive center of the brain so that even when we’re angry or stressed we can come across calmly and serenely.
Every day I wake up and get to smoke cannabis is a day I know I am going to be emotionally prepared to deal with the day. It helps keep me calm, it helps keep me focused and allows me the space I need to take what I am thinking and organize my thoughts so I can function enough to write.
Physical Health
Because I smoke cannabis I have to go outside my apartment to smoke, which means I am often surrounded by other folks who smoke cannabis. So I am more inclined to conversate and get to know my neighbors.
This is huge for me because, in my old apartment, I struggled with agoraphobia. I could only go to a few places, and I rarely left my apartment at all. I smoked inside, and no one bothered me and I didn’t bother anyone.
In this apartment I have to go outside, so my ability to communicate with other humans is coming back, and it feels really good.
I’m starting to stop masking my voice — for years I would speak with a perfect English inflection on every word — not the accent, just the tone — but I have a natural speech impediment that comes out when I feel safe and comfortable with folks. It’s starting to show itself again, which just means I have to work harder to hide, but this is especially hard when I am stoned because my speech impediment just means I have a lazy tongue.
Spiritual Health
I’m struggling with this one myself, but once I started smoking cannabis about six years ago, I suddenly felt more connected to my spirituality than I ever had before. As I’ve mentioned in other essays, I started painting, dancing, taught myself how to draw, and found that I have a real passion for the arts.
Art helped me communicate shit to the world that I couldn’t in the English language, it allowed me to transcend communication, and even if I didn’t always understand my paintings, it was a period in my life I’ll never forget because it wouldn’t have happened without cannabis.
My ability to deal with other people and the things that trigger them has changed completely through my use of cannabis. I am far more aware of my behavior than I was before. I understand human interaction outside of trauma circles, better than I ever did before.
Emotional Health
Because cannabis helps me regulate my emotions better, I am able to control the things that frustrated me a little more than I would be without cannabis.
The triggers I mentioned before — loud noises, big crowds, toxic connections — don’t traumatize me as much anymore. I can have social interactions that are healthy, and I can spend my time focusing on the things that I am passionate about.
I am able to focus, healthily, on the things that matter to my best interest. I don’t have to worry about focusing on helping other people, all the time when I can focus on helping myself first. This way I am better equipt to help people when they need me.
Addictive Wellbeing
When I was in my 20s I couldn’t get enough alcohol into my system. Sometimes I would order 4 drinks at a time just to ensure that I had enough alcohol to get me through the night.
There are days that I look at my life and I am so grateful that I chose cannabis over drinking six years ago. I needed something, to cut the edge, to make the emotional wounds hurt less, I needed something to cushion the blow because I could feel all these memories surfacing and I had nothing to hold me back.
Yes, when I first started smoking cannabis I had a nervous fucking breakdown, but that’s because I realized the counselor I’d chosen to help me through my writing woes, was one of the same men that hit me the night I was gangraped. And I did not make that shit up.
I don’t drink as much as I used to and in fact, stopped drinking altogether for about three years. Until about two years ago I hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol, and then to test myself I had a glass of wine at dinner.
It didn’t kill me. Now I can drink if I want to but I often don’t feel the urge, even when it’s in the cupboard or fridge.
I can handle my drinking, I can handle my smoking weed, but I realize this is not always the case for everyone, so here’s what I am proposing.
Hire Cannabis Patients
For decades cannabis patients have been telling you that cannabis helps with:
- Glaucoma
- Cancer
- Physical Ailments
- Seizers
- Sleeping disorders
- Creativity
- Nausea
It can heighten our perception, and help us focus our time better, and we know that through personal experience, so the best people to teach about cannabis, are the people using it.
Some of us have certifications in the study of the plant, and we can walk you through the process of introducing cannabis into your daily, weekly, or monthly habits, really calmly.
We can show you the way to start using cannabis while weaning off the hard drugs in a safe, healthy way, that will provide you the patient with the most comfort, and we know how to do this because we’ve done it ourselves.
Getting “clean” can be one of the hardest decisions in the world, but it should be done with as much consideration for the mental health of the patient as well as the physical.
It’s not just about changing your drug of choice, it’s about helping you find an aid that will make it easier to stay away from the hard poison that is slowly murdering you whether you want to admit it or not.
Just some food for thought.
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall, The Loud Mouth Brown Girl
