My Experience with Medical Marijuana as a Psychiatric Medication and Harm Reduction Strategy
Posted in Addiction & Substance Abuse, Alcoholism, Anxiety, Grief, Herbal Medicine, Lifestyle Changes, Marijuana, Mental Illness, My Experience With..., Personal Stories, PTSD, Schizoaffective Disorder, Sobriety, Therapy, Therapy By Andrea Lambert On December 23, 2014
Trigger Warnings: suicidal ideation, grief, alcoholism, drug use.
When I first came to medical marijuana, I was desperate. Fighting Schizoaffective Disorder, alcoholism, PTSD, the recent death of my wife, chronic anxiety, and newly recovered childhood abuse memories, all I wanted was to be put out of my misery. I told my therapist, “When an animal is broken, you either shoot it or put it out to pasture comfortably, I’ll take either one.”
After a difficult year involving three inpatient and one outpatient stay at psychiatric facilities, I was willing to try any experimental therapy. I was facing down the battle of detoxing from the most recent of my relapses. Cleansing myself from the wreckage of two failed relationships with men I’d attempted to date. I was broken. Drinking heavily. My therapist suggested I get a medical marijuana card and use that as a detox and harm reduction method to avoid another inpatient stay.
Eager to avoid inpatient detox, which I had endured previously, and outpatient rehab, which I had not, I complied. I didn’t want to give up my comfortable apartment and live in an unstable, dangerous sober living. It didn’t seem safe. I wanted a different solution.
It was the easiest piece of psychiatric care and addiction medicine that I’d ever encountered.
On a sunny day, when I was ready to detox, I walked down the street to the local dispensary. I picked up a business card for a local doctor who could issue me a medical marijuana card. The address on the doctor’s card was a few blocks away, so I walked down the sunny spring street. I quickly found a storefront offering cards even closer to the one I had been searching for. I went in. A woman with dreadlocks walked me through the process. I filled out a form with my very real, legitimate symptoms: depression, anxiety, PTSD, insomnia, herpes. In return I was given an official-looking letter on green paper with a seal and a stamp of a doctor’s signature. It seemed good enough. I gave the woman $35 and went on my way. I was now legal for a year in the state of California to buy, carry, and consume in my own home a wide variety of strains, edibles, and cannabis extracts.
My local dispensary was my next stop. It was all highly secure and guarded, which made me feel safe. I was buzzed into the large, windowless storefront by a hippie security guard who deemed my paperwork legit and had me fill out some forms. Then I was free to purchase. He buzzed me into the back room. Staffed by bubbly, heavily tattooed women that seemed knowledgeable about their product. It had the air of a health food store, with a handwritten menu of Sativa, Indica and Hybrid strains. The marijuana was stored in mason jars under a glass counter. The strains had fanciful names written in marker. A cooler full of delicious-looking edibles: caramels, cheese fish, chocolate bars, Rice Crispy treats and cookies. A mural lined the medicating room, where bongs were available. I selected an eighth of something called “White Widow” as I was a widow, paid $20 and got a free joint and small glass pipe for being a new customer.
That walk home in the early spring sunshine was full of anticipation. Certainly I had smoked weed before, in fact, I loved to smoke. I always had a good time, and if I didn’t drink, nothing bad would happen. Alcohol, cocaine and speed were my substances of abuse. Having shaken the hard drugs a many years ago, I was still battling hard with alcohol. I had been fighting to get sober for a year, tried two detoxes, outpatient rehab, AA, having a sponsor, and I kept relapsing. I had given up marijuana quite reluctantly when I entered rehab. I was saddened by AA’s abstinence-based view that all things pleasurable were sins and should be avoided.
Finally, I could smoke weed for a medicinal purpose, not just for fun with friends. Weed allowed me to get through my detox without hospitalization. I had been drinking quite heavily for a month and would otherwise have seizures and hallucinations. In contrast, my at-home detox was comfortable and uneventful. I was just stoned, on my couch, watching movies. Not in a dangerous inpatient facility under institutional rule, sharing a bathroom with a homeless woman and being strip-searched.
My anxiety was not responding to anything but heavy benzodiazepines, also strictly monitored under this abstinence-based, no pleasure center stimuli model of addiction medicine. To have an additional tool against the anxiety was wonderful. I found a better psychiatrist and went on Klonopin as an additional treatment. Recently I have had some relief from the anxiety. I can go to the grocery store again.
When I tried this experiment I was being seen at day outpatient program at a local dual diagnosis hospital. I was open with them that I was trying harm reduction, and they were encouraging and sympathetic. After a few months of daily medical marijuana consumption, I was able to graduate from the outpatient program and launch back into my life. Marijuana brought me a year and counting of sobriety. A positive and beautiful period in my life: intellectual re-engagement, newfound joy for life, neo-pagan Wicca spirituality, and I got back together with my good, loyal boyfriend.
I now continue using it for anxiety, PTSD, depression, emotional healing, motivation and creative blocks. I can feel my brain healing itself as I vaporize. I have moved on to using a vaporizer almost exclusively to prevent damage to my lungs from smoking. I can actually feel my synapses knitting themselves back together as my brain and body heal. I continue to do yoga and work out. My vision, which had been aberrant, improved. I no longer need to wear contact lenses. I became a nicer, friendlier, less bitter person. I began looking for creative opportunities and ways to shine and thrive that I had previously not been interested in.
The last year has been an amazing gift. I was able to start a small Etsy-based business. I was able to enjoy a deeper level of fun and intimacy with my boyfriend. I successfully handled my disability renewal and my wife’s estate without needing to be hospitalized again. I completed a new draft of my most recent novel and embarked upon a series of new paintings after being artistically blocked for several years. I became a Wicca practitioner, and discovered a whole rich new source of self-empowerment through growing my spiritual nature.
All of this has kept me sober for a year and counting without going to a single AA meeting, doing a single step, freely going to bars and clubs, drinking non-alcoholic beer, doing many of the things which I was told not to do in rehab. I can do these things now because my sobriety is stable and fun has a place in my life again. I want to participate in life, not watch from the stigmatized sidelines. I don’t need to sit in a circle of chairs for the rest of my life rehashing how much alcohol ruined my life.
I have a real, professional therapist now. She is young and preternaturally wise. That does my mental health much more good that the inept faux-therapy of AA. I am interested in being solitary and selective with whom I spend my time. AA is too porous, opening me to dangerous personalities and situations. I have chosen to withdraw from the time and energy-suck that I eventually found AA to be. I find my fulfillment and sobriety in art, writing, and enjoying the new world of spirituality and sensation that marijuana opens to me.
I now have hope for my life again. I know I am capable of a great deal, despite my disability. The motivating effect that Sativa has on me has brought me to do things that I care about, to reengage with a world that I had felt shut out of and disregarded by. I am grateful that medical marijuana is cheap, plentiful and legal where I live. It has changed my life for the better.
About Author
Andrea Lambert
Andrea Lambert is the author of Jet Set Desolate (Future Fiction London, 2009) Lorazepam & the Valley of Skin: Extrapolations on Los Angeles / 730910-2155 (valeveil, 2009) and the chapbook G(u)ilt (Lost Angelene, 2011). CalArts MFA. Her work appears in 3:AM Magazine, The Fanzine, Entropy, Angel’s Flight Literary West, HTMLGiant, Queer Mental Health, Five:2:One Magazine and ENCLAVE. Artist working in mixed media oils and collage. She lives in Reno with her cat.
thank you so much for sharing this story! my life has definitely changed for the better since i began using marijuana. it helps with my depression, chronic pain, obsessions, ptsd, anxiety, nightmares/sleep, etc. i’m currently working with my nurse practitioner to get a medical licence. in the meantime, she just prescribed me nabilone (synthetic THC pills)
xoxox