survivorsforcannabis-blog

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Karina Pujols: How Cannabis Helps Deal with Social Phobia, Motherhood and Everyday Triggers

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Karina Pujols (@_karieee) is a 28-year-old mother and survivor from Manhattan, New York. In this interview, she shares how weed helps her to heal and cope with lifelong social phobia, depression, anxiety as well as PTSD from sexual assault. We also discuss how she has been impacted by issues of access and affordability, negative stigmas and pharmaceutical alternatives.

Content warning: rape and suicide ideation

What was it like growing up with social phobia?

I’ve been social phobic all my life. Since pre-K, I wouldn’t speak in class. They thought something was wrong with me and held me back twice, even though I did the work. So I was a lot older than other kids, which made me not want to socialize. It still hurts when I walk by that school.

I’d been through a bunch of therapists because of this, but still was only comfortable talking at home, so my mom recorded me secretly in her bra. I heard my own voice over the recording and got traumatized. I felt she betrayed me with my own voice. It took me a long time to communicate over the phone after that.

Fast-forward to junior high, there were three or four other shy people that I felt comfortable with. By freshman year in high school, I was dating someone but we hadn’t made out yet. He forced himself on me when I was pushing him away, and took my virginity. I was 16 going on 17, it was my birthday. I didn’t have sex for three years after that and went through this whole depression throughout high school.

Eleventh grade, I started drinking. It helped me socialize, I was the life of the party but then it got out of control. I would get into fights with my sisters, embarrass myself in front of family members and the whole block, and just wake up in the morning like, what happened? I also did coke in high school, before I smoked weed.

When did you first start smoking weed?

I smoked once in high school but not again until after, in 2010 when I started working and everyone at my job smoked. You’d think I would have started sooner, because in my neighborhood, you’re always gonna see a bunch of guys outside smoking. But I didn’t talk to anyone here until I started buying from them to smoke on my own.

And it was like, wow, I can actually smoke and not lose control. I’m still myself. I would smoke blunts, starting little by little. It made me less anxious and helped with my depression.

But back then you could only get sour or haze. When I smoked sour, it was very strong and I would smoke a lot because I was a beginner and didn’t really know. It made me paranoid, like everybody’s staring at me. So then I smoked haze, which didn’t make me so paranoid.

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How did you realize it was helping you as a medicine?

I first started just to try it, and continued because it made me feel good and like I didn’t need to drink. But I didn’t see it as medicine because it was illegal. I started doing research, and also studied Chinese medicine so I started seeing it as an herb, not an illegal drug. I learned how it affected me, calmed my fears and helped me work. I could go smoke on work breaks and be fine, instead of smoking cigarettes, which I used to do to calm me down.

I stopped smoking cigarettes when I got pregnant. But I did do research about pregnant women who smoked weed, and their kids turn out perfectly healthy. During my first trimester, I had so much nausea that I couldn’t eat or drink. So I would roll on hemp paper, take a couple hits and it was just like, finally! But I didn’t smoke in my last trimester, which I’m not sure was a good idea for me – I ended up having high blood pressure and they had to induce me into labor.

My daughter was born in 2013, when I was 24.

When did you start smoking weed again?

I didn’t smoke right after, I didn’t want to get arrested or have her taken away from me. I was going through a lot during that pregnancy, including issues with the father and his addiction. My anxiety and depression came back really hard. When I started smoking again, I could only get sour, which made me even more stressed. I got a lot of throat and ear infections, like I thought I had cancer or something but the doctors couldn’t find anything. It turned out just to be all the negativity that I was internalizing from what everybody was saying about me smoking weed as a mother.

I was also hanging out with the wrong crowd – I had friends who sell so there was a lot going around. At some point I was abusing it, overdoing it way too much. When you smoke the right amounts it helps, but then you smoke too much, and you’ll still feel good but you don’t feel as motivated to get out. Now that I see weed as a positive thing, it doesn’t affect me like that. I don’t even get paranoid at all. It’s amazing how when your perspective on something shifts it affects everything else, too. 

Where are you at now?

Less than a year ago, I had to get help because I was way too depressed and my anxiety was getting worse. I’ve been depressed since I was little so I always thought about ending my life but never had a plan. The only thing I knew was the George Washington Bridge. I was scared to walk by that bridge, I was scared my body would jump without me even acknowledging that my body was jumping. I was scared of myself and my decisions, so I went to get help. I went in and they were like, oh yeah, you young mothers come in here all the time, you’ll need somebody to pick up your child because you’ll be here for 24 hours... So I was like, nevermind.

Weeks later, I went to a psychiatrist. Right now I can’t afford the cannabis or CBD that I need, but I do have health insurance so they put me on the antidepressant Effexor, and Xanax for anxiety, which helps but it becomes addicting after a while. And research has shown that Effexor is harder to get off than heroin.

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So I’m still on that. If I had money I wouldn’t be, but I had no other choice. I felt stuck. I couldn’t get out of bed or do anything. I have a kid, I have to do stuff. I also was just diagnosed with social phobia. I knew that something was weird, the way I was communicating wasn’t normal, I would just cut people off. My last therapist cut me off because I kept missing it – it was really hard for me to talk to someone, and they didn’t understand I had social phobia.

There’s some people I’m super comfortable with, I don’t need to smoke or do anything but other times I need something extra so that I can function. It has to be the energies of people, because when I’m alone or with a good energy I’m fine, I don’t feel any type of way.

Cognitive therapy has been really helpful in forcing me to do the things I’m most afraid of. My anti-depressant helps with the social phobia but the anxiety is still there.

What are some of the ways that weed helps you?

It has helped with anything and everything that I have dealt with. With the issues from childhood, with my triggers. I get triggered a lot because I’m at home, in this house where my virginity was taken. And that wasn’t the only time I was raped – there have been more times. I’m triggered every day, but cannabis helps.

When I smoke, I’m more outgoing, instead of lazy and depressed. I’ll actually start cleaning up my house and doing stuff with my daughter. I’ll be way more active, I can do anything. I don’t use it around her – I don’t want her to think I’m smoking cigarettes but when she’s older I will educate her about it. Cannabis helps me figure things out when I can’t think straight. When I’m in panic mode, I’m walking in different directions, I don’t know what to do or who to call. And if I just take a couple hits, everything slows down, like okay, I can think straight and not make rash decisions.

It also helped once I started having sex. I wasn’t getting pleasure – I wanted to do it but was just too tense. So when I started smoking and dating somebody who also smoked, I was actually able to let go and not be so self-conscious. And it helps me communicate better with the other person.

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Do you communicate these reasons you like to smoke with the other person? I don’t really, I keep that to myself because then they’ll be like oh, you can’t have sex if you don’t smoke weed…  it’s not true because I have. And it’s not like I don’t want the person or I’m afraid of them, it’s just the social phobia, these things I’ve always had.

Education is key so that everyone can understand what they are consuming, and it helps those who don’t consume it to not judge what they don’t understand.

Do your doctors support you using cannabis?

The doctor I’m seeing now supports me. He didn’t want me smoking at first, so I told him about how it’s the only thing that helps me and now he doesn’t bother me about it. He told me to buy CBD but I can’t, so he gave me Xanax. I only take it when I’m about to have an anxiety attack.

All my pills are completely free of charge with my health insurance. It’s expensive to buy CBD out of pocket. They told me to get a card, but it’s really hard to get here.

I wish they would legalize it here… it would also create more jobs. I’ve done my own hydroponics before and was offered a job, but couldn’t take it because I didn’t have someone to take my daughter from school. Now, I live with my mom and my sisters are helping with my situation.

Why did you decide to share your story here?

I decided to share my story with you and future readers because I always felt misunderstood due to my social phobia. I recently opened up to my sister and it felt like weight lifted up off my shoulders. Sharing my story feels liberating and now I can make space for more positive things. I also want people who have similar mental health issues to feel less alone because when I hear someone’s story that I can relate to, that’s exactly how I feel.

I am also sharing to end the stigma. Cannabis has been extremely helpful in my journey to healing and dealing with everyday life, especially as a mother. I want other mommas to know it’s okay to medicate even if it’s still not legal where they live.

Lastly, I’ve been practicing my social skills and communicating with my friends more on how I feel – I have lost less friends and also made many because of it. Sharing can be helpful for others in similar situations and I hope that anyone who can relate keeps on going, because change is constant and nothing can last forever. Just keep riding the waves as hard as they may seem.

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All photos taken by @sonderskies

[survivorsforcannabis-blog]

Could You Date Someone Who Does Not Consume Cannabis?

Dating can be really fucking difficult when you’re sexually traumatized, with or without the added stigma of smoking weed as a means of survival. For some of us, whether or not our partner also consumes can make all the difference in how comfortable we are in a relationship. For others, the answer is not so black-and-white. To explore this issue further, we asked in a story poll, “Could you date someone who does not consume cannabis?” and the results were evenly split with 49% of respondents replying “it could work” and 51% replying “no thanks.” We also received the following anonymous responses from the community – in no particular order, in their own words: “I have always been with people who self medicated before I did myself and it was never a problem. I think it’s only an issue when we hold judgment around the other person’s actions. I don’t drink, it brings up trauma for me, but my boyfriend does. And he is very respectful and non-judgmental about me smoking daily.” ✦ “My ex boyfriend did not understand and shamed me for it. He kept saying that I wouldn’t always need it and that I should cut back. I use it legally for multiple illnesses and chronic pain. My current boyfriend smokes and is suuuuuuper understanding of what I go through. I picked ‘it could work’ because I feel like even if he didn’t smoke, he’d support me 100%.” ✦ “I never feel truly comfortable with my smoking habits when I’m with a non-smoker. Even friends. It’s at least partly in my head, but I feel self-conscious and like they’re judging, like I’m some sort of fiend who can’t function without it. And maybe that’s partially true, maybe I am a fiend. But they just don’t get it.” ✦ “It is such a big part of my life, dealing with stress, positively dealing with my emotions and triggers (instead of using food, alcohol, or doing other destructive behaviors), that if they didn’t use too, I feel like they would start to resent me for it.” ✦ “I don’t know how it would work with someone who doesn’t smoke, as it has become an integral part of my socializing. I am, however, wary of those who consume more than me, as past experiences with such partners seem to end up with them taking far too many financial liberties that impact our shared lives. Honestly though, those experiences have made me afraid of any relationships, medicated or otherwise.” ✦ “Yes, I dated a cop a while back. I was upfront about my cannabis use and even consumed it in front of him. I thought it would eventually be a problem or a turn-off but it never was. I believe it can work as long as both individuals are honest with each other and accepting of each other.” ✦ “Reading all these stories is actually giving me hope in finding a partner that will be understanding and accepting. I often worry I won’t meet someone who is accepting of my use, especially if they don’t smoke!! I’d prefer to date a smoker though, they just get it!!” ✦ “I feel kind of ashamed to say no, so I want to say it could work? But I think part of the issue is that I do still have so much internalized shame around my consumption that people who don’t [also consume] make me feel judged. Which is shitty, because I know that’s not always true.” ✦ “Nah. I can’t lmao. I’ve tried and it’s like there’s a whole level of understanding we’re not reaching with each other. I feel uncomfortable and like obsessed with the plant purely due to how often I smoke. Even around light smokers, I can a little better.” ✦ “Judged for being me and smoking my medicine” ✦ “I find I was more comfortable with a guy who used cannabis. I was often judged and criticized by one who didn’t. [He] also policed my behaviors, which made me feel like I had to hide it. Smh” ✦ “The last couple guys I dated guys who didn’t smoke, they ended up taking it personally, feeling like I need to be high to “tolerate” being around them. It just hurts their ego, so then they try to make it seem like it’s my character fly for “needing” to be high to have sex. It doesn’t end well.” ✦ “My ex barely ever smoked, and I did so daily. Eventually, he started to use that against me. So I probably won’t do something like that again…” ✦ “I actually think it depends on the person and their views rather than just saying it could or couldn’t work…again I would rather just hang out with my dog.” ✦  “The person I’m currently seeing cannot smoke due to epilepsy but is a fan of CBD topicals (as a massage therapist) and is completely comfortable with my own cannabis habits. It’s pretty nice, and I don’t have to worry about anyone raiding my stash.” ✦ “My husband and I been together for 10 years next year, I met him and he didn’t smoke or drink and I used to hotbox the car with him in it. He goes to all of my events and parties. Non-smoking partners can definitely be with someone who smokes. Now discussions on where the funds allocated for your smoking come from, are a different story.” ✦ “I could never. They just don’t get it.” ✦ “My husband is not a cannabis consumer and he actually hatessss Mary J and that I consume it. However, when I stopped for a bit, he saw how much it helped me with my mood swings and my nerves so he eventually said he didn’t care if I consumed anymore because it was doing more good than bad. When I asked him what bad did it do, he had no answer. He’ll still talk his shit once in a while, but when he sees that I’m having my mood swings he sends me to smoke!” ✦ “I’ve been single for 13 years and I feel so protective of my cannabis, any animosity against it makes me insane and I can’t tolerate the ignorance as it’s the only comfort and relief I have for my PTSD. Plus, sex is better with cannabis.” ✦ “It’s a balance for me and my man. At first he seemed not to get it but now I think he understands how medicinal it is for me.” ✦ “I use tinctures almost daily to help control pain and inflammation. My partner doesn’t use cannabis at all and was a bit unsure of it when I started but once she began to see it was medicinal, not recreational, she became a big fan. Like other medications, cannabis doesn’t work for everyone’s body, and not everyone needs it. As long as they respect my choices and I respect theirs.” ✦ My wife and I have been together 17 years. She doesn't smoke, I do, every day. It's fine. I used to date smokers before and it just makes me smoke waaaaayyyy too much. I'm a nurse, so I do actually have to be sober sometimes, lol. So yeah. It works. I never thought it would, but it has for us, for a long time. Thank you to all who have participated in this discussion and shared your experience <3

[survivorsforcannabis-blog]

Exploring My Sexual Juiciness with Ganja Tantra Yoga

Last week, I attended my first real yoga class – ganja tantra yoga with Dee Dussault, aka Sexy-Flex, which sets out to “explore the potency of your sexual juiciness” in a yogic environment. It was also my first legal cannabis event AND my first time dabbing. Let me tell you about it. My main anxiety going into it was: what to wear!? I wanted to wear shorts but knew I would be the only one and worried about attracting unwanted attention. It would be a women/trans only space, which I know is supposed to help us feel safer but as someone who has [also] been assaulted, abused and bullied by women, it doesn’t always do that for me. So I smoked some of my usual indica dominant, said FUCK THAT and wore shorts anyway.

The studio was candle-lit, featuring a spread of fruit and chocolate and weed, encircled by a setup of blocks and pillows for our comfort. Dee served us hot tea as we passed around joints and pipes and vape pens.

At least 5 of the 15 women in attendance were cannabis yoga teachers! This included Minelli, who was sitting to my left (and offers classes in LA & online). To my right was someone who – when I shared that I used to hate yoga until 8 months ago when I started doing it with weed and Youtube – immediately guessed that I follow Yoga with Adriene. Fortunately, Adriene trained me not to compare myself or my practice with anyone else so I didn’t give a shit about being a beginner surrounded by pros.

Weed can help ease those kinds of insecurities in yoga, too. And as you’ll see, it also helped me stay mindful throughout the potentially triggering aspects of this experience.

After socializing for a bit, we all introduced ourselves with one word to describe how we wanted to feel after the session. People said things like “full,” “open.” I said “safe” and then my mind left the room for a minute until it was time to go to our mats.

It took time for my body to relax. At first I couldn’t focus on anything but the music. One of the first songs to play had a strong memory associated with it, begging to pull me out of my body and back in time, to a past life about ten years ago when I was using a lot more than weed. I saw this as a test. My ears caught Dee’s voice and I managed to pull myself out of the rabbit hole and remind myself where the fuck I was.

From then on, the music took a background role to Dee’s guidance. I found my mind crossing back and forth between observing the movements and sensations in my body and controlling them. I was not always in sync with everybody else but didn’t care.

Not once did I wonder about the time passing. This is definitely a good sign. A sign of being present! But I could tell we were nearing the end when Dee announced that it was time for a strawberry meditation.

This was my cue to take a pee break – I have some PTSD-related illnesses in my jaw that affect my ability to chew and I wanted to avoid the anxiety of that. When I got back, there was a strawberry waiting for me on my mat anyway and Dee was just beginning to instruct us how to suck on them. That was something I could do! It honestly made me even hornier after all those pussy exercises we had been doing that whole time – what someone accurately described as “almost sex.

After chilling out in shivasana, we were invited back to sit around the circle. I can’t say what was discussed in that circle because I somehow ended up sitting outside of it with Jessica Clark, who you might remember from our blog interview on cannabis-enhanced yoga for PTSD. It was then that I learned how to dab for the first time ever with Mama Sailene, who shared with me her inspiring story as a cannabis activist.

We dabbed Skywalker OG, an indica dominant strain, which you already know is my type. And I felt what I had set out to feel: safe.

Once I got home, well, I’m not going to tell you exactly what I did with all that built up sexual energy, but I will tell you that I did it multiple times.

It was a privilege to attend this event. Thank you to Dee, Jessica, Mama Sailene and all the other women who were part of this experience.

<insert photo here> Photos by Jessica Clark

[survivorsforcannabis-blog]

How Can Weed Help Eating and Appetite Issues Caused by Sexual Trauma Plus (C)PTSD?

Our relationships with food and with our bodies are often directly or indirectly impacted by sexual trauma and the illnesses that (C)PTSD may bring. To get an idea of the ways that cannabis might help (or not help) these issues, we invited our community to share their experiences. We asked in a yes-or-no poll, “Does cannabis help you with eating/appetite issues (including but not limited to eating disorder symptoms)?” to which 94% of respondents said "yes." The following comments come from survivors of different backgrounds, genders and ages. In their own words, in no particular order: “I go through periods of severe panic and depression due to PTSD, and my appetite disappears. Eating makes me nauseous. Cannabis allows me/stimulates an appetite, and even if it’s not much, I at least have the opportunity to take in some kind of sustenance. I starve myself far too often that the munchies are very welcome when they come along.” ✦ “My eating disorder included diet pills that ruined my stomach so I’m always nauseous when I eat. Cannabis allows me to eat! I also learned to love food because of how much cannabis as a plant has changed my life.” ✦ “I have struggled with eating disorders forever. I’m at the point in my life where I need THC + CBD in my system before I can comfortably eat anything. It can be a nuisance when traveling, but overall, I got a good grasp on it. My therapist is proud.” ✦ “I was abused on a full stomach. Cannabis helps relieve my body from the idea that the two are related so I can stay healthy and eat without fear.” ✦ “I said no [to the poll] because it definitely increases my appetite which has been hard on me mentally, but cannabis has allowed me to access a place of self-love and forgiveness so when I do eat, I can better reflect on my bad feelings surrounding food and how I can forgive myself for my lapses (when I think I’ve eaten too much). I definitely still struggle with disordered eating habits even with cannabis in my life, but I’m finally opening the avenues within myself for change.” ✦ “I have an undiagnosed ailment that causes me to vomit every day for 3 months, and I lost 50 pounds because of it. I was passing out and constantly dizzy and overwhelmed, until I started smoking regularly. Now it’s one of the only ways to calm my nausea, and help me eat and maintain a healthy weight.” ✦ “I do remain cautious since THC can really go both ways. Cannabis has helped me regain my lost appetite due to constant migraines and nausea but it also has increased my tendencies to binge and purge. I am now trying CBD instead, especially before meals and trying to force my body to eat, then consume cannabis after.” ✦ "I have bulimia but it is a cycle of anorexia and binging and since using cannabis and CBD along with therapy, it is helping. THC helps me get hungry and feel good in my body [and ingesting cannabis in oil forms really helps GI issues]. A lot of ED survivors experienced sexual abuse so we try to control and escape our body. I feel cannabis helps me love my body more and feel normal without being so anxious or not hungry. I owe so much to Mary Jane." ✦ “One of the ways in which my trauma shows is in my lack of ability to take care of my basic needs consistently. Mostly I ‘forget’ to eat and cannabis ensures that I do. Also, due to chronic inflammation of my vagus nerve, I am often nauseous and can’t/won’t eat. Cannabis eliminates the nausea and it brings my appetite back. Without cannabis I would not be able to eat as much as I actually need, so I’m extremely grateful for the munchies effect.” ✦ “I developed anorexia as a preteen from being hyper-stimulated with pro-ana media – both that I looked for, and stick-thin bodies promoted in media by celebs like Paris Hilton. I was ritualizing when and what I ate. I started working out obsessively… in middle school. Cannabis currently reminds me to eat, especially on days I’ve been running on only coffee or feel too busy to eat.” ✦ “With chronic pain and chronic daily migraines, I have no appetite, but cannabis helps give me one.” ✦ “Growing up, my abusers instilled in me a lot of disordered eating habits, which also partly came from the historical/cultural trauma of our people. Today, weed helps me manage my relationships both with food and my body.” ✦ “I developed a routine without even realizing it. It’s hard for me to eat (trauma, anxiety, disordered eating, all that) so after I have a few bites my body tries to tell me I’m full, so I always eat half my dinner, smoke and then I’m able to eat the rest of my food. I didn’t realize I’d made this routine til I tried to eat out at a restaurant and I was like oh no, this isn’t going to work lol.” ✦ “I had surgery about a year ago that caused me to lose about 30 pounds. Considering the fact that I was 110 to begin with, this was a good fraction of my body weight. When I was finally able to eat solid foods, cannabis was able to bring my appetite back and also help me hold down food more.” ✦ “It’s been a tool throughout my journey in recovery from anorexia. Although I’ve abused it in the past, it now helps with pain relief, as an appetite stimulant, and just to relax which is really hard lol! I love cannabis for the communal aspect as well – necessary for healing!” ✦ “Since my mom died last year, I’ve had zero appetite. I got scared as I abruptly lost almost 40 pounds. I’d go all day and be close to fainting because I forgot. I depend on ‘munchies’ to feed myself while I work through my grief.” ✦ “Mostly, sometimes, it makes me eat things that hurt my tummy so ya know, it’s a balance for me.” ✦ “Cannabis is so necessary for my IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome)! I wake up with some of the worst stomach pains in the morning, as soon as I smoke I feel fine. It helps me eat too and with nausea in the morning. Cannabis is the only thing that’s ever helped my IBS and doctors continuously try to convince me to take a pill three times a day. I know what works and that’s my medicine.” ✦ “I have hEDs (Ehlers-Danlos syndrome) and fibromyalgia. Both have lots of symptoms but both especially cause intense pain that lessens my appetite and makes me nauseous often. Cannabis numbs my pain and increases my appetite. Indica strains work best for me. Haven’t found many sativas that don’t make me anxious.” ✦ “Cannabis helps me have a healthy relationship with food. It has regulated my core system enough that I no longer binge eat. Now, when I’m having depressive episodes and my appetite is completely gone, it helps me eat just what I need to for the day. Thanks for this great survey/conversation starter.” ✦ “Smoking before eating always helps get my appetite started. I first started this routine almost 4 years ago and now I find that, unless I’ve been starving all day, I don’t work up an appetite until I smoke.” ✦ “I’ve been in recovery for my eating disorder for a few years. It’s been a long road and I have had more success medicating with weed than I have ever had with antidepressants.” ✦ “As a recovering bulimic, cannabis puts me more in touch with my body. It doesn’t stop me from eating (obviously) but I become more aware of the physical sensations of feeling full / no longer hungry, so I’m more able to stop myself from binging. Also that full feeling can be super triggering for me to purge or self harm, but after I smoke I don’t feel as anxious, so basically I’m able to eat normal meals now without interference.” ✦ “I have ARFID (avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder). I’ve suffered since I was 6 months old and cannabis helps my anxiety around food.” Thank you to all who have contributed to this conversation.

[survivorsforcannabis-blog]

Sheena: Medicating in an Unregulated Market Plus Bringing People of Color into the "Cannabis" Space

Sheena is a 33-year-old New Yorker, survivor and cannabis advocate. Having been a cannabis consumer for most of her life, she began approaching it from a wellness angle in recent years. Today, she advocates within her own communities and volunteers with Women Grow. Here, Sheena shares her story of trauma, what it’s like to live in an unregulated market as a person of color, and what motivates her to advocate as a bridge between the cannabis space and communities of color.  In her own words:

When did you begin using cannabis?

As a teen, I used cannabis to escape thoughts of unworthiness and sadness. I started smoking a little after my first rape at 14. I was impregnated, that was my first miscarriage. And I suffered my first sexual assault at 11. I was abused by another child, forcibly. That took a long time to process and I still have to see this person, because of family ties.

Looking back, I can say that some strains helped calm my racing thoughts, while other heavy sativas exacerbated the racing thoughts, gave me horrible flashbacks and paranoia. That’s one of the dangers of an unregulated market – especially in New York City, where you have great variety but there’s no way to control what’s coming in. I was exposed to really strong strains at a young age. It was sporadic, whatever you could get on the streets.

But I started out on alcohol. Alcohol is actually the gateway drug, not marijuana. For me and other teens around me, it was far easier to get our hands on alcohol and prescription drugs like Xanax and Prozac. You just hoped that whatever you had would numb you out while entertain you.

I also experienced a level of neglect – parental abandonment at first and then later on, they invited someone into the home that made it very hostile. There’s also generational trauma that my parents perpetuated on me, and then there’s all the cultural trauma of being people of color.

It’s a lot, and when you don’t have the tools to process, you’re gonna escape. You can use any number of things as a crutch, so that’s what cannabis was for me then. I would consume outside of the house and then when I got home I could deal with being there. Sober reality was too much to take.

Once I was a bit older and got involved with a heavy smoker, I started having regular access to high-grade cannabis and it started stabilizing, without these crazy episodes of paranoia. So through my 20s, I was a pothead. I liked it better than alcohol, it didn’t give me hangovers and I could still function, even on an indica.

In my late 20s, I ended that almost decade-long relationship with this person I had built myself around, so I had to rebuild my identity. And cannabis was there.

I actually had an intervention, three people told me that I had anger management issues, and that got me into therapy. Before that, I was very anti-therapy. But I had only seen therapy that doesn’t work. Therapy is what you make of it, like anything in life.

Many people also don’t realize that there are many different types of therapy for different experiences. Thanks to all the identities I hold, it was hard to find someone that could assist me in my healing – being Latina, being bisexual, being kinky – it felt like I already had a few strikes against me. I first saw one therapist who was great for childhood issues, but she absolutely fucking sucked for trauma. My current therapist is trauma-based and culturally competent, she’s also Latina. It’s Dialectical behavior therapy, I was extremely blessed to find her.

Has being in therapy affected the way you medicate?

It was in therapy that I started exploring those feelings that I had used cannabis to avoid, and also noticed how it relieved all of my anxiety symptoms at once. Cannabis shifted from something I could sub in for alcohol, to the medicine that it was originally intended to be. This shift also came in conjunction with when vape pens started getting popular here.

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For the record, I have five disorders – general anxiety disorder, social anxiety, dissociative disorder on top of my PTSD. But now that I was becoming aware of these things, I could realize that my reactions to stressful situations were really my disorders, and I could use marijuana responsibly whereas before, with uneducated use, I used to binge. Now, I can notice that I’m anxious, notice the physical manifestations in my body, take a couple pulls from a vape pen and be okay. I can go on with my day.

I was just becoming armed with this knowledge when I was raped again. It was domestic violence, it occurred within a relationship. This is where my life splits into two parts – my life leading up to that and my life after that. It was like an extinction, of my soul and my spirit.

Cannabis is what’s kept me alive this long, it helped me control my thoughts and be present in my body. There were so many times that I felt dissociative, like I’m floating away, like am I here, am I not? And when I smoked, I just felt like myself. Because when I was sober and had to cope with the rational knowledge that somebody I loved violated me in this way, in my own house… There were some points when I could literally feel my psyche splitting from the inside out. And cannabis helped keep me together. Vape pens saved my life.

What does your consumption look like now?

Cannabis is now an essential part of my self-care. And I don’t need a lot – there’s this beautiful concept, microdosing. I just take enough for me to be okay. Unless I’m using it recreationally, but now I make those distinctions. That’s a distinction that needs to be taught as we move towards legalization, and that’s a distinction we have to make as consumers.

I feel like smoking flower is the most optimal way to use cannabis because it’s the quickest, but when I cannot do that – because I work a very corporate job and cannot be coming back from smoke breaks stinking of anything – a vape pen is the best thing. It helps me handle anxiety and the pressure of my job.

For depression, I like to smoke high THC, high CBD strains. In Denver, I found this strain called Monica’s Miracle – the budtender called it Adderall in weed form. I do feel like I have ADHD, or Executive dysfunction – an inability to do the most basic adult things. I feel like [the reason it’s so common] is that nobody emotionally raises us or teaches us emotional coping skills. I have theories that this has to do with un-dealt with generational and cultural trauma as people of color. We’re taught how to survive, no one teaches us how to thrive. How can you teach someone how to thrive past that when you’ve never thrived past that? I feel like we’ve reached a point now where we’re starting to ask that question.

How has being a woman of color affected your experience of cannabis?

I was arrested when I was 17, for smoking and for two roaches in my pocket. This was the Giuliani era, when he was really cracking down. It was a very traumatic experience. They were two Puerto Rican cops who didn’t really want to take me, they just wanted to take the two guys I was with, but the white sergeant said I had to go, said they had to teach me a lesson.

I got arrested at 5:30 in the afternoon, was driven around Harlem in the van for hours and couldn’t call my mother until 3 o’clock in the morning. I didn’t go in front of a judge to be arraigned until 6:30 the following night. So I was a 17-year-old girl with no prior convictions, was never even suspended from school, and I spent 24 hours in police custody. I can look back now and make humor of it, but it was terrifying, and it was so excessive.

I didn’t smoke for almost a year after that because I just didn’t want to deal with it. I was like, fuck this – this is not worth it. But things were stressful at home and I distinctly remember the night when I started smoking again – I almost got into a fistfight with somebody so it was like, something needs to give. But I didn’t consume in public, was constantly watching my back. It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve ventured to smoke publicly but it’s always in the back of my head, that maybe I’ll go through that again.

The biggest thing that we have to keep in mind as we move towards legalization is access for people of color. It’s very important to pass the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act in New York, to ensure equity, to ensure that we do have access to sit at the table – if we choose to sit at it. But from what I’ve seen, we still have a long way to go in terms of education on what’s possible.

I recently attended the Women of Color in Solidarity Conference, so I was taking smoke breaks with other women in community organizing activist spaces, but very few of them were making the connection that they’re doing it for self-care. This comes with education. And overall, women of color are not aware of what their sisters are doing within the space.

I find that when I have conversations with my neighbors, with my friends outside the space, people just don’t know what’s going on and I feel like we’re in a bubble. That’s a big gap and for me it’s important because, especially as women of color, we bear the brunt of almost every ‘ism’ you can think of, to varying degrees, based on what privileges we carry. We’re just not centered on anything. So that is something I’m actively working towards bridging.

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Did you always call it “cannabis”?

I didn’t consciously start calling it cannabis until I “crossed over” to the cannabis space. As a Latina, Colombian to be specific – it was always weed, marijuana, hierba – slang. If you were around white people you’d say pot or reefer, whatever the fuck they’d say. I only now call it “cannabis” and started talking about the space, and noticed a shift in my own behavior, but I’m trying to keep in mind that this shift occurred because I had access to resources.

One of the things I try to be conscious of is that while I am a woman of color, I do carry certain privileges, such as being light-skinned. So I also think we need to be conscious of access to language.

Sometimes when I do say ‘marijuana,’ people tell me it’s not politically correct. I’ve had people tell me that it’s against me as a Latina, but I really never knew that ‘marijuana’ was racist. Who are you to impose that on me when that was not my experience? I would respect if that was someone else’s experience, but coming to correct people says more about you than it does about the plant.

Recently, I was at a kid’s birthday party in the projects, around my hood friends. They still smoke dutches and I’m telling them about the volcano, vaping and edibles, and they just don’t give a fuck about any of that. I kept calling it cannabis to the point that they told me to call it weed, and what am I supposed to do, keep being snotty and calling it cannabis? That’s their language and that’s what I come from.

If we want to reach people, we need to use language that they understand. What use is it for me to speak in terms that people don’t understand? Meet people where they’re at and sometimes they’ll gravitate to that. Shifts in consciousness don’t happen overnight. It’s a process.

What motivates you to advocate for the plant?

A dear friend of mine was diagnosed with breast cancer and passed away last December. She was already a consumer when she was diagnosed at stage 4 and shit got real very quickly. We went to Denver last August, to see what was out there. Vape cartridges really helped her so we came back and put up a GoFundMe to get her some. She met her $2,000 goal within 2 days of posting, then GoFundMe shut down her campaign and refunded everyone their money, because she stated on the page that she was going to use it for cannabis. It’s real bullshit.

I helped supply her with vape cartridges and sometimes it worked, other times it was not potent. That’s another problem with the unregulated market, it was an absolute mess to get any consistency in the medicine she needed.

She spent the last month of her life in the hospital, pumped up with opioids. It’s almost like the painkillers were worse than the cancer. They gave her fentanyl, which was far too powerful. It was horrific to know that cannabis could help her but we couldn’t give her that. So there’s always going to be this question, as long as I live: what would her quality of life have been if she lived in a regulated market?

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Another thing is, all my experiences led me to be trained in Mental Health

 First Aid, through a class offered by the NYC Department of Health. I feel it’s crucial, everyone should take it.  My mom took the class, and that was one of the most affirming moments I’ve had with her, for her to validate me even if she can’t quite understand what I’m going through. The fact that she was willing to see me as I am and not just pray it away or deny it, as people of color often deny these conditions, that helped a lot.

And I hope that as I open up, I can help others feel affirmed and feel that maybe they can open up. As I opened up to my family about my journey in the cannabis space, I’ve gotten more support and acceptance than I could have ever imagined.

When I went to Denver, I bought back an insane amount of edibles, lotions, tinctures – to approach my family from the wellness angle. I brought lotion for my uncle’s psoriasis and arthritis, and gave tea to my grandmother for her gastrointestinal problems. You have to tailor your approach, but the beautiful thing about cannabis is that there are so many products out there.

They were extremely interested and very grateful. They admitted they wanted to try but didn’t know where to look. So that empowers me to continue exploring what’s possible in the space, because I can see what this is doing for my family.

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[survivorsforcannabis-blog]

Sexualized Abuse in the Cannabis Industry

CBelow is an anonymous contribution from a survivor in the cannabis industry.

I am a victim of sexualized harassment in the cannabis industry. After creating a business with a former partner of mine, I was verbally and physically abused by him and decided to sell him my stake in our company so I could move out into my own place. In turn, he took our business's Instagram and slut-shamed me to its followers for months. It traumatized me so much that I developed PTSD, started seeing a therapist and lost an unhealthy amount of weight.

In an attempt to move on with my life, I developed a new hemp business and soon after was threatened by him, that if I said anything about his previous abuse, he would convince my investor to stop backing my new project.

Living in a state of fear and depression, I found myself becoming sick, miserably depressed and less social. My abuser started throwing cannabis events and told me I was not allowed to attend or date anyone else he knew in the industry (which had become practically everyone at the time). Feeling like I couldn't make new connections or friends with those who shared my love for cannabis, I started giving up on myself and my dreams.

My health worsened and after laparoscopic surgery last April, I was diagnosed with endometriosis. This was a major wake-up call for me! I was no longer able to sustain the huge manufacturing business I had put my heart and soul into developing.

After months of research, I started making some huge lifestyle changes to stay on top of my illness. My passion for survival made me strong, less anti-social and interested in getting back to my roots. I was inspired to start a blog focused on providing support and inspiration to others suffering from chronic illness and looking to cannabis to treat themselves.

By stepping up to help others, it in turn has helped me have a newfound confidence in myself and in the profound healing properties of cannabis. I am no longer afraid of what this person might say or do to me, and I am happy to say I am feeling somewhat healthier.

[survivorsforcannabis-blog]

Sarah's Survival Story

Sarah is a queer femme from Colombia who today lives in Germany. Below is her story, written in her own words.

Content warning: Sexual abuse, physical, psychological and emotional violence, animal abuse, self-harm.

My name is Sarah. I was born 33 years ago in the beautiful city of Medellín, where my father comes from. My German mother had been living in Colombia for a couple of years when they met. She got pregnant after a short time, after believing for years she was unable to bear children. To her, I was a gift from heaven. To my father, I was someone who reminded him of his first girlfriend. He began to hit my mother when she was pregnant with me. She, having been an abuse victim herself, since she was a little girl, didn't know how to escape him. When I was about three years old, he began sexually abusing me. He also would beat me up for the stupidest reasons and neglect me and my basic needs as my mom went to work as the sole provider. He was an alcoholic, a multiple drugs addict, an incredibly talented artist: a painter and sculptor; a brujo, a magician and the darkest force that my soul and body and mind were ever exposed to.

When I was 10, we moved to a beautiful farm in the Colombian countryside, submerging ourselves in the horrors of La Violencia (the armed conflict) that was about to explode in our region. Not only was my childhood composed of the terror within my own family, it was terror wherever I went. He threatened to kill my mother if I told, so I kept quiet until I couldn't bear it any more. I was 12 when he summoned me into his atelier and demanded I undress so he could "paint" me. I rebelled for the first time. I told him to unlock the doors and let me go, and that if he didn't, I'd scream until someone rescued me and then I would tell EVERYONE I met on my way what he had been doing to me. I didn't care anymore if he would kill my mom or not. This was about MY sheer and utter survival. To my surprise, he let me go and never touched me again.

This was not the only thing he would do to me. His physical violence was so brutal that to this day, I wonder how we actually survived him. Once, he locked us up in the house and set it on fire. We escaped by jumping from the balcony. Once, when I was in second grade, he hit me so hard with a belt until blisters formed on my behind and I couldn't sit in school for four days, or the slap of the back of his hand would stay on my face until the knuckle-shaped bruises disappeared. He entered my body with his own body and with different objects. He slaughtered some of our pet dogs and fed one of them to us, in secret. He would lock me in the basement for hours and force me to paint until he was pleased with the result. At age six, I painted Van Gogh, Rembrandt and other artists, as he said, to improve my skills. It nearly killed my love for art.

When I turned 13, my sibling and I begged my mom to leave him, and she did right away. It was difficult to get him to stay away from the house. This was at a time when even the police were too scared to come to where we lived to retrieve the bodies of murdered neighbors. This was a time when no one cared about domestic violence. Eventually, though, we got a restraining order and with the help of our neighbors who would defend us with machetes, he had to finally stay away. I went to the police to report him when I was 14. They laughed at me and told me to stop making up stories about my father just because I was mad at him. It broke something inside me. To know justice was just never going to be served.

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When the civil war got too awful and several of my friends, schoolmates and neighbors had been kidnapped, raped, tortured and/or murdered, and it seemed really strange that nothing had happened to us yet, my mom decided to pack our few things and move us to Germany. We left when I was about to turn 17. And although the war was horrible, I felt like I was being torn away from the womb and the lap and the breast and the arms that bred and fed and held me. Fleeing from my motherland was one of the most heartbreaking experiences of my life. Yet I was immensely relieved to not only escape the constant gunfire and the terror and the uncertainty, but also to be out of my father's reach for good.

When we got to Germany, my trauma ripped me apart. I developed an obsessive showering disorder, trying to wash away the dark stains of his hands all over my skin. I started having nightmares so horrible that I basically stopped sleeping for a year. Whenever I looked outside the window, all I could see was concrete and my heart broke every time, thinking of my lush, green Andes. Eventually, I stopped falling asleep out of fear of the scenarios in my dreams. I would get an hour of sleep every night, or 4-5 hours every other night. I started hallucinating due to the lack of sleep and soon couldn't tell my dreams and nightmares from my waking life. I felt like I was going insane. I then met my first girlfriend and found myself to be in my mother's role, my girlfriend being my father. Again, I was beaten, raped, humiliated and gaslighted.

Somehow, I managed to break up with her after a few months and met my first wife. The year that followed I began to cut myself in order to overlay the gut-wrenching pain within. I was neck deep in reliving every piece of my trauma, incessantly. Every single day was a fight against suicide. I went to a clinic for a few months and in total had 10 years of seeing different therapists. Some good, some plain abusive but most of them unable to deal with my story. When you tell your therapist the overall story and they start tearing up, that's not a place where you feel safe. I found myself sparing them details that would make them feel overwhelmed with emotion. Healing was impossible this way.

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I was 25 when I first broke down crying - without shunning my inner child. I hugged myself and I hugged her and wept for a very long time. This was when my healing truly began. I kept going to therapy, I started doing yoga and meditating, I began my spiritual journey. When I turned 27 my first marriage (the relationship lasted eight years) ended and I found myself completely shattered, but it was my way out of emotional dependence. I hurt for a few months, but eventually moved on.

Still, my sleep was a mess and I had an array of symptoms such as extreme chronic headaches and the full range of CPTSD (Complex PTSD) symptoms, from self harm to nightmares, to flashbacks, dissociation, body dysphoria, self-hate, chronic pain in my womb, anxiety, panic attacks, and so on and so forth. The symptoms lessened with every year that passed, and until this day I am still healing little by little.

When I was 29, my new partner (now my spouse) introduced me to the medical use of cannabis. I started using it to relieve physical pain, then moved on to use it regularly to sleep. Then, one day, while I was high, I felt the urge to paint. I was terrified of doing it, but too stoned to care, so I just did. I painted and the mean voice of my father criticizing every brush stroke was quiet. I am by no means as good as the other artists in my family, but I am finding my artistic voice, and it is mine. That, to me, is enough. I love to paint but I can only do it with the help of cannabis. Also, after years of therapy, there was nothing they could do for me anymore, so again, I was on my own. In the process of trying to talk to my family about it, to ask for their support, I lost all of them except for my mother.

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Every day different subjects want to be looked at, and healing has been messy, painful and often extremely exhausting. But I'm on a good way. Cannabis has helped me to heal my relationship with sleep and with art and most importantly, it has helped me to see that I deserve love, that I'm a good person. That I have value. That my life, despite its terrible beginning, is precious, and that there is hope and abundance. It helps me with anxiety, and depression, and has opened my heart to true love for life. It has changed and keeps changing my perspective and my point of view, helping me to hold myself accountable and take responsibility for the collateral damage my healing process has caused in my relationships. It has made me more compassionate not only with myself but with the people in my life. I can't count how often the sacred herb has helped me to stay sane in times of great emotional turmoil. It has eased my physical and mental pain, thus helping me to build the life I always wished for. Without cannabis, I don't know how I would have been able to find a place of so much peace and stillness that allowed me to access the most wounded parts of me, without fear.

Four months ago, I discovered the books of Anthony William, the Medical Medium. They, too, have changed my life completely and this is the first time I feel truly optimistic and truly hopeful. Yoga, Witchcraft, Cannabis and Medical Medium nutrition have made my life the most wholesome it has ever been.

Today, I stand between the old life I built so far and the new life I have dreamed up for myself. I have found the love of my life after I fell in love with myself. I have eliminated every single toxic relationship in my life and I am surrounded by love, friendship and beauty. My home is my temple and I've become my own best friend. The four pillars of my healing are constantly there for me, and I'm there for myself, through them.

This is my story, and I thank you for reading it. It means a lot to be heard and acknowledged. Thank you.

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all images belong to @solanum__dulcamara

[survivorsforcannabis-blog]

Ashley Manta, the Cannasexual: Helping Others by Living Out Loud

Ashley Manta is a survivor of sexual assault and a cannabis-friendly sex expert with years of experience in trauma healing and sexual violence prevention. She is The Cannasexual, a term she coined meaning “anyone who mindfully and deliberately combines sex and cannabis to deepen intimacy and enhance pleasure.” Besides educating people on pleasure, Ashley also speaks openly about how cannabis helps her cope with PTSD from sexual trauma. Here we spoke about why the topic is still so taboo in the cannabis community, what it’s been like to turn her passion into her career, and I also asked her for some personal advice. In her own words:

What is it like to have made a career out of cannabis and sexuailty?

For a long time, cannabis was a trigger for me, because my rapist was using cannabis and I just assumed that using cannabis meant getting sexually assaulted. It turns out that’s not actually the case, and now I’ve made this career out of cannabis and sexuality, which is such a cool mindfuck.

It’s so empowering to be living my life on my own terms. I fuck who I wanna fuck, I do the jobs I wanna do, I get paid doing things that I love, I travel, I have this incredible tribe of humans who are loving and supportive and accept me exactly for who I am. I don’t hide anything about myself and it’s so fucking liberating in ways that I never imagined it could be.

And people are responding. By living out loud, by just being me, I’m helping people. And that makes me wanna do it more. I’m so unbelievably grateful for all the ways people have supported me over the years, and given me opportunities that allowed me to build and reach more opportunities. I just taught at Coachella, I just got interviewed for Rolling Stone, I’m going to be on Playboy TV, I got nominated for Influencer of the Year for the California Cannabis Awards – and I’m not taking just one date, I’m taking two sexy dates – because fuck it, I’m gonna be walking down the red carpet in a smoking hot dress like yeah, this is who I am!

My constant meditation is, what else is possible and how can life get any better than this? How else can I feel alive and empowered and electrified in what I’m doing? That’s how I map the trajectory of my day, my week, my year. And I want that for everyone. I want every single person to feel this emboldened by their passion.

It’s amazing what you’ve turned into something so positive and powerful.

It’s taken a long time, and there are hard days. It’s not all rainbows and sunshine but that’s okay, and that’s why it’s so important to have people who care about you and support you when it’s really fucking hard. It’s important to have someone, or a group of someones, who can remind you why you’re fighting and to help keep you motivated… or just to bring you a fucking cup  of tea, because sometimes you really just need to stay in bed all day and take care of yourself and that’s okay too.

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The reason that I got my infinity heart symbol tattooed, with ‘survivor’ – I didn’t realize it was a non-monogamy symbol at the time – but I chose this because infinite love, patience and kindness is how survivors survive. Whether it’s from strangers, a support group online, through RAINN or through a therapist, survivors thrive in community and with support. It’s really hard to heal and work along your healing journey when you’re in complete isolation. That’s why I talk so openly about it, because I want somebody, even if they’ve never met me, to think, ‘Okay, she’s doing this, too. I’m not alone. I can do this.’

That’s how I felt when I found you! Why do you think sexual trauma is still so taboo in the cannabis community [even in women-centered discussions]?

This isn’t a sexy topic. Trauma is kind of a drag. It’s never been my most popular workshop because people think – yeah, if I’m gonna spend $30 bucks on a workshop, I wanna learn about blowjobs, I don’t wanna learn about shit that’s gonna make me cry.

There’s also a scarcity of people who are really informed about trauma – at least in the cannabis space. There’s a couple people taking about PTSD but that’s mostly concerning soldiers or traumatic brain injuries in athletes. There’s not a whole lot of people talking about cannabis and sexual violence survivors.

And I don’t want anybody who doesn’t understand trauma to be talking about trauma. If an organization doesn’t really get it, I don’t want them to be giving uninformed, problematic advice like, ‘oh, just use cannabis and that’s gonna heal all your shit!’ No, let’s not get carried away here. It’s a great tool, but it’s not a miracle drug.

So, there’s people who aren’t talking about it because they don’t know enough about it, and that’s cool – and then there’s people who don’t know enough about it, but think they do, and that’s dangerous.

And trauma isn’t just a skinny, pretty, white people problem. That’s the other piece of it – you see such little representation of people of color in these conversations. And they’ve most likely experienced not just individual trauma, but also cultural trauma. That’s another thing we have to deal with – so many people don’t understand that’s a thing that happens, and that horrifies me.

So there's all of those factors.

Can you give me some advice on how to talk to a sexual partner about my issues with touch? Intimate touch is a major trigger for me.

If you need a certain kind of touch to feel comfortable, you need to actually show that to your partner.

One of the things I do early on in a relationship is let my partner know that I am a trauma survivor and because of that, I need certain accommodations in my relationship. If they want to be with me, they need to be down with that, within reason – they also have their experience and their boundaries. But I’m gonna say: these are the things that I need and if you can give me those, great, and if you can’t, that’s also fine, but you’re gonna need to stay away.

So, if you're getting into a relationship, at some point you’ll need to tell the person, because of my trauma, this is what my body needs right now – and you can model it: this kind of touch doesn’t feel good to me – and this kind of touch feels way better and helps me feel more grounded in my body. And you can model that and show, I need more of this touch.

When you give them this data, partners who respect and care about you have an opportunity to be like – wow, thank you for giving me cheat codes to you as a human and how to make your life better, more joyful and enriching and respectful. Ideally, a partner hearing this will be grateful that you are taking the time to give them what they need to be successful with you – as opposed to that, ‘oh my god, I’m so high maintenance, I’m sorry that I’m making you do this.’ No, fuck that shit. All you’re doing is asking for what you need, and that’s okay. It’s something you’re allowed to do.

Pro tip: Track the way different cannabis strains affect your sense of touch.

Ashley is available over Skype to answer all those sex + weed questions you can't ask your therapist.

[survivorsforcannabis-blog]

Three Perspectives on Dating Plus Sex After Trauma

PTSDude hosted a discussion with Survivors for Cannabis to share the experiences of a transgender Mexican man, a biological Lakota man and a cis Armenian woman. We answered the questions of how PTSD and sexual trauma has affected our attraction to others, our ability to approach potential partners, our relationships and sex lives. Read the transcript:

[technical hiccups & awkward staring from @ptsdude.health]

P: Welcome to Dating and Sex After Trauma—it’s about relationships, it’s about physical intimacy. I’m with [@survivorsforcannabis]—are you also on the bottom in your screen? I dunno, like—

S: Yeah, I’m on the bottom.

P: We’re gonna jump into this—Frank Waln is not live with us, I interviewed him earlier this week, he’s a busy dude, and I have all his responses to the same questions we’re gonna talk about. So we have a couple different perspectives. One of the things we dug into was attraction, first and foremost. I know Mel has a lot more experience to speak on this than me or Frank does, so if you wanna get into it, bro. Go ahead.

S: Okay, it’s important to note that I’ve had different periods and types of trauma at different times in my life, which affected me differently at different points. So, as far as my trauma has affected who I’m attracted to—

Before I started getting raped in my 20s, I had traumas from childhood and adolescence, which made me learn how to be very independent and—emotionally independent and numb. So I never really looked for a relationship, so I was always just attracted to dudes who were also not looking for relationships. Which often meant guys who had their own issues.

Also, especially because of where I live in the world, trauma is like a fact of life, it’s not like a medical diagnosis, it’s just something people live with every day and accept as normal. So the men that I’ve been with lately are pretty traumatized as well. I’m trying to learn to not be like, too sympathetic to that because I’m like, obviously aware and trauma-informed and understanding of how it affects people but I’m trying to learn to not let that hurt me.

P: See there you go, that’s awesome, thank you. I learned so much shit right now. ‘Cause I’m a traumatized dude so I’m like, I’m that guy and I’m hearing this shit for the first time. So that’s pretty dope. Um, and so talking about attraction: for the most part me and Frank had a similar response, where you’re feel romantic and physical attraction, but you can’t really feel like a sexual attraction. You can’t really picture yourself having sex with someone unless you’re like actually already having sex with them, y’know what I mean? I think you just block out that whole thing altogether.

And so kinda like, with that it affects—as a dude, like as a heterosexual guy approaching women, y’know, you’re supposed to have the confidence to do that. We had pretty similar responses on that also: that you just like, you lose that ability to comprehend that somebody’s actually attracted to you, that someone’s genuinely interested in you and not just trying to use you for something. That’s gone, like that confidence is gone and I don’t know how it can come back or if it can come back. But it’s just really something that I know is distinctly missing now.

And I know me personally, since cutting out my abuser, there’s like this voice in my head all the time that’s like “ALL MEN WANT TO USE YOU FOR SEX, ALL WOMEN WANT YOU TO SHUT UP AND GO AWAY” and it’s just constant and it’s constant and it’s constant. So I smoke, a lot. CBD kinda silences that a little bit. Before sexual trauma I was actually extremely social and I had no problem speaking to strangers, speaking to anybody, forming friendships, forming relationships. Not really any issues with that. And trying to force that confidence back on, it’s brought a lot of like self-worth questions, made me suicidal, definitely brought relapse a few times just from trying to push that self-worth back on—and I know it’s affected you in a very different way of approaching people, so—

S: Yeah, when I was young I was shy, largely because of sexual and emotional abuse as a child. But as I grew up I got pretty confident, honestly because I had the looks and charm to get what I wanted, if I was attracted to someone. And I was confident about that, especially in my more hypersexual stages, and I wasn’t ashamed of it. But if I thought I might like someone more than that then I just wouldn’t know how to do it or how to approach them because I don’t know what that looks like. I know now, but I never had a healthy, loving relationship modeled to me, so even if I wanted to properly date and have meaningful sex that just wasn’t a thing I would know how to do. It’s a very foreign concept to me. I learned it was easier to meet guys at a bar, or through drugs or on Tinder because people there expect less from me; they don’t expect anything emotional from me and that’s what I needed.

P: On relationships, me and Frank had pretty different answers, y’know we’ve had different experiences after trauma. So, he had a pattern of relationships where it would be super intense for couple weeks or months like very quick very immediate a lot of affection a lot of closeness and then it’s too close, and then you gotta cut it, and he would ghost. Because his has a lot of dealing with people that are close to you, and not being able to trust people that are close to you. So as soon as somebody gets within that zone of being too close, too trusting, you know too much about me—then it’s like, “I need to dip, I need to get outta here.”

So for mine, actually before and during my sexual trauma and experience in sex work, I was in a romantic relationship for six years, and didn’t realize til much later that I was gaslighted for six years. I didn’t put a word to it. But I was not able to trust my gut after that, to trust my intuition, to trust anything. So just because of that I’ve completely avoided dating, because there’s this paranoid voice in my head that screams that someone’s lying to you, that it’s not genuine. So I don’t think its fair to put somebody through that, because I’m not gonna expect them like, to quiet that voice down, y’know, that’s the voice in my head. So I’ve pretty much avoided dating for a lotta years just because of that.

And to transition into how this shit affects your sex life, pretty briefly. For me it’s like, I’ve been lucky enough to attract some beautiful and confident women who know I’m totally oblivious to everything, and pretty much just like make the first move on me, give me a very obvious greenlight and I’m like, “Oh okay! That’s awesome!” But that’s like the only way I’ve been able to actually have a sex life. I never assume it’s coming, ever, no assumption that anyone is attracted to me.

The reason I consulted Frank is because I’m transgender and Frank is biologically male, so I wanted to get the whole male perspective. So, apparently—as transmen we are very lucky we don’t have to deal with this issue—but I know all the biological men out there gotta deal with Whiskey Dick, have to deal with Cocaine Dick, and apparently there’s something called Depression Dick that happens too—doesn’t let it happen, doesn’t let it fly. So that is something that hinders sex. It’s not you, you’re not crazy, you’re not screwed up. It’s your body’s reactions to the experiences you’ve gone through. That’s what it is.

S: So, relationships for me—I’ve never been in a serious committed relationship because I learned how not to depend on anyone for anything. And as I said, even if I wanted to, I just wouldn’t even know what that would look like. I never desired a partner honestly, I put my energy into other things. When I was young I had like one uncommitted thing, he was emotionally abusive, but to this day I’ve never been in a committed relationship.

After my more violent traumas, I became even more numb and like a slutty fuckboy which was fun in some ways but has caused me to be an asshole in other ways. Out of protecting myself, but it’s still no excuse—You end up doing things you’re not proud of and you hurt people. Staying emotionally numb was easier than being vulnerable. But I really took pride in the fact that as a woman I could fuck around without feeling, though at the time I didn’t realize it’s because I was so completely numb and had no feelings in the first place.

Also, I’ve developed a very serious fear of touch. I was never a very touchy person but after my more violent traumas, any touch just became a trigger—especially soft touch, really anything, and it still is. Like I just freeze. There’s been some good times but cuddling is not an option for me. It’s very uncomfortable. I just don’t do it. I could have sex but not any emotional, cuddling kind of thing. I can be sitting next to someone and wanting to touch them really badly or like lying in a bed with someone and I just can’t do it. And I get triggered when people try to touch me and I’m just waiting to see like, what they’ll do next. It’s not that I don’t want people to touch me but it’s just automatic, where my mind goes. Sometimes I have some good weed and a good person around that helps with this but often times I don’t have either of those available to me. And I know CBD could be a game changer in this.

To be honest, I think I also need professional touch therapy, bodywork. I’ve tried it once but it’s very expensive—which is why I’ve only tried it once. But like, I need a professional person to help me learn how to be okay with being touched again because I don’t want to put other people though this shit any more. It’s not fair to other people. Lately, I’ve started to be attracted to nicer guys who want to put up with it but they don’t know what they’re getting into—

P: (laughs)

S: Like, it’s not fun for them. They think they can fix me, or like, help me, hold me—

P: Yeah, too many guys wanna play hero anyway.

S: Yeah, it just doesn’t work. So that’s where I am now. I know need to heal a lot more physically and mentally and be in a better place before I can possibly think of being in a committed relationship. There’s not enough space in my brain right now for another person on top of my own stuff.

[survivorsforcannabis-blog]

Alexandra Miller: treating Complex PTSD and endometriosis with cannabis

Alexandra Miller is a 27-year-old survivor who consumes cannabis to treat her Complex PTSD (CPTSD) and Endometriosis, a chronic disease which in her case resulted from sexual violence. Alex studied Spanish / Gender studies and today lives in Maryland where she runs Alni CBD Body Care (@alnicbd). Here, she shares her experiences of childhood and sexual trauma, overcoming her eating disorder, treating Endometriosis, moving away from alcohol and prescription pills and how that all led her to cannabis. In her own words:

Trigger warning for descriptions of the aftermath of sexual violence

Growing up, my childhood was extremely abusive. I am the eldest of 3 children, our parents divorced when I was 7. It was a very ugly and bitter divorce. The way they behaved and put us in the middle set a horrible example for us in relationships, holding grudges and civility. My mother has untreated mental health issues, so there was constant emotional, psychological and physical abuse.

I moved out at the age of 16 to live with my father and step-family. There, I experienced other forms of abuse, mainly psychological. I developed an eating disorder as a way to deal with my anxiety and to take back some form of control, living in such a repressed household. Moving to a different town and changing high schools in 10th grade was extremely stressful, on top of the abuse and trauma. I put all my focus into school, softball, SAT prep and my eating disorder.

After a while of starving myself and a year of losing my period due to the eating disorder, my father sent me to inpatient treatment, followed by outpatient treatment. The experience at the inpatient hospital was a combination of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest & Girl, Interrupted. After some years of struggling, I was "recovering" from my eating disorder, but not really, since I transferred my coping mechanism to binge drinking alcohol when I left for college.

Around the time of my eating disorder is when I first discovered cannabis.  It helped with my appetite and to get over the feeling of being full after a meal. I wish more people with eating disorders had access to cannabis; I had to use it illegally until I moved to Colorado.  My early years of medicating with cannabis were spent punished by my father, who kept confiscating my medicine. He was quick to put me on antidepressants, yet criticized cannabis; I knew something was innately wrong. In my view, if it improved my quality of life and did no harm, there was no reason for it to be illegal, and my view is the same to this day. 

I was 17 when I left for college, freshly "recovered" from my eating disorder. Once away at school, I turned to alcohol to cope, regularly getting blackout drunk. I wish cannabis was more promoted in society, that way maybe I wouldn't have felt the social pressures to drink. Alcohol is also more readily available and accessible than cannabis, which is unfortunate.

One night my sophomore year, a couple of friends and I went to drink at a mutual acquaintance's house. I got black out drunk as usual and followed a cat into a back bedroom. From that point on I don't remember anything until the following morning when I woke up and was gushing blood out of my vagina. I woke up in the bed of a male acquaintance I had seen around but never talked to. I tried to hide the blood from him, because as women we are taught to be ashamed of our own blood. The blood soaked through my underwear, jeans, and a fleece I was using underneath to protect the rapist's car seat when he drove me a few blocks back to my house.

This was only my third sexual partner and it was not consensual. I did not know it wasn't normal to bleed like that after sex. I got back home and just laid on a towel for a few minutes before calling a former friend who told me to call 911. No one in the hospital knew what to expect when I called and said I was bleeding out of my vagina, but once I got there, they saw it was an emergency. I was rushed into emergency surgery to repair a vaginal laceration and received a blood transfusion. They said the injury was so deep my bowel was exposed.

To this day I have severe pelvic pain, gastrointestinal issues, and adhesions as a direct result of this physical trauma. I also have a chronic disease called endometriosis, which was also caused by this trauma (most women are born with it, my case is extremely unique). Since I told the nurses and doctors it was an accident (didn't know what happened since I was unconscious), no police were called to the ER and no rape kit or any evidence was collected. I really wish they had at least called a victim's advocate to explain to me my options. I didn't even know what a rape kit was! It's scary I didn't realize for a few years it was a rape, even though I almost died.

I also had a grand mal seizure a year after the assault, due to built up stress & insomnia.  A neurologist tried to blame the seizure on my cannabis use and put me on a heavy dose of anti-seizure meds.  These meds would poison me within a few weeks, sending me to the hospital during my first week back at university as a transfer student. 

2016 was the hardest year for me, when I tried to report about 8 years later. The cops told me the rapist "didn't understand female biology" and that's why he didn't know it was an emergency I was bleeding... They also said we were both drunk... The rapist was never prosecuted or charged. He is still walking free to this day. 

I started abusing my PTSD anxiety medication (I was taking up to 50mg of Valium per day at my worst); I became violent to my current partner (spent a night in jail!); and I attempted suicide with pills (it makes me gag just thinking about swallowing all those pills now!).

As far as the anti-depressants & anti-anxiety meds, the latter proved to be the worst. I experienced one of the worst traumas a human can experience, and even still I say never use benzodiazepines. After just a few years of taking them, I noticed my personality changed for the worse, I was having more mood swings, I couldn't sleep, my memory was awful, it felt like my memories were being deleted, and I became violent. While trying to wean off the anxiety meds, I had several seizures, one I had in a crosswalk and woke up in an ambulance. I still have a chip in my tooth from that seizure, hopefully I can afford to fix it one day, but at least I am alive!

Weaning off of prescription anxiety meds was the first time I discovered CBD and its success in treating anxiety and PTSD. When taking CBD, for the first time I felt a sense of calm and happiness *whoosh* over me. It has no negative side effects, I don't have a seizure when I miss a dose, and it helps with my anxiety AND depression. I have been using cannabis (THC) for nausea since my eating disorder, but in 2016 I was diagnosed with endometriosis, which has been the more recent cause of my nausea and digestive problems, along with pain, inflammation, sharp cramps, chronic fatigue, sore body, muscle spasms, sciatica, and GI issues. I use THC and CBD to treat all of my ailments, a mixture of cannabis and hemp. I of course incorporate other cannabinoids whenever possible, i.e. CBG, CBN, THC-A, THC-V, CBD-A & more. 

Within the endometriosis and chronic pain communities, only some people are aware of the benefits of cannabis and hemp. I had the advantage of living in Colorado and working in the cannabis industry, so I had a lot of information to share with people in my online support groups. Both in the medical dispensary where I worked and talking to other people with chronic pain online, I discovered that many people were being taken advantage of, being brainwashed into thinking they must pay a high price for CBD! (Fun fact: it is NOT anymore difficult to extract CBD than any other cannabinoid, do not let people fool you! My boyfriend has been managing cannabis extraction labs since 2014 and has taught me a lot.)

I worked in cannabis edibles manufacturing before becoming a medical dispensary store supervisor. With my endometriosis diagnosis, however, I had to quit that supervisory job, since I could no longer stand and work for 45+ hours a week with the pain, fatigue, and nausea. While at home, I was helping connect people in my support groups with affordable CBD, as well as tinkering with some recipes for CBD salve for my own pain and to share with others.  One thing led to another and I created Alni CBD Body Care!

It is my mission to share with as many people as possible the wonderful benefits of CBD, especially since it is a natural alternative to harmful pharmaceutical medications. CBD and cannabis activism is also close to my heart due to the fact that I have had several friends die of drug addiction or overdose. They unfortunately did not live in states with legal access to cannabis. CBD and cannabis have been proven to help people with withdrawal symptoms, as well as the emotional aspect of becoming sober. Some women with endometriosis or other chronic pain conditions become addicted to their narcotic pain medication, because that is the only option where they live. My goal is to help make natural pain relief in the form of CBD topicals and other products available to as many people with chronic pain as possible. :)

Healing from this trauma takes work every single day, it is very hard. I have good days and bad days. The hardest part is dealing with the chronic pain and not having any of my medical expenses covered by victim's compensation. I would be fine if I just had endometriosis, but knowing a crime committed while I was drunk made me feel like it was partly my fault. This is one of the reasons I was so happy to discover Survivors for Cannabis. Connecting with and helping and empowering fellow survivors is the only way I am able to heal. 

[survivorsforcannabis-blog]

Amna Hussein: Surviving with Cannabis, Spirituality, Activism and Community

Amna Hussein (@og_hotmess) is a 22-year-old cannabis consultant and advocate, the founder of the National Conference for Women in Cannabis and a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and rape. They created the NCWC (@the_ncwc) to hold a space for black and brown femmes in cannabis. As a non-binary, queer and Muslim first-generation Sudanese-American and womanist, Amna saw a need to build a framework for inclusivity and equity in the cannabis industry, where the most marginalized people with the most hyphenated identities come first. Here, we talk about how cannabis has saved their life, how they integrate the plant into religion and spirituality and what motivates their activism. In their own words:

Has cannabis always been part of your life?

I was always taught not to go near cannabis, to not even think of going near it it. I didn’t start smoking until I was 14-15 years old and I completely was like, I’m going against the grain, I just wanna be a badass. Like I said, I’m first-generation, my family’s Sudanese so I was raised to be good and follow cultural norms. My family knew to taught me to stay away from drugs, do good in school, go to a good college, blah blah blah. So a big part of the rebellion was to start smoking weed – but it very quickly became more than rebellion.

When did you become aware of its medicinal effects?

I feel like when I started smoking I was using it medicinally because my trauma was childhood-based, I guess I just didn’t know that’s that was what I was doing, that I was medicating. But consciously medicating, honestly it was probably within this past year, when I was really like, ‘oh this is my medicine’ and it wasn’t just ‘oh, I’m stressed I’m gonna smoke,’ or ‘oh, I’m depressed, I’m gonna smoke.’

At what points has cannabis helped your symptoms the most?

So I just quit smoking cigarettes a couple months ago, I’m very proud of myself…it helps with that. It helped when I would have my manic episodes. I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, which I see as a product of trauma. Its worst manifestation was about two years ago; about a year ago was when I got diagnosed. So I had been dealing with it for about a year, year and a half and it was just fucked. I would feel like I was falling apart at the seams – it actually felt like my brain was splitting in half sometimes. I really didn’t know what was going on. It was one of the scariest times of my life and I just remember being like, damn, I’m not okay. I would smoke to lessen my symptoms. It would be the only thing that would keep me grounded enough to not go ballistic, even though it often felt like I was over the edge. 

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But I definitely abused cannabis sometimes. I also developed this eating disorder that had started in high school and it resurfaced again, full force, actually worse. I was abusing a lot of drugs at the time – weed actually helped me sober up, too. I was on amphetamines, coke, all up on that, abusing the fuck out of my prescriptions. Anything I could get my hands on, I wanted it in me. And so I would. And it had gotten to this point... that even when I was like, okay, I need to eat, I would end up throwing it up even when that wasn’t the plan. I learned later on that I was subconsciously tying to lose the childhood weight that had given me, what seemed like, mature body features like curves and breasts. 

Cannabis helps me stay alive. It helps me eat. It helps me not throw myself off of buildings and you know, not admit myself to a hospital every week – which is not to say that’s not something I couldn’t have benefited from.

You said that you abused weed at some point. Was there something that clicked that made you start using it in a different way?

Yeah, it was actually last summer, I had gone tripping so I was being slightly more spiritual… I was selling weed at the time and I was just pushing, like I was trying to survive, and there was this girl [who wanted to buy]. I was having the worst day and I really just wanted to go home but I really needed these funds. I just had a mental breakdown 30 minutes before going to go see her and I remember feeling so numb that going to interact with a human was my biggest nightmare. She immediately noticed that I wasn’t okay and pressed on, asking what was wrong. 

She had been through the same trauma. So we just bonded over the fact that we had just been fucked over by life way too early. In the spirit of brown hospitality she invited me over for dinner so I wouldn’t be alone. On the way there, we were driving and and the sun began to set, it was beautiful and we drove past a wooded area, there were hills everywhere… and I couldn't help but say, “oh my god, it looks gorgeous!” – It turned out to be an old spot she used to hang out at when she was younger. 

So we’re walking up this hill and she’s like “yeah, there used to be water here but there’s no more water here because it was a manmade lake and it was drained”... and we get on top of the hill and lo and fuckin behold, there’s a whole-ass fucking lake there. And we’re just like WHAT THE FUCK THERE’S A LAKE! So we start walking around and we’re smoking and talking and I’m talking about out trauma and I’m just sobbing. I’m sobbing next to this lake thinking, it made me so bitter... but I’m so happy that to be able to appreciate so much more about life than I could've otherwise.

She was completely sympathetic and understood where I was coming from with that, and said something along the lines of, “He chose you so long ago.” It was in that moment where I saw my own iteration of spirituality. It was a moment of acknowledgement that came completely out of the blue.

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So after that I was fucked up, like, dope, weed isn’t just weed anymore. And I remember telling people about it, Catherine McLean, a researcher on psychedelics for John Hopkins University, had done an integration circle we were talking about our psychedelic experiences and I told everyone in the circle that I’d had this experience with cannabis, and she reminded us not to forget that cannabis is a psychoactive drug. It can be a psychedelic and you can have a psychedelic experience with it, it’s possible to see God in those moments. 

After that I started praying with my weed, I started having my meditations with cannabis. My appreciation for cannabis meta-morphed into a realization that a seed created this medicine for me and one day I know I will go into the earth and I will feed another seed and that cycle, just thinking of all the things and all the people and all the energy from lives lived and that will be lived. I’m just in awe of the chance to experience it. Purely because I am here and now I am this person, and getting to fall in love with cannabis all over again. In a way that was how God was saying, 'hey I’ve always been here,' or like cannabis saying, 'thanks for noticing.' And so yeah, that was honestly one of the catalysts that changed the perspective of my life, let alone weed.

How does your family feel about you integrating cannabis into Islam?

So my family is Muslim. Like Muslim Muslim Muslim, til Allah do them part. I consider myself culturally Muslim – I will swear all the swears, I know my suras and all that but what I really appreciated about Islam was the beauty of it. How beautiful and how romantic it is towards Spirituality. When I read the Quran and what it was asking and the tenants and all of that, the way that it exhibits that is just this notion of love, eternal love, love love love, like shut the fuck up, everything is about love. And on top of that it’s just good lessons and like a guidebook for me in terms of building a moral compass. Living by its tenements though... that’s a different story.

I'm spiritual but I’m not religious so I think my family could sense that for a while. My family [would tell me to] pray five times a day…and I was just like no, if God fucks with me, why does he need to know that I’m there five times a day? That’s ridiculous in my head. That was why I was upset as a child especially because I was being called lazy and a bad person by my family because I didn’t want to fucking pray five times a day. All the while never knowing that my Quran teacher was one of the people molesting me.

My father thinks I’m just up to some foolishness and I’m just being a fuckboy or whatever, and my mom is just like, 'if you’re gonna do it, you’re gonna do it.’ But we don’t talk about how it’s spiritual for me. I’m actually pretty closeted from my family. They just know that I consume and I’m into it but, for example, they don’t know about the conference. My family’s completely in the dark, which I feel is a lot of brown girls’ narratives: yeah I’m gonna change the world, I just can’t tell my family yet. 

I think you're right about that. What motivates you and your work with this conference?

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There was this activist, Uneeda Nichols, who helped get the bill for Initiative 71 in front of legislators. One of the major vendors in the area started out in her house. He’s gained large notoriety, he’s quite famous, and she’s still struggling in some ways. The repetition of oppressive tactics was infuriating. While I was in the car with some friends, we were talking about this situation and I was like, fuck it, why don’t we have this? Why isn’t there a barrier in place to protect people like this, or to make sure this industry doesn’t become like the rest?

I come from a family of activists. It’s in my blood. If it pisses us off we do something about it, or at least try. But especially with the relationship I’ve built with cannabis, it’s something I have to care about. The reason I started reading up on cannabis was just out of love and curiosity – a genuine love for my medicine. I just wanted to know why lemony things made me feel a certain way, you know? And so, it’s just the fact that I love it purely. Alongside my identity and family history, my love for cannabis keeps me going. 

On healing through community: 

My friends and I, we get together and we talk about our trauma over a blunt. We don’t try to do it on purpose, but we end up smoking a blunt, and joking like, ‘yeah so how old were you, 4?’ ‘Yeah I was like 8…’ ‘And then when it happens again in college, you’re just like, ahh, how could it happen again! Oh god, I feel like such an idiot.’ We crack jokes about it and create a medium to make light of pain, and come back from it, normalize it. Because it’s normal, to an extent. That was also something I realized – everyone’s been raped. People with penises, vaginas, whatever – especially coming from cultures like mine. I found out so many people in my life had been molested and raped and just fucked over. Just awful, awful things and its so normal and our community hides it, and we covet the perpetrators.

I know so many people that it’s happened to... I know so many people who don’t even realize they’re medicating. They don’t even realize the reason that they need to medicate. They’re just like, yeah I just had a stressful day… It’s like, nah b, your day really wasn’t that stressful, you’ve just been dealing with unaddressed trauma for 20 years. That’s also how I consider cannabis being a vice, when you don’t know that you’re using it to medicate, because you’re just using it to avoid the fact that you even have something to medicate over – to create that blind spot of, ‘I know there’s pain but it’s external.’

I mean, what cannabis does for people is amazing. It makes me comfortable enough to talk to someone about it. It makes me not hate talking about it. There are moments when I’ll be smoking and talking to my friends about it. And the sisterhood, the bonding that’s built there, the love and empathy that people feel for each other in those moments is amazing. It's why cannabis and surviving can work so well together.

photography: @photogoon420

[survivorsforcannabis-blog]

Kailyn Brown: Cannabis as Medicine, the Impact of #MeToo, and the Importance of Family

Kailyn Brown (@adoredzero) is 32-year-old cannabis consultant and advocate, and a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. Born in San Francisco, today she lives in Tacoma, WA with her husband, daughter, 2 dogs, 3 cats and a beta named Alpha. Kailyn has been a regular cannabis consumer for about a decade and uses it to treat anxiety, PTSD and pain. Here, she shares her story of cannabis and mental illness, how the #MeToo movement resonated with her and how the trauma has affected her family as well. In her own words:

What kind of work do you do in cannabis and why is it important to you?

I am a Medical Marijuana Consultant. I educate people about the therapeutic benefits of using cannabis products for health and wellness, whether it’s physical or mental. I think it’s so important to me because I found cannabis so comforting when nothing else was and when I began to learn why (chemically) it was helping I wanted everyone to know as well. The science and taking the time to understand it breaks that negative stigma that has followed the plant for as long as it has.

How did you first become educated about cannabis as medicine? At what point did you start to consume it in that way?

I first heard that cannabis was being used medicinally in the States before I heard it as actually big news. My dad worked as a maintenance man in a lower income apartment building in Seattle and one of the tenants there was a very frail older man named Jim, he sold me weed. Jim not only sold weed but he smoked it and in fact he claimed that it killed his cancer. I think this was like 15 or so years ago. After that I had stopped smoking to work in pharmacy as a technician [at 18] but I’d hear more and more from people about how they used cannabis for reasons other than getting high..I eventually left pharmacy which then also allowed me to consume and I became a daily user again after that. I never really used it for a particular reason, well pain, but as far as mentally. I just knew it helped better than anything else. I have used cannabis with the intention of reaping the medical benefits within the past 4 years, with a highlight on large amounts of CBD each morning. I use it mostly for social anxiety but I welcome everything else that it is helping me with!

​​Had you tried different medications for mental illness?

I have tried a variety of different medications, none ever really seemed to help and if they did it wasn’t for long. I have experimented with several psychedelic drugs in the pursuit of “fixing myself” or finding some hidden answer. In reality, I learned to accept myself more. You shared with me that #MeToo changed your understanding of your mental illness.. can you talk more about that and how the movement resonated with you? Were you aware you had PTSD before then?

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#MeToo didn’t hit me right away when it started to build. I wasn’t dismissive to it but I didn’t really connect myself to the movement, I’m guessing because my trauma was so long ago and I’d always detached myself from it in a way.

I am not sure what really made it hit me one day; I think it was when the Larry Nassar case was beginning to really take weight. Maybe it was because of the ages involved.

I just happened to have a therapy appointment that day and I decided to finally tell someone outside of a very few people about the childhood abuse. Since my therapist did not know about the abuse it shed new light on my mental struggles, I did not really accept PTSD as a diagnosis before that (though it had been toyed with) because I couldn’t, or I suppose, wouldn’t allow myself to connect the dots. After all this time I could finally start to understand why I reacted to things like touch in a different way than everyone else seemed to, or why I could just never let my guard down. I honestly couldn’t figure out why people could be so open with one another..

It’s still a work in progress but now that I have been able to recognize and identify these feelings I can work through them with a sort of new view.

It’s weird to think you are not a part of something and then you realize it epitomizes a part of you. It’s painful and scary but also freeing in a sense, because it’s the truth.

What was the difference in how you reacted to touch?

It seems to me that whenever someone touches me I just wait for them to stop. There was even a moment today when my daughter gave me a small side hug and I thought about this very question. I see other people seem comfortable with touching in friendships and family; I don’t have that same ease. Even though mentally I can understand the connection that is in touch, I just don’t care for it much. I have difficulty even with my husband when we get intimate sometimes but he is very understanding, as cruel as it seems.

What was it like when you shared what happened in your childhood with the people close to you?

I first told my father when I was 14 or so years old. We were on the bus and he brought up my childhood friends dad, I must have appeared uncomfortable because my dad asked me if my friend’s dad ever touched me. I responded with, “it happened a long time ago.” He was livid… however, we didn’t talk about it again until again until I was in my late 20s. When the subject reemerged I learned that my dad went actively looking for the guy. I’m kind of glad he didn’t find him because my dad would have killed him. My dad has passed now but in the last couple of years he was alive we could talk freely about it and I knew that he deeply regretted letting that happen to me.

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My mother… I told her around the same time since I knew it would be my dad telling her if I did not. She seemed to care but I don’t think she believed me. Till this day she has never mentioned it. We have a pretty good relationship besides that, it’s the thing that’s always been there hanging in the air. Well, at least for me— I don’t know if she ever thinks about it. But recently I took to Facebook and told a small part of my story, naming my abuser and admitting to the mental struggles that I have learned to live with. My mom made that angry face emoji, but that’s the only acknowledgement I’ve gotten from her on that subject to this day. I do think she feels very guilty though, she was the person that paid for my MMJ consultant certification when I announced I needed the funds not too terribly long after I posted my #MeToo contribution on social media.

My husband, Chris, has been the most supportive person in my life. He has to deal with the ramifications of my abuse and my responses to traumatic stimuli but he does it from a place of true caring which makes a world of difference for someone who never really knew who to rely on. I know that I am very lucky to have him and I know that not everyone has someone in their corner, even if it comes later in life.

Do you think your mother believes you now? Why do you think it is so difficult for her to acknowledge?

I do think she believes me now, I think she can’t bring herself to really acknowledge it because it would mean that she would have to admit that she never did anything when I first told her. I can’t begin to know how hard that would be to accept; I have a 14-year-old daughter and I would murder anyone that would do anything similar to her. I think because of that I won’t bring it up with her either, we both know that we both know. I think it would tear her apart.

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[survivorsforcannabis-blog]

Jessica Clark: The Yoga plus Cannabis Combination for PTSD and Sexual Trauma

Jessica Clark is a cannabis yogi and reiki therapist, a PTSD survivor and the owner of Soul Shack yoga & wellness studio in Los Angeles, where she works with clients with various conditions including all types of PTSD. Here, Jessica shares her journey through this ancient combination, how yoga + cannabis are “made for one another” and why they are especially healing for sexual trauma. She also offers us guidance on how to begin exploring this practice that has changed her life, which she now brings to the lives of others. In her own words:

When and in what ways did PTSD manifest in your body?

It's hard to say exactly when my PTSD started, but I first noticed it as a constant state of anxiety, depression, insomnia and chronic physical pain in my late teens. At the beginning of my yoga practice, the pains that first stood out to me were my shoulders & lower back. Then, a few years into my practice, I realized a lot of it was coming from my hips and an inability to pretty much ever relax in my pelvis, which affected my entire spine.

Now that I know so much more about PTSD, I know that this is not only normal, but pretty much the rule: the psoas muscle, often referred to as the "muscle of the soul," is the origin of tension & pain in most people with PTSD, and is deeply connected to most parts of the body. No matter my client’s condition, if the psoas is overly tightened & constantly contracted, it sets off a chain reaction that brings disharmony to the entire body. And for those of us with PTSD, the psoas muscle is constantly contracted, affecting our body's ability to function normally. This is why hip openers are SO great for PTSD and also my favorite poses to do in my own practice. The psoas holds onto trauma at the cellular level and it is by lengthening & stretching it that we are able to bring fresh, new bloodflow & energy to soften the muscle tissues, to bring about release and thus renewal to the psoas, hips and back, and to all of the systems of the body (the nervous and glandular systems in particular). This is also why hip openers are commonly known to bring the deepest emotional releases in yoga.

How did you first discover yoga and cannabis? How has this addressed your symptoms?

I started smoking cannabis with friends when I was 19 and then found yoga later that same year. The first time I went to yoga class high, I was so nervous and thought if anyone found out, I'd be judged and maybe asked to leave for doing "drugs" at yoga class (on my college campus). But I did it anyway and also continued to practice while medicated at home, where I could get much deeper and not feel bad if I had to stop to cry and/or process all of the previously unprocessed emotions & memories that yoga brought up for me.

At the time, I didn't know that combining cannabis and yoga was normal (they've only been doing it for thousands of years in India!) OR that crying during yoga, or using yoga to release deep emotional experience was normal. All I knew was that it was working.

I stayed with this process for years, uncovering layer after layer of memories, trauma, and emotions that I knew I had to let go to move forward… I could read as many self-help books as I wanted, but for some reason doing the physical practice of yoga, especially paired with cannabis, was by far the number one thing that allowed me to TRULY let go, even if it felt like torture at the time.

Eventually, this led to me getting [my first] Yoga Teacher Training Certification in beautiful Mother India. In India, yogis will smoke or drink cannabis on the streets & in ashrams as part of their practice, whereas in America until very recently, it was pretty taboo for someone to openly admit mixing the two.

One of my first jobs in LA was teaching for 420 Yoga founder Liz McDonald [until the studio closed several years ago]. For fear of being excommunicated from the LA yoga scene, I did not teach public cannabis enhanced yoga again until recently, once my own studio became established. I did however offer private cannabis enhanced yoga and found that with all of my experience in healing myself, it suited me very well and more importantly, was very needed in the yoga community – a teacher who can sit with you one-on-one, support you through your journey, tailor every class to your mood, tell you it’s okay to cry, give you reiki during Pigeon pose releases, etc.

I hate to sound biased, but it’s true – clients who medicated with cannabis before their private yoga (or reiki) sessions always had bigger releases & breakthroughs and were able to connect with their breath in a deeper and more consistent way. On top of this, my clients with PTSD were usually the ones who saw the biggest results from combining cannabis and yoga. After my private practice took off, I realized there must be something to all this and started keeping records. I haven't done anything with them yet, but have used them to inspire myself to do more research on combining these two healing practices that, in my opinion, were made for one another.

There is no better decision I've made in my whole life, than to do yoga & smoke weed daily. My entire life, my body and mind would be totally different, still stuck and anxious, if I had never discovered yoga AND cannabis. One would have done me so much good, but the two together – that was proof enough that maybe there was a higher power after all. The two together really are perfect. I am a completely different person than I was before. I have learned to stay relaxed through most of my day, instead of tightened and anxious; my body is more open and flexible than ever; my mind and emotions tend to stay more even, instead of getting so easily overwhelmed; and my breath is slow and full and deep – something I never thought I would have.

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What makes healing PTSD from sexual trauma with yoga + cannabis different than healing other types of trauma?

Healing PTSD through combining cannabis and yoga definitely comes with its own set of protocols, but working with clients who have PTSD from sexual trauma specifically has additional protocols. It’s even more complicated when a client has multiple types of PTSD from multiple time periods & experiences. At first some of these cases were so daunting... but knowing that I had done it and remembering how it felt in my body and what it must have looked like, enabled me to see it in my clients as well. So much of it is intuition and trusting the wisdom of the body.

The psoas tends to be very tight and "stuck" in all PTSD cases, especially with sexual trauma, so we pay extra attention to hip openers and the sacral chakra. There's also the issue of touch – most people with PTSD, especially women, will not want to be touched until they feel really comfortable with a person. This is why I recommend that every yoga teacher ask their students first whether they would like to receive hands-on adjustments. Allowing them to decide when they are ready to receive touch can be a very empowering act in itself – and when they’re ready, this also teaches the body how to trust again.

Every single one of my clients with PTSD has recovered to some degree. One of my closest clients is a veteran and had very bad PTSD for years, and now says that he has none. He's a completely different person thanks to the practice he has sustained throughout the years. There is never a one-size-fits-all formula, so I tend to tailor sessions to the individual and their unique needs & how those needs change over time.

As far as a routine, I usually start most of my clients (& myself) in Restorative Yoga postures, just focusing on the breath, then move onto the deeper stretches once it is obvious they feel safe and are starting to tap into what I call "the rhythm of release."

In general, all PTSD cases need to be treated with care in regards to environment and working with the senses – ideally in a quiet & dim setting with relaxing music, working slowly with the breath and the body. Allowing clients to leave their eyes open until they feel safe & relaxed enough to close them is an extremely important aspect of yoga for PTSD that is largely overlooked in public classes.

For those who have never tried the yoga + cannabis combination – where should one start and what are possible risks?

If budget isn't an issue, I highly recommend doing your first yoga + cannabis session one-on-one with a guide for PTSD, since it is a condition that requires so much sensitivity. If budget is a concern, toking up at your house by yourself with a beginners’ yoga video is a great start, and a very personal, sometimes safer feeling one too. It depends on whether being alone makes you more nervous or less nervous.

You want to feel as comfortable and safe as possible so that you are in the best place to let go completely if a big emotional processing breakthrough is set to happen for you. Once you feel confident in your skills to do yoga while consuming cannabis, you can venture off to a public class, especially if you live somewhere that allows for publicly cannabis enhanced yoga classes – you’ll be comforted by the acceptance and presence of other cannabis users, and your teacher will likely be more into the healing aspects of yoga rather than just getting a sweaty workout (which is great, just not what we are looking for with most cannabis yoga). Public classes tend to be more one-size-fits-all, but still have many benefits.

Ultimately, I suggest working up to having one day a week where you do a half-day "processing" practice. For me, this is usually Saturdays where I consume a hefty amount of edibles, flower and oil paired with a 4-8 hour yoga practice and just allow whatever needs to happen, happen.

Possible risks are very few, but could include people who are less experienced with cannabis feeling too uncomfortable to "drop in," and in general, it is said that cannabis and yoga together cause people to lose their balance. This is easily avoided however, by having students use the wall during balancing poses until they figure out a more subtle way to hold their balance. Another risk is taking more than what their current tolerance can handle so that they can barely do the practice at all & just stay more in a heady space, but even that is handled simply by taking time in meditation before moving again. I have learned to trust the sacred wisdom of the plant and to trust that it always gives us what we need when we need it.

Lastly, another risk could be becoming reliant on cannabis to do your yoga practice. Although I have done the vast majority of my 13-year practice under the influence of cannabis, I have found it is always healthy to do a practice without it from time to time, to establish to one's psyche that there is no dependence, just enhancement. It’s also nice to practice without cannabis for comparison and contemplation purposes – sometimes it’s really beautiful to have that reminder of just how powerful cannabis is.

What does science say about all this? (Keeping in mind the legal limits on studying the health benefits of cannabis in the US…)

As far as what we do know, both yoga & cannabis have been shown to help regulate emotional and physiological states.

The evidence that yoga can alleviate the symptoms of PTSD either somewhat or completely, is significant. Almost all scholarly articles list movement therapy & yoga therapy as the best way to treat PTSD.

Yoga in particular is proven to be highly effective for regulating the hormonal/glandular system, which is where all of the stress hormones from PTSD are created, and where the hormones responsible for what's known as "the relaxation response" also occur. Those toxic stress chemicals not only affect the glandular system but make their way into the entire body, the bloodstream and the muscles until one day (through yoga/movement/cannabis) it is released & flushed from the system.

It’s really a matter of releasing the emotions from the psoas to rejuvenate the hormonal system, until the stress hormones are not being released all of the time, and the hormones responsible for relaxation are now released the majority of the time. Add cannabis, a plant medicine scientifically proven to induce relaxation, with the relaxing effects of yoga, and boom – we bring the body out of the fight-or-flight response and into the peace of the present moment.

It is known that those with PTSD can have a hard time experiencing pleasure, a feeling experienced in the present – because the body keeps replaying the past. This is where cannabis' euphoric qualities provide a lot of help.

Going even further, studies have shown a direct link between PTSD and disruption in the endocannabinoid system [which plays a huge role in the control of emotional states], and since cannabis acts directly on the endocannabinoid system in a positive & natural way, it has been shown to provide great relief for PTSD. 

The plan for treatment must be physical, emotional, mental, and for many like myself, even spiritual. Cannabis helps many of us heal on all of these levels at the same time, with its beautiful ability to bring us into the present moment & enhance the patience and kindness within myself to stay with the practice & continue to heal and grow.

Why do you feel it’s important to recognize and diagnose PTSD?

Because so many people suffer from it for years without knowing, thinking that being constantly anxious & scared is a "normal" feeling to have. It's so sad how much we hold onto thinking it is ours when it is not. That's what so much my work focuses on - how to allow ourselves to find our baseline again, our point of equilibrium, after having been without it, and reliant on being without it for so long.  I've often seen people frantically turn to drugs, alcohol or other harmful addictions to help soothe their anxieties, shame, pain etc. from their PTSD.

I also feel this topic should be discussed more often. Most people, especially women with sexual trauma, hide their PTSD or feel ashamed that they will bring the mood down if they talk about it. I would love to help create a world where that is a completely nonexistent thought. If a man or woman with sexual trauma does not want to talk about their trauma that is one thing, but we also have to examine why we make these decisions. I have often found for myself, it may be a waste of energy because very few people have a working framework for how to sympathize & relate to someone sharing their PTSD story. People want the tools to help one another, we just are not taught what those tools are, and so often we humans tend to shy away from things when we don't know how to do them (i.e. when we don't know how to listen & provide safe space for PTSD survivors). With just a little extra education on the topic in schools and other places for community, I think this could really change.

To learn more: Ganja Yoga by Dee Dussault The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk

[survivorsforcannabis-blog]

Alexis: Replacing Prescription Pills with Cannabis

​​Alexis (@oldcatlady666) is a 23-year-old California medical cannabis patient, advocate and survivor. She was diagnosed with PTSD at the age of 19, due to sexual abuse. At the time, Alexis was prescribed multiple medications for depression and anxiety: Zoloft, Buspar and Hydroxyzine. Her dosages kept rising until she “didn’t feel like [she] was a person anymore.” That all changed when she found cannabis two and a half years ago – Alexis no longer needs to take pills and hopes to never need them again. Born in Sacramento, today she lives in the Bay Area and works in cannabis sales. In her own words:

Can you describe how you felt on pills?

I felt a sense of artificial happiness. Even though I was smiling and acting like I was having a good time, I just felt numb inside. It caused me to believe I wasn't capable of being "fixed" (even though you can't "fix" me, and pills would never be able to). It felt like a mask. I was hiding my true emotions by taking a little pill every morning,

How is cannabis different than that? Can/do you get that same numb feeling from cannabis?

Cannabis is absolutely not the same for me. Cannabis is a healing plant. It does everything I need it to do for my PTSD. It works to physically calm me down, as well as calm my brain down so I can better regulate my thoughts. Cannabis also acts as a natural antidepressant, but I still get my normal emotions.

Once you tried cannabis, what did you do to become a patient?

I actually tried cannabis a few times before I became a patient. The first time was in an illegal state. It didn't do a lot for me then. But when I tried it in California for the first time, it was incredibly beneficial.

I started with micro-dosing it. I would start with maybe just one small hit of

cannabis flower from a pipe, and then wait 4 hours before consuming any more. I have anxiety, so if I smoked too much it would cause panic attacks, but I found just the right amount for me at the time.

Then I talked to a doctor, and got my cannabis recommendation. And from there I started finding different strains, edibles, tinctures and concentrates that worked best for me. After I realized how fantastic it worked for my PTSD and how much it calmed me down, I stopped using Zoloft and switched to just cannabis.

Talk a little more about how cannabis helps with some of your specific symptoms.

I have insomnia from flashbacks/nightmares, or because I don't want to sleep due to the flashbacks/nightmares. Cannabis makes me sleepy and relaxes me. It also helps me get rid of negative thoughts and puts me in more of a positive mindset. I have bad panic attacks - sometimes it feels like I can't breathe. Cannabis can also act as a high blood pressure treatment, and I have issues with that as well from my PTSD. It also helps relieve nausea from my anxiety, so I can eat more.

When I wake up, I don't have to worry about crippling anxiety or depression and I can start my day.

I'm healing. I don't know where I would be without this beautiful plant.

[survivorsforcannabis-blog]

Amber Amour: Moving West, Knowing Your Cannabis, and Forgiving Your Rapists

Amber Amour (@ambertheicon) is a survivor and cannabis patient, artist and consent activist, psychic and spiritual coach for rape survivors. For years, Amber has been speaking up about her own experiences of sexual assault while inspiring other survivors to heal holistically. In 2014, she began the #StopRapeEducate chalk art campaign to educate the public about sexual assault. In 2016, she founded Creating Consent Culture, a movement to end sexual assault by normalizing consent and communication. In her own words:

When and how did your PTSD symptoms first begin to manifest? How did you first put a name to it?

I would have to sit down and meditate on this to give you the most authentic answer....

It's complex since I was molested as a child and I didn't learn about PTSD or how molestation affected me until I was an adult. Looking back, I'd say that PTSD came in the form of depression, anxiety, suicidal feelings, rage, triggers, extended periods of dissociation.

I didn't learn about PTSD from rape until I was in my twenties while studying trauma.

What role does cannabis play in your healing? Has that changed over time and if so, how?

It soothes my anxiety, PTSD, and negative emotions. I have been using cannabis to heal from PTSD due to rape for the past 13 years. I use it daily. My consumption has not changed over the years. What has changed is my knowledge of the plant. Growing up in Ohio, herb was always accessible. I used it as a teen to ease the pain of being a closeted molestation survivor. In college, I traveled to Amsterdam where I learned about the different types of cannabis and their healing properties.

I moved to California in 2017 to have abundant access to medicine to help cure my PTSD. There are hundreds of cannabis products today: oils, sprays, edibles, tinctures. I've learned to enjoy it in different ways such as mixing canna-oil in my food or brewing an energizing tea from stems. 

The knowledge has helped me better consume. There was only one kind of herb that I could get from my supplier in Ohio. Amsterdam and California taught me about all the different strains.  I now choose an herb based on my needs, instead of just taking the only kind around. Knowing what you are smoking is critical to healing.

Do you have a medical card? What process did you go through to get it?

Yes, I obtained a medical marijuana card while living in California. All I had to do is find a doctor, set up an appointment, and tell him what I was there for. I specifically got a medical card to heal anxiety and PTSD from rape. I also mentioned my menstrual cramps and within a matter of minutes, I became a legal cannabis consumer in the state of California. Thousands of people do not have to go through this process, especially now that cannabis is legal recreationally in California. 

How does being a queer woman of color affect your consent activism?

It makes it harder... I'm pretty much ignored... or looked at as an "angry black woman," even when I'm calm and just stating facts.

Do you "forgive" your rapists? If yes, what does that look like to you? If no, why not?

Absolutely. Forgiveness is freedom. While I was angry, I let the rapists control my emotions. Now that I have forgiven them, my soul feels much lighter and I am totally focused on my soul mission. My goals are far more important than hatred for abusers. I have no hatred. I am free. I am healed. Forgiveness took my healing to a whole new level. Forgiveness does not mean their actions were justified, it means that I no longer allow the pain to run my life. Every survivor deserves that gift and only they can give it to themselves. 

How does it feel now that the cause you have been in for years is suddenly part of the mainstream conversation with #MeToo?

It's always great when survivors speak up :) 

[survivorsforcannabis-blog]

Alana with Cannabis: Recognizing PTSD, Cannabis as a Security Blanket & the Illinois Medical Program

Alana (@alanawithcannabis) is a 25-year-old survivor of several sexual assaults, the first of which occurred in childhood. Today, she lives in her home state of Illinois and chooses medical cannabis to treat her Post-Traumatic Stress. In her free time, drawing on her experience both as a patient and a former budtender, Alana reviews medical cannabis products and dispensaries around Illinois for the blog Talking Cannabis, in collaboration with her boyfriend (@drbudzil). In her own words:

When were you diagnosed with PTSD? What was that like? I wasn’t diagnosed with PTSD until I was 22. Up until then, I had been diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and depression. It was strange – it was almost like a wave of relief because certain things finally made sense: why I was never able to remember things, the belief that I just wasn’t going to live to an old age, along with an abundance of other typical PTSD symptoms. It was weird to me though, that no one had ever diagnosed it before then, since it seemed so obvious to me. I had seen more therapists and psychiatrists over the years than I can ever recall, yet none had told me I had PTSD and if they had told my mom, she never told me. Looking back, I had the symptoms from the get-go: impaired memory, self-harm, eating disorders, etc. Maybe the reason PTSD hadn’t been diagnosed sooner is because I just didn’t want to talk about anything to anyone, so no one knew everything that was really going on. I will say that knowing the correct diagnosis (not just GAD and depression) has helped me significantly in managing my symptoms. I’m now able to identify and better attempt to avoid or deal with my triggers.

When did you first try cannabis and how has the way you medicate changed over time? I first used cannabis when I was about 12 years old and used it sporadically throughout my life, but really started using it on a regular basis by 2014, when I was 21. This was right after I had a negative reaction to getting off of my antidepressant medication (Celexa) and at the height of my PTSD really hitting hard with anxiety. At this point in time, it was still illegal in Illinois and I was buying off the street. I wasn't able to pick out strains and had a few batches that gave me anxiety or made me a bit paranoid, but I stuck with it because any of my cannabis-fueled anxiety or paranoia was still better than my experience with pharmaceuticals. Now that there's more information available about how cannabis works and I have access to a regulated market, I'm able to better manage my symptoms and I know what strains and terpenes and cannabinoids work best for me. I honestly think that's the coolest thing about cannabis: I don't necessarily need to know what strain a bud is or if it's indica or sativa. I can smell and pick up on the terpenes and determine what I think the effects will be for me. I wish I had known that when buying on the street - I could have avoided some of those anxiety attacks!

So cannabis has changed your relationship with your PTSD? It has! Now, when I'm having an anxiety attack, I can still tell myself that I have meds and that this feeling doesn't have to last. It's such a relief because in the midst of one, I feel completely lost, like I'm losing my mind and it makes me even more anxious and scared that the feeling won't go away. So, cannabis has sort of become my security blanket and reminded me I'll be okay, I just need to medicate and try to breathe.

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Give a couple examples of how different products or strains have helped you treat different symptoms, in the short- and long-term. I've used a variety of indica and CBD products to help manage my anxiety, or help me fall and stay asleep. When my anxiety is really severe, I could wake up 5 times in a night drenched in my own sweat. Sometimes the only thing getting me back to sleep was a massive dab of OG-18 (OG Kush lineage) cultivated and extracted by Cresco Labs here in Illinois. I also really enjoy the Pennywise suppositories made by the non-profit Shelby County Community Services. A lot of people don't talk about suppositories, I suppose because it's taboo – but they are the most medicinally beneficial in my opinion, because you're not digesting and breaking down cannabinoids in your stomach acid, or burning anything off by smoking or dabbing. They've worked wonders for my digestive issues and back pain and cramps. Pharmacann (which also goes by Matter Cares) has some truly amazing concentrates and really focuses on terpenes, which I love! And my other qualifying condition, Post-Concussion Syndrome, sometimes made it hard to focus or remember anything, but cannabis kept me focused and interested in whatever I was doing.

Tell me about medical policy in Illinois and the process you went through to become a patient. Governor Pat Quinn signed the Illinois Medical Cannabis Pilot Program into law in 2013 and the first dispensaries opened in November 2015. At its inception, the program did not include PTSD or terminal illness as qualifying conditions. This changed with an amendment in 2016 which added both, as well as extended the program until at least July 2020 and allowed patients to register for a 3-year card rather than a 1-year. The process was pretty straightforward for me because I did everything through The Healing Clinic, which completed and submitted my application, physician certification verifying my qualifying conditions, fingerprints and payment. Unfortunately, they didn't accept my insurance and I had to pay for each visit out of pocket. Money is another big factor holding more people back from obtaining their cards: it's expensive. I paid $300 for my card to be valid for 3 years, plus $65 for fingerprinting so the state can do an FBI background check, plus the cost of the doctor visits at The Healing Clinic. And if you're designating a caregiver, they pay $75 for a 3-year caregiver card, and $65 for fingerprinting. It’s also important to know that in Illinois, once you become a patient, the state links that to your Driver's License so that if the police run your DL number, they can see you're a patient. While this has the potential to be a bad thing – most people fear discrimination or harassment – I have yet to hear of anything like that. Everyone I've spoken with that has been pulled over has simply been asked if they're in compliance or where their cannabis is stored, but never ending badly. I can see the benefit of this as well, in case a patient does have product on them or in their car but doesn't have their patient card on hand.

What's the cannabis scene like in Illinois? What's next in policy? The cannabis scene is…interesting. There's a lot of interest in doing community events and having festivals/cups, but for the most part, Illinois is far too restrictive to allow anything like that at this time. We wouldn't be able to host a Cannabis Cup or Secret Sesh or any other event like that because cultivators are not allowed to sell directly to patients, and neither cultivators nor dispensaries can allow onsite consumption or sell at a booth. And a patient has to be registered at a dispensary to make a purchase, so we're in limbo waiting for things to loosen up a bit. I hear there's talk about allowing patients and caregivers to grow but I'm not sure how reliable or accurate that is. I'm hoping that in the next 5 years, Illinois legalizes adult use and that in doing so, medical prices will drop like in Colorado. Because as it stands now, a patient trying to go by the standard 1 gram RSO (Rick Simpson Oil) per day to treat cancer is looking at having to spend anywhere from $35-80 per gram, and it's just unrealistic to expect people to be able to afford that.

Header photo by Jay (@jay_mmj)

[survivorsforcannabis-blog]

Why Am I Doing This?

Because I know too well how debilitating sexual trauma is and I feel obligated to share that which has been so essential to my survival.

Because PTSD is real, complicated shit and talking about what caused it can be empowering but it is not enough to heal.

Because all survivors deserve the peace that this medicine can bring.

Because nobody talks about rape as the most likely trigger for PTSD, rape survivors have little to no voice in public discourse around PTSD and/or cannabis, and everything about that needs to change.

Because my long relationships with both cannabis and with my trauma became infinitely more meaningful the moment that I began intentionally looking at the former as medicine for the latter.It is the only thing that effectively helps me to engage with my emotions more objectively, that helps me to process the big-picture for the long-term while also helping to manage short-term symptoms as needed.

Because our veterans have been working hard on this, and I believe we can work together.

Because prescription pills are not my solution and Big Pharma is not on our side.And our democratically-elected president is a known rapist.

Because I understand how crucial it is to have a supportive network that validates your experience when you’re dealing with this shit. And the best way we can learn is from each other.

Because I want to see the stigmas break down in front of my eyes. It’s necessary, and it’s about damn time.

If you get me, then join me.