Cannabis Self-Therapy for Healing Trauma

This post began as a note about using weed to help manage or treat emotional issues but it turned into a full-blown account of my experience using cannabis as emotional medicine. I just wanted to organize my thoughts in writing at first, but I think I'm going to share this because I find the potential  of this plant for healing emotional trauma is incredible.  It's only been a few months but I've gone through some incredible transformations as a result. 

(There are also some pretty gnarly personal tidbits in here regarding my own process of letting go & growing up - be warned!)

Using cannabis has been tremendously important for my spiritual and emotional growth - not because it helps to facilitate meditative states or expanded consciousness (although it's great at doing this, it kind of feels like cheating) but because it's helped me identify and eliminate emotional blockages that were slowing down my evolution. It's helped me develop the insight needed to make long-term, permanent improvements in my communication skills, my self-image, my behaviour towards others, my integrity and my emotional intelligence.

We need to heal these problems before we can even work on spirituality, I think, because Spirit is limited by our emotional maturity. Getting these things down is more important than just being mindful and meditating all the time. Both are very useful, but they can also easily be used as a distraction to avoid difficult emotions and memories. 

Before diving further into this idea I'd like to clarify that

a) I don't think I qualify as a stoner, that is, I don't often use marijuana recreationally annd much prefer to use it in a therapeutic environment, i.e. by myself in the evening

b) I'm not referring to cannabis self-therapy in the sense that "oh, I got baked and had some cool realizations about life, very therapeutic brah." Don't get me wrong, weed is great for broadening perception and having mind-blowing conversations is great! - but it's not necessarily therapeutic.

That said, I've been developing a relationship with cannabis lately as if it were my therapist.

I'm not the type of person who can smoke a doobie and sit down and chill. I'm one of those people smokes weed and tends to get extremely anxious, uncomfortable, and have my thoughts spiral out of control unless (and even sometimes when) I'm in a comfortable environment by myself.

Fairly recently I came to see that these anxieties and uncomfortable feelings weren't just that. They surface signs of much deeper psychological unrest and, as yet, unidentified trauma.

Bam. There we had it. Weed, as Marley says, reveals yourself to yourself. I was revealing parts of myself to myself that I'd been repressing, hiding from, and struggling with my entire life.

Not only was I entirely unaware of the possibility that I had been repressing trauma, I had never even considered this to be an important part of my own personal growth. That all changed quickly.

The first experience with cannabis self-therapy (which, I should mention, was entirely unintentional thanks to me getting whomped by a pot cookie with ~5 grams of crystal baked into it) was like a slap in the face. During that first pivotal experience I identified (or rather, was relentlessly slapped in the face by the brutal therapeutic hand of cannabis) several manipulative behaviours that I'd been carrying with me for many years. I also immediately recognized that these were behaviours that had led to me damaging friendships or intimate relationships. It was all my fault. These words echoed in my mind with a truth that resounded louder than self-pity ever could have.

A deep-seated belief was immediately flipped on its head. I had previously thought that I was justified in my actions. I thought that my ex-partners were crazy for reacting the way that they had.  They weren't. I was just being a dick.  Not only that, but I'd been in denial. Not only that, but I was starting to realize that there were years of repressed trauma stacked on top of all this.

Now that I could actually recognize how dumb I'd been acting, I couldn't believe that it was actually me who had been doing it. I felt like I didn't know myself at all anymore. No - I'd never really known myself in the first place. I was just a chain-reaction of behaviours that I'd adopted to help protect me from the pain of my traumas.

Fortunately, the solution came as quickly as the realization. . I'm the only one that I'm capable of changing, and if I want to improve as a person I had work to do. I had to start peeling away the walls and barriers I'd built around my own issues and feelings.

Deeper I went. I unearthed memories from my childhood that I'd not thought of for years. I replayed moments in my childhood which had always seemed arbitrary but for some reason had always stuck out in my mind (never having a shoulder to cry on, learning to bottle my tears at a young age, never learning to properly connect/communicate from my family) and could now recognize the toll that these things took on my emotional health and how that reflected back on me through the way I treated my friends, family, and partners.

Upon realizing this I called a counselor and begun getting therapy immediately.

I didn't stop using weed though, and to be honest I think it helped me more than my counselor did.  Most often when I arrive at my therapist's, she'd follow up on what we discussed the week prior. When I was using this way, the weed would put me into a very clear, introspective mindstate that allowed me to psychoanalyze myself and work through things on my own. She is a fantastic woman with incredible insight, but unfortunately I've stopped seeing her because everytime I had a session booked, I'd have nothing to talk about so we'd just chat about life and love. Great conversations, but not ones I can pay for!

This state of mind was teaching me how to identify any destructive behaviours that were causing harm to me or my loved ones. It was encouraging me to figure out what sort of trauma or situation created these behaviours. It was teaching me how to start healing by forgiving myself & others, It was teaching me how to replace this trauma with gratitude & forgiveness. 

The first few months were hell. Breaking down walls and exposing trauma hurts. I cried a lot the first few times I worked with the plant in this way. My girlfriend seemed to think I was crazy for subjecting myself to this. Therapy - successful therapy, at least - is rarely comfortable and crying is pretty common. I just wish I could express more easily the powerful impact that cannabis has on my psyche without coming off as someone who just likes to get baked.

Since I've begun this regime I've experienced INCREDIBLE improvement in many areas of my life. By exploring and transmuting some of these unhealthy behaviour patterns into more positive ones, I've been able to make long-term progress on self-improvement.

• I figured out  that I was raised in an emotionally negligent environment and that this had prevented me from loving myself. Since I didn't love myself I was obviously a disaster in romantic or other intimate relationships and friendships It's only 3 months later now and I've  fixed up the strained relationship that me and my mom have struggled with for 26 years. I've started being openly intimate and vulnerable with myself and my partner without doubting myself, and I've been able to truly bond and connect with my mom and the rest of my family for the first time... well, ever.
• I learned that as a result of my upbringing, in certain situations I was capable of being manipulative, passive aggressive and otherwise difficult to communicate with. Acknowledging this let me make some changes that have made huge improvements in my personal relationships. I've also repaired friendships that I ruined years ago.  Now that I knew what my mistakes were I could finally start apologizing for them. 
• I did some deep learning about self-expression, self-love, and creativity and recognized that my anxiety disorder - which I've struggled with seriously since I was 16 - was pretty much just the result of me failing to fully express myself. Since realizing that I've become way more confident and stoked on sharing my music and art with people. l get pumped on my own ideas whereas a couple years ago I'd box myself off, saying that it was "egotistical" to love myself or express myself. I'm learning to vocalize my emotions instead of bottling them up or letting them control me.
• I learned that I could sometimes be apathetic. I blunted my emotions as a defense mechanism to avoid being hurt. I've begun doing very intense intimacy work with myself and my partner and have begun to tune in with emotions that I'd not only repressed but entirely forgotten about. I've felt sadness, yes, but I've also been able to truly experience joy, love, and compassion for the first time in years.
• I figured out the source cause for my 10-year heroin addiction. I saw that it was a lack of self-love that led me to using drugs. I was looking for love outside of myself but I couldn't get it because nobody could love me if I didn't love myself. I've opened a channel through which I can love myself and love others. This has filled my life with a sense of bliss comparable to that which I felt when I was addicted.

Has anyone else ever had an experience like this?

Each one of the bullets above marks a problem that I've been battling, consciously or unconsciously, for anywhere from 10 to 20 years. These are issues that I could have easily ended up carrying with me for the rest of my life because I had no idea any of them were even there. I thought it was just the way I was, and that was perfect.

Before this began, I didn't have any intention of getting therapy or doing any sort of emotional work. I didn't think I needed it. The night I ate that crazy cookie was the night I realized that I didn't love myself. It was the night I realized that I'd been trapped in a dark hole for many years, and also the night that I realized there was a light at the end of that hole. I've been crawling towards it ever since, with and without cannabis.

I feel lighter, happier, and have more of a sense of purpose now than I ever have before. Obviously I can't attribute this all to cannabis. Weed or no weed, I'm determined to grow and become a stronger person every day.

That said, the incredible insight, clarity, and ruthless compassion of cannabis can't be ignored. I'd say that, for those willing to work with it, marijuana can be least - if not more - therapeutic than psilocybin, LSD, and many pharmaceuticals.