Bud for My Buds

Let me start this out with a short story about my first experience with Marijuana. I was just a lad in high school with a dream to be a game designer, I had never tried any drugs because I was a gamer nerd with very few friends. That being said, my sister was quite the opposite. She was a social butterfly and us being two years apart, we always had a decent relationship as family, She is the first person that introduced me to Marijuana and so trusting her instincts, I tried it. Bad goes to worse here as, in fact, I knew nothing about the drug and I didn't know what different types of plants or strains were available, about 30 minutes after coughing up a lung I started getting pale and dizzy, I ended up in the bathroom for about three hours puking my guts out and trying to keep my composure. From that day on, I decided it was not for me, I had no other information about it, and I had no interest in knowing more. I only knew that it made me sick so obviously it was not good for me. From that day forward, I made a conscious decision to never smoke it again and to avoid being manipulated into trying again. I ended up telling most people I was allergic to it and if I tried I could possibly end up in the hospital. That being said, I had no idea the reason in which I had thrown up or why the drug made me feel the way I did.

Fast forward about 13 years, and I am now a Army veteran with back pain and depression issues and many more things that would get me off topic. I have never been a drinker, I never enjoyed the way it made me feel, and I never went out of my way to get drunk because nothing tasted good to me. I hit a low point in my life where my depression was so bad that I couldn't function as a human being and I ended up losing a lot of good friends because of it. So I put some thought into trying to do something to take the edge off and since I didn't enjoy drinking—I had tried several times—I decided it was a good time to try smoking Marijuana again. Living in California at the time, access to it was very easy. For some reason, this time was different. Things felt better for a moment. I regained some enjoyment I had lost in some of the simplest things. I was starting to feel more like myself, laugh about situations that wouldn't make me even feel a shred of emotion. I started doing tons of research on it and found out that Indicas and Sativas are very different and each different type of strain within that did different things for different reasons.

I came to find out that there are so many different types of Marijuana strains I could look into: strains that give you energy, some that make you want to sleep, and others that make you feel creative and open your mind to new and exciting things. I've come to find out that this drug specifically isn't actually all that bad for you. It helps and there are ways of using it that don't cause you to have to smoke! Examples being: Vaping, which is a healthier alternative to analog smoking; Edibles, created by extracting pure THC and infusing it with butter to cook goodies with; Topicals, lotions and balms that are infused with THC to help people with joint pain or nerve damage. If you are someone who is interested, I "highly" recommend you do some research on what you think your body needs and what types of strains may help you with your every day life. Leafly is a great resource for tons of strains and information on benefits and side effect's.

Long story short, I am now a Marijuana advocate. I believe that it will do more help than any lab-made drug to date and I hope that research on this drug continues to help others. Don't knock it 'til you try it!