Using Marijuana to Treat Depression and Anxiety: My Experience

If you had told me when I was fourteen years old that I would turn into a stoner in ten years, I'd have laughed in your face. I was taught DARE programs in elementary school that brainwashed my mind into thinking drugs would kill you, including marijuana. Entering high school, I knew it couldn't really harm you much, but that.. sort of weird internal stigma was still there preventing me from trying it at first.

Then, I eventually smoked for the first time with my friend at a party when I was about seventeen. I smoked three times in that week, thinking weed didn't work on me, because I did not get high once. Obviously, I know now that I was somehow doing something wrong, I must have been. But that experience turned me off of marijuana for about a year, and I was disappointed that I did not get my desired results.

At nineteen, I was dating a huge pothead who had a medical card for 'back pain'. After we dated for a while, I had learned a lot about marijuana and I was ready to try it out again. He showed me proper techniques on the inhale, slang, and basically anything that you would know if you were to smoke weed on a daily basis. I got high instantly and violently the first time we smoked together, and it was one of the best experiences of my life. That is for another story, but after smoking about twice a week with him after a few months, I discovered that my anxiety levels had gone down a bit, and I thought smoking could be connected. I hadn't been trying too hard to work on my internal monologue, but marijuana slowly started helping me to change my thought process over time.

I started becoming very interested in using weed medicinally, specifically for depression and anxiety. I hadn't changed much of anything else in my life. My suspicions were confirmed when my search results turned up a lot of results about people successfully using cannibis to relieve symptoms of ill mental and physical health, including depression and anxiety. It might even help my migraines? Sign me up! I began to smoke on a daily basis as an experiment, using it to calm down at the end of the day. I would deeply meditate during my high sessions, and since my brain felt like it was moving at five FPS, i had less trouble clearing my mind of negative thoughts, and I was able to relax much easier.

Being high while you meditate is deeply.. insightful. You can focus better to sense your body and every cell. You can imagine things better. My personal favorite way to clear my mind while high and zoning is to imagine a spinning blue rose in front of me that has a magnet in the center, pulling all of the negative thoughts out of my head by a smoky string. Doing that for ten minutes and imagining my brain being scrubbed clean of thoughts inside my head is the most refreshing fucking thing to me. I can come out of that feeling on top, even if I go into it with a headache, and anxiety about the headache, I feel lifted, and I feel better, physically and mentally, because marijuana helps me to absorb the pain when I accept that it exists.

After several few months of daily smoking and a lot of meditating on life and my feelings, I started to feel overall happier and less anxious. I felt like, and still do feel like I can slow down and enjoy life when I have some ganja on hand. Even if I am having a stressful day, knowing that I can literally slow down at the end of the day whenever I want to is a nice perk and gives me something to look forward to. If you haven't tried marijuana for depression and anxiety, or you are skeptical about it, my recommendation is to just do it anyways, because we really only do have one life. How many people do you know that landed in the hospital from getting high? What if it could help you and you are missing out? Questions to ponder.

If you too use marijuana for depression and anxiety, I would love to know more. Leave me a comment!

If you are interested in an app that has guided meditations and meditations based around being high, I recommend https://www.simplehabit.com

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