Mental Wellbeing 2

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Sometimes suffering through things provides clarity. I've been trying to practice meditation for several months now and have been really sick for a week and a half. The two probably don't have any combination, I think, but I feel like I've realized something. This vision of fear I've discussed here and more importantly, with one of step brothers has seemed to melted away this morning, him being an Army drill sergeant. Whatever I do going forward will be my own path, but the paralysis needs to die. 

I'm going to sky dive this summer. Hold me to it.

 

[Spockydog]

From Vice magazine:

You Can Get Weed Legally in the UK for Anxiety – So I Tried It

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You can now get medical weed for anxiety in the UK. Just read that again and properly take it in this time.

This isn’t clickbait. It’s not one of those TikTok’s where some dude from the US tells you very confidently that there’s a polar bear living in the River Thames, but when you properly look into it, it actually happened in 1252 under the reign of Henry III. No: You can, very feasibly, get medical marijuana delivered to your door, within the month, without ever leaving the house. No catches, no caveats. (You probably should leave the house, though.)

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It was time to find a new solution. At the time, I was writing a VICE article on why cannabis can sometimes make you feel sick. I ended up speaking to Dr Mikael Sodergren, the head of the Imperial College Medical Cannabis Research Group, who also founded The Sapphire Medical Clinic, the first medicinal cannabis clinic in the UK back in 2019.

I knew that the law in the UK had changed in 2018 after outcry around parents being criminalised for giving cannabis to their epileptic children to minimise seizures. But until I spoke to Sodergren, I had no idea it was now available to people with mental health and pain issues, mirroring the system in place in parts of the US.

“We have seen 20 percent month-on-month increases in patients,” Sodergren said. “Last month in the clinic, we saw 475 new patients.” As of April 2022, “about 60 percent of our patients are chronic pain patients. Then we've got about 20-25 percent of patients who have psychiatric [issues] – mostly anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder, a little bit of depression, things like that.”

It’s safe to say I was intrigued and, although other clinics are available, I signed up with Sapphire in May. The process was pretty seamless. The biggest faff was logging into the NHS app and screenshotting my entire medical history to send to the clinic’s consultation team. Imagine how many iPhone screen-sized snaps it takes to collect all your data from birth to present day and understand that this took me hours.

From there, I was booked in for a consultation with a doctor who arranged to talk to me via Zoom. The initial consultation costs roughly £130 or for a reduced fee of £50, you can agree to join their patient role, which means you have to fill out a form documenting your progress for their cannabis research.

At this point, I felt a pang of imposter syndrome and started rehearsing and re-rehearsing the lines in my head of what I should and shouldn’t say in case the doctor decided that I wasn’t worthy of medicinal weed. 

The reality of the consultation was vastly different: It was both incredibly intense and incredibly therapeutic at the same time. I was met on the call by a friendly guy sitting in what I can only describe as a laboratory. We made some light conversation before he asked about my experiences with anxiety, drugs, trauma and self-harm. I felt comfortable opening up to him, regardless of whether my answers might affect the outcome of the meeting. He ended up writing two separate prescriptions to treat my anxiety: one for THC oils and one for straight-up dried cannabis flower.

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It’s early days, but I’ve never had such an overwhelmingly positive experience in combating my mental health issues, or any other medical issue for that matter. Sure, not everyone’s experience is going to be as successful as mine but I’d definitely recommend looking into it if your interest is piqued. As always, sesh safely and happy blazing!