Marijuana & Self Improvement

Have you ever considered the use of marijuana in your journy of self improvement?

Now obviously I am not a doctor, nor should anything in this post be concidered as medical fact. The intent is to offer an opinion. Give you a little insight into what the posibilities are based on my experience.

I have been using marijuana since I was about 18 years old. If you’ve read any of my previous posts, you know I was heavily involved in sports as a kid with a preference to Basketball. Growing up marijuana was a no no. It was concidered as dangerous and insidious as crack, cocaine or heroin.

At first it started with an interest and a want to try something new. I remember clearly. Being at a party, I was fully straight edge at this point in my life. I had maybe been to two parties ever that involved alcohol. I didn’t drink so I was just there to hang out.

We were all in a friends basement. There was about 15 of us. Just doing stupid teenager shit. Two guys were in the back corner playing around with a treadmill that was set up infront of a closet. There were a few people on the couch talking, a couple people standing off in another corner. It was your basic first time party for our group. All the akwardness of not knowing what to do, with a side of teenage angst.

Soon there was a lull in the conversation. Then the room started to fall silent, when all of a sudden BAM! One of our friends makes the grandest entrance ever. Like I said we were in a basement so anyone coming in had to come down the stairs. Well he did, he did a header/swan dive down the stairs ending up face down on the carpet, legs sprawled up the first few stairs. Cackling like a heiina he was a puddle on the floor but seemingly having the greatest time. A smile ear to ear and nothing hurt or broken as he got up, just made him laugh harder.

The room was silent cause clearly we had no idea what was going on but since he thought it was funny, so did we and everyone started laughing. Just as he’s getting to his feet, we hear the wur of the treadmill. As the attention of the room starts to shift in that direction, away from captain fly down the stairs, we hear swoosh! zip! then crash!

One of the guys on the treadmill had gotten flung through the closet door behind him. It was as if we were in a cartoon. It was hillarious and awesome.

Later on I found out that captain dive down the stairs was super high on marijuana. The two guys playing with the treadmill, also un beknownst to anyone had also smoked a little weed before coming to the party.

That’s when I thought to myself, how bad is weed really? It doesn’t seem like it’s comparable to cocain or heroin. That’s when I started looking into trying it. There wasn’t alot of info out there, so I had to rely on friends of mine who had used it and “survived”. I was able to find limited documentation about the affects on the human body, but really it was all guess work.

So within about two years from that party I tried marijuana for the first time. Initially in my use of it I was just looking to get messed up and have a good time. Like most teenagers. I did. It was awesome, I giggled like a kid, slept like a baby and generally found it to be easier on me than if and when I drank.

It wasn’t until I hit my 30’s that I started to educate myself and understand the potential benefits of marijuana. Hell I didn’t even realize that we as humans have an endocannabinoid system. That means two things, we can naturally produce THC the psychoactive ingrediant in cannabis and our biological make up includes cannabinoid receptors, as if to say “hey” interact with this plant.

Now I am not saying that anyone should do anything, I want to make that clear. What works for me, may not work for you. All I am saying is that you should keep an open mind when trying to improve yourself. Some times the information we get is skewed to benefit the source for a multitude of reasons. Such as; politics, big business, social agendas and the list goes on. It’s up to you to figure out and research for yourself what the good and bad of anything may be.

So after dabbling in marijuana use for about 10 years with no real intent on learning or even paying attention to what effects it had on me. I finally woke up and realised it can be used as a tool for emotional healing, mental stability, self improvement and emotional intelligence. See when you get passed the “I want to get fucked up” phase. You can dive into your concious and subconcious and root out a shitty way of thinking, recognize ways of being that are holding you back and reflect on your interactions, ultimately pointing you emotionally and mentally in a more peacefull and accepting direction.

I still use marijuana to let loose and have a good time, laugh, tell stupid stories and party. I also use it to figure me out. Even though I know who I am and what I want, weed helps me navigate my own thoughts, reflect and be honest with myself. I have done alot of changing in the last 10 years, and I contribute atleast some of that to my use of marijuana. See it puts things in perspective for me.

I used to get caught up in the bad things that happen, even little things, like a big hydro bill comes and I don’t have the money to pay it right away well that would ruin my day. Weed would help me put it in check. It helped me analyze why I was getting so emotional over such a small thing. I knew the bill didn’t have to be paid immediately. I knew that even if I was a day late paying it my power wasn’t going to get shut off and eventually I would have the money to pay the bill. But seeing those numbers in that ammount owing box would set me off on a negative mental roller coaster. Puff a joint and all of a sudden I realize it’s not the end of the world. This percieved problem will get dealt with, it’s just come at an uncomfortable time for me.

As those thoughts got ironed out, so too did my understanding of why I reacted that way. Bills are a fact of life we all have them. I know we all feel the same way, that there’s never enough coins in the bank, so why am I reacting so toxically? Well marijuana helped me see that I was thinking in a toxic way, that I was allowing my ego to create a desperate need within me to be monetarily successfull. Obviously we all want that. But thats not what life is about. Life is about connection, understanding, progress and unity.

I have also had a temper. Marijuana has helped me control it, put it in perspective and use it as tool as well. I think I’ve said this before, but, I used to work concert security. Somewhere along the line I enjoyed the fact that people were intimidated by me. I don’t really know why, it’s also kinda funny concidering, my dad used to call me the softest tuff guy that ever lived. I like man stuff, I idolized real masculine men as a kid, or atleast people I thought were the type of man I thought men should be. For example here were my celebrity idols as a kid, Micheal Jordan, Batman, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenneger and Sylvester Stallone.

Real tough guy men. The kind of guy that wouldn’t back down from a challenge, would slap the taste out of your mouth if you said the wrong thing, all while cracking some smart ass jokes while they figure out how to get out of the situations they are in. I recognize they are actors and playing a part, or they are completely fictional beings (Batman) but the principals behind them were what drew me to them.

I guess at some point I started acting and living out what I thought that meant in my head and it really culminated in an agressive, loud and in your face attitude giving off the wrong impression of who was. It wasn’t just weed that snapped me out of that. I had someone close to me point out an interaction I had and what they saw in my body language. It was an eye opener because I didn’t realize I was doing that. However, marijuana, even though it didn’t help me recognize the problem, it helped me readjust, understand and improve what kind of vibe I was putting off. It became a real tool for me in terms of self analisys, understanding the ego and maintaining an unbroken perspective of self.

Again I am not saying that marijuana is going to make everything all better. It is not the magical elixor of mind, body and health, but as it has become legal in Canada and more countries around the world. More studies are available to us about what effect marijuana has on humans both mentally and physically. What I am saying, is that it is possible that marijuana has the potential to help people improve their state of being in one way or another. It is just that though, a tool to be used responsibly by adults to better understand themselves, the world around them and their place in it.

If you feel like you’ve exhausted all your options and your looking for something that can put you right in that reflective and progressive state of mind. Maybe it’s time to do some research into marijuana and what it can do for you.

If you have questions talk to someone you know that is knowledgeable about it. You can even shoot me an email and I will gladly give you any information I have or atleast point you in the right direction. I am Cannsell Certified and I’ve been using marijuana in multiple capacities over the past 23 years. If you are curious, I can help you find information or better understand the information you have.