A Brighter Day, By Psy-23

Throughout our lives we all experience countless events which can alter how we perceive ourselves and others, things that can form and shape our world view to become very different.

For many, this  can lead to an incredibly lonely and isolated mind set where we can become disconnected from the world around us and the treatments on offer can sometimes leave people feeling worse off than they did before.

Recently, we caught up with one of our readers who has found that cannabis has become a guiding light that is leading them out of the darkness which has enshrouded them for so long

Like many people who find themselves feeling lost and alienated, there was a time when Ben turned to alcohol and drugs to mask his pain and suffering. Losing himself in a haze meant that he didn’t think about the issues he had and for a few years he buried his head in the sand and got wasted at every opportunity.

From coke and pills to mixtures of whatever he could get his hands on, Ben spent a good few years in a blur of poor choices and chance encounters before he felt that enough was enough. It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when Ben began his downward spiral, but he remembers vividly the moment when he realized that he needed help.

After experiencing severe insomnia over the course of six months, he often found himself wandering around with no sense of purpose. Days and nights become a twisted blur and he became increasingly confused between what was real, what was a daydream and things that were shadows of memories. One morning, he was walking around the empty streets of his local town when he found himself strolling down the seafront.

He sat on a bench and watched the sea rolling in and out, contemplating life and trying to clear his head. With no real sense of what he was doing or why he was doing it, he felt compelled to walk down to the end of the beach and began to climb up the side of the steep cliffs above the rocks below. Once he reached the top, he sat with his feet dangling over the edge.

Looking back, he wonders if he had any kind of intention to his actions, but at the time he was just working on auto-pilot and has no recollection of making conscious decisions. As he sat staring down at the jagged rocks and crashing foam, he thought that these were not the actions of a reasonable person. Later that day he called the doctor to seek help.After spending around half an hour talking about how he felt and why he was struggling to sleep, all the doctor could do was offer him some sleeping tablets.

Ben was a little knocked-back that there was no offer of support or discussion of the next steps: it was essentially pills and nothing else. He tried the pills a couple of times and managed to get some sleep, but the way that he felt the next day and the ensuing haze that fell over him made him question if they were actually doing him any good. To make matters worse, they made him confused and he felt even more isolated when he couldn’t communicate his thoughts and feelings effectively.

It didn’t take long for him to decide against continuing with his prescription and when he went back to the doctor with feedback they did little more than shrug and offer him some anti-depressants alongside a different type of sleeping pill. He declined the recommendation and sought out help elsewhere.

During this time, Ben was at university and he learned that he could receive counselling as part of his position as a student. Having never been to speak with a therapist before, he was a little worried that they were going to label him as ‘crazy’ but he actually found the experience to be incredibly useful and insightful. In these sessions he learned about the concept of ‘intrusive thoughts’ and came to recognize that he was focusing in on negative ideas as opposed to ‘letting them go’.

 Intrusive thoughts are essentially ambient thoughts that drift around in our unconscious and then suddenly appear at the forefront of your mind. While some people will have these thoughts crop up and just think ‘That’s weird...why did I think that?’ before moving on, people who have suffered traumatic experiences or are experiencing mental health issues will often cling on to these thoughts and become stressed out because they believe that there is something wrong with them. As an example, Ben found that he often experienced dark thoughts about dying or the death of others close to him.

This was never more than contemplating how life would change as a result of these losses, but they were really quite troubling. Initially, he found that these thoughts would come and go but as time went on and he became more distressed due to his lack of sleep and sense of isolation he found that the thoughts were more regular and more prolific. His counselor explained to him that he had to learn to manage his response to thoughts as they were nothing more than abstract ideas that didn’t necessarily reflect who he was or how he felt.

Ben made a few more appointments and learned a lot from the experience that helped him to be more aware of his difficulties, and the sessions also enabled him to pinpoint certain events which may have been the catalyst to his condition.

While there were many contributing factors, the main issue which compounded everything was that Ben was not usually open in speaking about things that troubled him.

From a young age he had learned to bottle up his emotions and this meant that he had attempted to deal with many events on his own, despite lacking the emotional maturity or world experience to do so.

He felt that he didn’t want to burden others with his problems and this had allowed them to fester in his mind for many years. The reality of this meant that he was trying to process the untimely death of a close friend when he was young, along with the fallout from false accusations made against him in his teens (which led to unwarranted police investigations) and a sexual assault that had been carried out against him by a person in a position of trust. He had always assumed that he was ‘doing okay’, but he was gradually becoming aware that he needed more help than he had realized.

In an attempt to distance himself from the crowd, Ben began to spend more time trying to keep himself occupied during the day and tried to avoid the nightlife scene as much as possible. He became more selective of the people he hung out with and it was during a relaxed afternoon at the beach when he overheard someone talking about CBD and its benefits. Having been a bit of a toker in his youth, mainly due to peer pressure and the giggles of getting high, Ben didn’t really understand the distinctions between THC and CBD.

Still, he accepted the offer of a few puffs on a CBD vape cartridge. Throughout the afternoon he felt more relaxed than he had in a while and the near-constant intrusive thoughts seemed to dissipate into nothing. He was amazed by how calm he felt and the sense of peace it gave him was immense. That night, he felt like he slept more soundly than he ever had before.

As a result of this chance encounter, he wanted to find out more and his research brought him to Weed World and some of our previous articles alongside numerous other pieces of information online. Over the following few years, Ben experimented with CBD and THC in numerous forms and now finds that a combination of CBD oil and vapes through the day help him to maintain his focus, while a joint of decent medium-THC bud allows him to unwind, chill out with his friends and sleep soundly each night.

He went on to explain that it’s strange to look back on the worst of his experiences now after coming to realize that he didn’t need anything more than a little assistance from a plant to help him see past the swirling chaos that had consumed him for so many years, but he’s thankful that he has managed to find a sense of peace again.

Over the coming year, he is looking to set up his own small grow following the advice of his friends and a couple of like-minded individuals. He explained that he doesn’t expect much from his first attempt, but the idea of working closely with a plant so close to his heart fills him with a sense of wonder and joy that he hasn’t felt for a long time. Hopefully, with a little help from his new friends, he can continue to grow and see the bright side instead of being drawn into the darkest shadows of the mind.