Years of training and countless drills and exercises may well prepare someone for any number of possible situations, but you can never tell what may happen once your boots hit the ground on foreign soil. While many of us will only ever have a perception of war from what we see on TV or in movies, those who serve on the frontlines will often find themselves changed by their experiences. For some soldiers, the real battle begins when you get back home.

Rob served his country for almost two decades, spending much of his time in Afghanistan, and the army continues to hold a special place in his heart, but he has had to come to terms with the fact that his experiences have changed him. He explained that there were a number of situations that he had to face which could be considered as traumatic, yet it is the mentality of trying to survive in a conflict zone that left him struggling to adapt to civilian life.

Try to imagine being in a constant state of alert, where every single person has to be perceived as a potential threat and a momentary lapse of focus can lead to tragedy. Think what it would be like to see your friends maimed and killed around you, screaming in agony, pleading for help.

Picture yourself trying to fight against the elements and terrain as well as your enemy. Rob explained that these things are almost too common place for some serving soldiers and while making it back home is a blessing that some will never see it's almost impossible to simply 'get back to normal'.

Something as simple as going to the shop to buy a paper can become overwhelming to someone who has spent so long in a hyper-sensitive state: you're trained to read and respond to body language, you're checking every window to see if someone is trying to line you up in their sights, you're watching every vehicle to see if it seem suspicious.

If you've ever had a panic attack where you can't figure out what's caused it, then you can probably understand that overstimulation can trigger the brain's fight/flight/freeze response and there's very little you can do to stop it.

The first time Rob recognized that he was struggling came after a chance encounter in public. He sometimes felt  bit 'edgy' in crowded places, but he always put it down to his training and thought that it would be something which would become less prevalent over time.

One afternoon, while walking to an appointment in his local town centre, he saw someone running towards him and his response caught him off-guard: in a moment of panic, he found himself screaming at the person to stop in the middle of a busy street. As you can imagine, this caused something of a stir and people were confused as to what was going on but Rob found it very difficult to bring himself out of this heightened state.

As time went on, he noticed that he had a much shorter temper than he had before and it became difficult to manage his emotional response to anything from poor driving to people cutting in the queue. On top of this, he found that he was suspicious that someone was 'coming for him' when he was at home and he spent most of his nights sitting in the living room and checking the windows with increasing regularity. Soon he would come to learn that this state is known as hyper-vigilance, but in the midst of the moment he just felt terrified.

Over a period of a few months he was assessed by his doctor and diagnosed as suffering from complex post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and prescribed a number of medications to help 'settle him down and ease the intensity of his episodes'. In reality, Rob found that the pills caused him to suffer vivid nightmares and flashbacks to his time in service. His doctor reassured him that it was just some teething issues and they tried a combination of different prescriptions in the hope of finding something that had fewer negative side-effects.

Over the next two years he felt like a lab rat being dosed up with all manner of drugs, and while they did seem to have an impact in terms of his tendency to over-react and lash out they also had the adverse effect of making him forgetful and almost constantly drained of energy.Family life became strained and some people even said that it was hard to be around him because he was becoming a shadow of his former self.

He became increasingly disinterested in finding things to occupy his time and often found himself spending days in isolation and avoiding contact with others wherever possible. Whilst searching for help on an online forum one afternoon, he happened to get chatting with someone who seemed to have been struggling in much the same way that he was.

After a couple of weeks of chatting online, he was invited to a meeting for veterans with PTSD who were looking into alternative treatments.One of the first things they spoke about at the meeting was the use of CBD to ease with the anxieties that are commonplace with PTSD in soldiers. Everyone present knew what Rob was feeling when he described his experiences of flaring up and lashing out at people or how tense he felt when his brain told him that someone was acting suspiciously, and the majority said that they had been prescribed similar medication to Rob initially.

As the meeting progressed there were some individuals present who extolled the benefits of THC in vastly reducing stress reactions and also for limiting the frequency and intensity of nightmares and flashbacks.Research into the effects of THC on the amygdala (the part of our brain that deals with emotional behaviors and stress responses) have shown that it significantly reduces the intensity of the brain's response to perceived dangers. People who suffer from anxiety disorders often have an over-active amygdala or are responding to specific triggers that link to a past trauma.

For soldiers this can be a misinterpretation due to their heightened senses or a trigger that causes a flashback to a specific event. Studies have shown that THC plays an anxiolytic role in regulating the mechanisms linked to fear behaviors in humans, meaning that it has the potential to be hugely beneficial for many sufferers of PTSD who suffer from complex social fear issues. By reducing the brain's response it limits the release of hormones and therefore the brain doesn't go into an instinctive panic response without a genuine sense of imminent threat.

This chance encounter turned into a strong friendship and Rob found the support network to be incredibly welcoming. To find people who not only understood what he was going through but had actually gone through it for themselves helped him to find a shining light in an increasingly dark world. He soon obtained a range of CBD products and spoke with his doctor about his plans to wean himself off of his prescribed medication. The doctor advised caution, but indicated that he was happy to reduce the prescription over time if Rob found benefits from using CBD.

Over the next few months he saw a number of improvements, but he also came to find that there was a much greater improvement to his day-to-day life when he vaporized strains containing THC to complement his CBD intake. Living in the UK, where THC is a controlled substance unless designated for a very limited number of health conditions, Rob is now in the process of attempting to obtain a prescription for cannabis on the NHS, but this is likely to still be some way off.

Meanwhile, he has to treat himself illegally to achieve a comfortable living. Rob hopes that he can find success in his quest for peace and he went on to say that anyone who is suffering in silence needs to know that there is always hope out there, no matter how dark it may seem.