While at the same time we have this insane anti-drug fervor directed at every drug that cannot be dispensed by a $200/hour shrink.

I told my therapist that I was going back to smokin pot after 15 years of abstinence, because I think it helps me stay more functional while I am suffering the after-effects of a history of child abuse.

He was remarkably comfortable with my decision although he did offer me legal drugs as a substitute. But I have friends on anti-depressants and I don't want to go through the long periods of adjusting dosage, etc. PLUS I am not depressed, just post-traumatic.

Someone should write a book "Listening to Cannbis" along the lines of "Listening to Prozac".

I wonder if my shrink would vote for legalization.

I notice that smoking pot does not suppress my emotions or block bad memories from surfacing (which they must, as a part of healing) but it sure as heck reduces the bodily stress reactions to those emotions and those bad memories. It does sure as heck stop the panic attacks, though, and that is fantastic for me.

Now that I understand more about my own past, I am thinking that perhaps it was only my steady pot smoking as a teenager that enabled me to have some degree of functionality in high school while I was enduring sheer HELL at home. I think I probably would have committed suicide or engaged in self-mutilation without pot. Self-mutilation is common in girls who are being sexually abused. I had started doing a bit of that myself when Ientered therapy, and I notice that the weird urge to harm myself stopped cold after I started regular small doses of pot every day.

A few hits sevel times a day seems to work. More than that I don't want.

I think cannabis has a genuine psychopharmacological value.

I wonder how many people out there are thinking they are smoking it "recreationally" but are really basically self-medicating because for some reason they need it, like some people need Zoloft or Effexor or Prozac.

-- rec.drugs.cannabis