How CBD Radically Changed My Life
Looking at all the trending #myfavoritemeds posts of women showing their current medication regimen or tride-and-true pill of years induces a haunting nostalgia of the decade in my life that I was in the same cycle. I was on psychotropic medication for over ten years, treating symptoms of anxiety, depression, “mood swings,” and insomnia in the hopes it would help me feel better. I started with just Lamictal when I was 17 and slowly added Adderall when I became too dulled, Abilify when my lows became too low, and finally Klonopin when my anxiety became too high and I stopped sleeping, increasing the milligrams over time and going on over 15 med trials total over the course of my adult life.
A few months before my 27th birthday, I realized I had been doing the same thing for so long, back and forth from my psychiatrists office, from the pharmacy, from cognitive/behavioral therapy, and my baseline was still utterly miserable- and getting worse. I felt like I was going through the motions of what I was supposed to be doing but I was hollowed out inside, like I had become a shell of a person, my spirit lost somewhere in the black that resided behind my façade. I had zero passion in my life, no motivation to do anything except to somehow feel better. I didn’t know at the time that the drugs I had been taking to feel better had slowly stripped me away and constructed an entirely different person in my place, someone who was emotionally disconnected from anything, including myself.
I began a medication taper in March of 2016 that would last for 11 months. With every chip away at my cocktail I only felt better, until I was completely off of my Lamictal and Abilify and my anxiety started to pronounce itself stronger. I tried everything to remedy it, first going back to psychiatry with another medication trial- Lexepro. This induced panic and sent me on a three-day-long anxiety spiral that only ended when I stopped taking it. I looked into alternative medicine like acupuncture, quantum reflex analysis, and meditation, but none of these things provided meaningful relief at the time. Then a friend recommended hemp-based CBD and my life radically changed.
What they don’t tell you about medication when you’re considering the treatment approach, is all the parts of yourself you sacrifice by taking them, the negative side effects beyond weight gain, potential infertility, and heightened risk for demetnia, as if those things aren’t bad enough. They don’t tell you that you become disconnected from YOU. That you lose control of your mind, opting instead for a chemical to reign over your thoughts, feelings, human experience. And when you’re on medication for long enough, you forget who you are and what being in control of your mind and body feels like. You lose yourself underneath layers of promises that this pill will be the one to give you your best life.
They don’t tell you that you have OPTIONS, drastically more effective, safer options where you don’t have to sacrifice ANY of the kaleidoscopic facets that make you who you are. CBD is one of the options I use today, in combination with a diet and lifestyle that works for me. It is non-psychoactive, unlike its more popular THC counterpart, so you are 100% in control of your mind 100% of the time. It doesn’t slow your thoughts like a benzodiazepine, or muddle with your neurotransmitters to infuse a false sense of happiness. It works to calm your physical body, so your free mind has the space to follow.
If anyone has any questions about CBD, I encourage you to reach out to me and/or do your own research. This plant has had a seriously major role in the exponential healing I have endured since March of 2016, an experience I am not alone in.
This was originally featured in a December 7, 2018 post on Instagram at @themorganmay