Marijuana: The Miracle Drug.

As some of you know, my primary spiritual belief system is that of Zen Buddhism and part of that belief involves rebirth. Awhile back, I went to see a highly respected and trusted psychic who was recommended by my equally respected and credible psychologist. Anyway, she told me that in one of my past lives I was a Native American shaman who lived into his 90s. And that before that I was a shaman/medicine man in Africa. Those are both cultures that I really identity with but especially Africa. Plus, I have always been one who has spent countless days up high in the pine forests and meadows of the high rocky mountains. I am also one who respects all living things on planet Earth. As well as someone who has been curious about and attracted to natural remedies and plant life. I use to grind up flowers with water in with other plant matter when I was a kid. I was just having fun but isn't that interesting that I was subconsciously doing something that shamans have done for eons? I even spent a couple years selling vitamins and herbs to people looking for alternative therapies. I developed an extensive library of knowledge both in my mind and piled up on one of my many book shelves. So, anyway, I certainly feel a connection to the role of shamans.

So it shouldn't come as a surprise that I, The Green Man support the legalization of marijuana and certainly believe in its medicinal use. I don't know of any other drug that has so many benefits to it and thus why I call it a miracle drug. I personally use it to be a quick acting anti-depressant when I'm feeling suicidally depressed from my mental illness. As well as an anti-inflammatory for my fibromyalgia, which eases my aches and pains quicker and more effectively than a handful of Advil. And nothing tops the stomach pain easing effects of marijuana. When I get the flu I don't reach for Pepto Bismal, which makes me gag or choking on half a bottle of those chalky Tums tablets. I go straight for the pot because it works instantly and lasts long. Plus, it relaxes the stomach muscles to help ease that tight, uncomfortable feeling that comes with stomach sickness. Also, it often flat-out shuts down nausea.

Let me be very clear up front, I do not recommend everyone with a mental illness smoke marijuana but it's long past due that the mental health community recognize it as a potentially beneficial drug for some. Especially when it comes to folks with major depression and tendencies toward chronic suicidal thinking and planning. Suicidal impulses hit me like a storm that explodes around you within minutes and before you can realize what is happening you are fighting to stay alive.

Many of you who struggle with suicidal impulses know that once it hits you, like LSD, it steadily pulls you deeper and deeper into an altered state of consciousness that you increasingly can not control. It isn't long before you are locked into what I literally refer to as a, "death spiral." Once that process starts there isn't much that can reach me let along pull me out of it without hospitalization. Except I discovered since my one and only hospitalization that smoking some pot right as that suicidal storm hits lifts me up out of that dark, powerful, destructive black hole like being plucked out of a violent sea by a coast guard helicopter. People don't take it seriously enough as a natural supplement to prescription drugs, which kill more people every year than died in the entire Vietnam War!! That's 50,000+ every year!! Plus, when I miss a prescription drug for my schizoaffective disorder it makes me vomit violently in withdrawals. Whereas if I don't do marijuana for a day or two I don't have anything like that happen. I'm not saying pot takes the place of my meds -- not at all. It simply adds to them to ease the symptoms that the prescription drugs can't hit.

There is no pill out there that I know of, which works instantaneously to pull someone out of suicidal depression how Ativan or Klonopin instantaneously can pull people out of mania (including anxiety and panic attacks). Certainly this isn't true for everyone because for some it might pull them out of suicidal thoughts but exchange it with psychosis. However, that's true for any psychological medication but that doesn't mean that just because say Lexapro doesn't work for someone that it should be banned altogether. It's clear that marijuana DOES help people with suicidal depression and that should be factored into what conditions qualify for medicinal marijuana. And for many it can also melt away anxiety and stress as well as any prescription drug but whereas the pill is made from a long list of hard to pronounce, unnatural chemicals -- Pot it all natural.

Besides, this is America and our country was founded upon personal liberties and freedoms so why is it the government's business if someone wants to smoke a joint in the privacy of their own home and laugh at cartoons? How does that hurt anyone? Sure there need to be laws preventing smoking it and driving and keeping it away from minors. However, did you know that because marijuana isn't legal and thus not regulated that it is easier for minors to get than alcohol? To buy alcohol a teen must walk into a security camera enforced store and show valid identification. Sure they can try to make a fake ID but it's difficult to do and fakes are often discovered. If a teen goes to buy illegal pot the dealer isn't going to ask for identification. He doesn't care who buys his product, thus the teens can get pot easier than alcohol. If pot was sold in a regulated store the use rates who go down.

Sure it can be abused if you smoke it all day but honestly how many people are doing that besides college kids? Another argument is that the pot today is stronger. Blah, blah, blah. Pot has NEVER, EVER led to any over-dose. You simply can't overdose on marijuana. You can smoke it all day and the worst that happens is you fall asleep and get a good night of sleep!! Wow. Soooo dangerous. The stronger pot argument is only valid if it led to overdoses but it doesn't. It simply isn't true. Sure it might cause emphysema but that's a personal decision that someone shouldn't be making for someone else. Besides you can bake marijuana into brownies and ingest it orally without running the risks of smoking. Plus now there is the vaporizing method, which is a mist that you ingest and it has been shown to be safe. That's the method I use. It's not unlike ingesting mist from those asthma pumps.

Hell, eating too much junk food leads to heart disease, diabetes and other major health problems but do we make Twinkies illegal? Alcohol leads to liver and kidney damage but we saw what prohibition of alcohol brought us in the golden age of gangsters in the 20's. And the same members of Congress that say pot should remain illegal are guzzling alcohol by the barrel full. Porn can be abused but it's legal, working can even be abused and break up marriages. Anything can be abused but does that mean we should make everything with the ability to be abused illegal? We'd have to outlaw cold medicine, mouthwash and paint solvents to name but a few things. We wouldn't be able to function as a society or leave our house!! Should we outlaw greed? Good luck. And what about the "legal drugs" that are aired non-stop on t.v. and take half the commercial time listing adverse side effects? No, I choose not to live in fear. It's time to stop demonizing marijuana and throw it in the same category as heroin, cocaine, crack and meth. Marijuana is to those other substances as B.B. guns are to AK-47's.

I find it very odd to say the least that Conservatives who are usually for personal liberties and the government butting out of a person's private life are for keeping pot illegal!! Huh?