The Weed in Me

Author: Marleen Theunissen

Cannabis has been a part of my life for the past 16 years. You could call me a “late bloomer”, because I only discovered Cannabis when I was in university. Looking back on that girl (who barely knew who she was and what she wanted in life), and that day is a part of what keeps me going.

Growing up was (and still is, honestly) a terrifying and confusing mess. There is a huge disillusion that one needs to face somewhere between wanting to be an adult, and becoming one. I know my parents warned me, but being an adult is hard and life is tough.

Nothing is “fair”, as the toddler and teenager alike, lament. Nevermind finding a purpose and being successful in business or your career, you also have to figure out how people work and how to have relationships with them.

Partly due to this ongoing cognitive dissonance, I’ve lived with a lot of anxiety that can turn into a depressive state pretty quickly if left unchecked. If you don’t experience anxiety yourself, imagine feeling like your lungs are too small to breathe and too big to fit in your chest at the same time. It kicks you into fight/flight mode, which cuts off a lot of other functionality in your brain, making it sometimes impossible to get a hold of yourself.

Cannabis is an instrumental tool in managing my anxiety. It calms me right down, allows me to look at something objectively – without the cloudiness that emotions can bring – and access the parts of my brain that can help me craft a solution. Long-term Cannabis use has been notably beneficial to me in terms of my general perspective on life, accessing skills I haven’t been exposed to and being a better, more authentic version of myself.

Now, with clarity, much clearer perspective and faith in myself and my ability to learn, I focus on defining who I want to be, how I want that version of myself to be treated, and how to change. The latter was the ultimate “aha” moment for me. One lesson that has been fundamental for me is the fact that things change – more so, the further we move along in time, the quicker things tend to change. It made sense to me to figure out how to do that; changing with the times, but without losing the essence of who I am.

What Cannabis has done for me; is it’s created a very real spiritual awareness in my everyday life. Finding myself. Getting in tune with frequencies of people and situations. Learning when I’m out of sync. Taking better care of myself. Wanting to grow as a person and becoming better. And wanting that for others, too.

So, here I sit today, a non-qualified and non-certified adult. I’m figuring it out as I go, because apparently no-one really knows what they’re doing. I’m growing constantly – however uncomfortable that process may be, I’ve committed to it.

I don’t know it all, but I’m really keen on giving it a go to find out all that I can. I’ll do all of this, while I keep smoking Cannabis, so that I may learn all that this very special teacher plant wants to teach me.