Cannabis, We Need A Break

By Alaina Dorsey CEO & Brand Lore Craftswoman of FADED

“You’re just gonna stop? Cold turkey?? I definitely couldn’t do that!”

That’s the usual reaction I encountered from long-term stoners and cannabis enthusiasts when I’d bring up taking any type of break. Be it a week or a weekend or, in this current instance, 30+ days, the nature of my decision tended to incite such incredulous reactions. As somehow who started consuming daily in September 2018, it’s an amusing result to witness. But it really got me thinking on why we don’t talk about breaks from cannabis enough.

“The effects are proving to be more bad than good for me,” I responded to my Thanksgiving host, layering it with my penchant for laughter to ease my occasional discomfort. Cannabis and CBD became regular staples of my life to mitigate symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder. I got my formal diagnosis in summer 2018, but these conditions were pervasive throughout my life.

“The weed is really fucking with my appetite and… I can’t really afford to not eat enough,” I continued. From September 2018 until about April 2019, my cannabis use was balanced. I micro dosed throughout the day via a variety of methods—smoking, dry vaping, cartridge vaping, edibles, tinctures, the occasional transdermal patch—but external stressors exasperated my mental illnesses and I was pushed over the edge. I ramped up my cannabis use and that… triggered something.

That something consumed me for well over a year.

“You know… I’ve been struggling to put weight on myself,” she mentioned, clearly considering that maybe her own chronic cannabis use was getting in the way of her own health goals. “I got this stuff to help.” She showed me a bottle of some orange liquid I can’t place the name of. But she said it was typically for bulimics and anorexic patients who had issues with eating. I nodded at the notion and made myself comfortable at her dining room table.

This gracious woman had cooked up a storm and invited folk over to eat. She was the mother of two girls who were highly curious about gymnastics. And she had a ridiculously cute and petite dog. I have no idea what breed it was.

“I’m opting for not smoking for the next 30 days. I think that’s best,” I said to her as she got comfortable across from me. She proceeded to roll a blunt with the wraps I had brought for the occasion. This shocked her, of course. “Thirty days?? Girl, I couldn’t!”

“I gotta eat! And it’ll give me time to put on another 5 pounds or so. A friend of mine who has a CBD company claims that diet and cannabis use go hand-in-hand.” I was weighing if I wanted to share this blunt with her, give or take COVID. And I had wanted to kick off my tolerance break on Thanksgiving. Once she was done rolling, I relented: I could start tomorrow in my weedless house.

Even as I’m writing this, I’m weighing if I want to wait a full 45 days or push towards my Capricorn birthday in mid-January. What I enjoyed and soon distanced myself from with weed is that it can be quite illuminating. It brought back sensations I had unknowingly deadened and allowed me to feel emotions I had distanced myself from, despite being a highly sensitive person.

But as my mental health waned in 2019 and I increased my use, my physical and emotional health began to deteriorate and I just felt… Stuck. I was eating less than 1000 calories a day. I struggled to stay asleep throughout the night for over a year. I dropped from 123 lbs to damnnear 99 lbs as pure anger and rage overtook me. I had gone on 30-day breaks before but I felt so, so miserable. And heaven forbid I go to bed when my room was too cold: I’d wake up covered in sweat and freezing.

It was an awful affair.

And I knew that I needed to reevaluate my relationship with cannabis and to step away from the plant to make my body healthier first. The weeks following Thanksgiving took me back to those symptoms: not being able to sleep, interrupted sleep thanks to the cold sweats, and my struggles to want to eat. All of this was continuing to eat at my mind.

And as someone who thinks for a living, it was costing me money.

So I made the shift. And even now I wonder how I’ll return to the plant. Thanks to multiple magic mushroom and acid trips this year, I’ve healed the deep, deep wounds and scars that ate away at my existence. I can finally fall asleep, dream, and stuff my face to my body’s content. So I don’t feel a need for daily consumption.

But I do miss my early smoking days of meditation and journaling and just floating through the day with a sense of ease. My battered body just couldn’t get there: cannabis would put me in a stupor and I’d sleep for most of the day and get into obsessive mental cycles laced with paranoia.

That is no way to live.

So we’ll see how things go when I get back into the mix. I won’t leave cannabis forever. But it certainly isn’t my entire life. I know many people need the plant to make it through their day-today. And I’m not knocking you.

I’m just saying… Be real with yourself. Take the break if you can.