The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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My “medical cannabis” prescription was approved. I’m not a huge stoner but I don’t like feeling like a criminal and, while the penalties for possession in the UK are very low (as far as I understand it you just get a warning and the cops confiscate it) I think it’s embarrassing to buy drugs like a sixteen year old when you’re approaching thirty. I also want to avoid smoking if I can avoid it but the vapes available on the UK illicit market are pretty much all dangerous synthetic cannabinoids where you have no idea what’s in them; the only way to get safe vape oil is legally.
The process was very straightforward. You have to have tried treatment for whatever condition (anxiety, ADHD, back pain, Long Covid, whatever) before, so I said I needed it for ADHD because the medication had not satisfactorily resolved my symptoms. This was indeed true. They checked my medical history (I think this is to detect schizophrenics who can’t have it), had one consultation and then approved it.
Interestingly, while my ADHD diagnosis consultation to get lisdexamfetamine cost £900 or something like it and took an hour, the medical weed one only cost £200 and took like ten minutes. After this you order what you want from an online store and it gets delivered to your house.
One interesting thing I’ve found is how few people in Britain even know that legal weed is a thing here at all. On the subreddit it’s common to see stories of police raiding people’s houses or even of people being fired before those involved are informed of the person’s prescription. It’s been legal since 2018 but is only available privately, not on the NHS.
I think weed is particularly dangerous for young people because it kills motivation. That said, as a gainfully employed adult, I find it strictly preferable to alcohol for most occasions because of the lack of hangover and lack of calories. Booze is more fun, almost always, but I’ve been more alert, have found waking up easier and have done more in the morning since replacing drinking at dinner with it (on perhaps 4/7 nights a week).
Huh. I didn't know this either..
To be fair, I never had any issues grabbing some, given how little the cops gave a shit and how unabashedly I've seen people smoke it in popular public spaces in London.
Guess I can try that if I really want to, but I'm not the biggest fan of the devil's lettuce though I did discover that CBD vapes, which are not supposed to be psychoactive, still get you high if you do enough of it.* I don't know why, but I suspect that even the small amount of THC they contain adds up when you're really puffing.
Well, as a psych trainee, I expect I'd have even fewer issues grabbing a hold of some, though the UK doesn't seem to have the same degree of medical fraternity or sense of professional courtesy that compels most doctors here to either waive or discount their fees for another doctor.
*However, CBD vapes taste awful.
UK doctors are banned or at least very strongly discouraged from writing prescriptions for family members iirc, something unusual even in many other Western countries.
It's not banned, but it's something that's frowned upon by the GMC, I can't really speak as to the degree of enforcement, but my impression is that they usually don't cause a ruckus unless you hand them narcotics or benzos and so on.
I think it's retarded myself, in India everyone accepts one of the perks of being a doctor (or having one in the family), is the massive benefit it gives you someone that is on call for you, invested in your welfare, and willing to take your issues even more seriously than is the norm. I have never seen it cause any conflict of interest or other things the GMC wrings their hands about. Thankfully I don't have all that much in the way of very close family left in the UK, so it's largely moot.
But UK doctors are only now pushing back against how hard they've been cucked, maybe they'll get around to this eventually. After all, I doubt lawyers get in trouble for representing family in court do they? (Never checked)
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I got involved in an argument on the Nextdoor platform with someone who's working on opening a cannabis and dog gift shop in our very small local shopping area, that currently only has three things in it, despite the nearest town (6 min drive) already having about 8 dispensaries. Mostly, I want an ordinance saying they can't have giant green flags in an otherwise beige setting, huge leaves on their signs, and other attention grabbing street side signage. My opinions aren't very strong on the substance itself, other than I tried it a couple of times and it did nothing for me. I don't care for getting drunk, either, but drink a cocktail occasionally for the aesthetic presentation.
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I was a big user for a couple of years here, after we got full legalization. Saying it kills motivation is right; I wouldn't say it does it directly, but indirectly by making you boring and okay with being bored. I've mostly stopped not because I made a choice to stop, but because my wife is now living with me, she doesn't use it and I don't think it would be fair for me to be so boring to be around when she's there. When she's not there, I usually have other things I want to do that would bore her but entertain me so I don't really need to make myself okay with boredom.
Maybe that's why I didn't really care for it. I already prefer very low stimulation, and things like meditation sitting alone in the dark.
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Every now and then, I'm reminded of how absolutely ridiculous the treatment of "medical cannabis" really is. While I can buy that there are a variety of maladies where people are able to mitigate symptoms by using weed, these often seem to be along the same lines as someone saying that their arthritis bothers them less after a nice dram of whisky in the evening. Strictly true, they're not lying, but not really something that rises to the level of needing to come with the trappings and verbiage of medicalization. There's something both hilarious and depressing about governments needing to maintain the facade that marijuana bans were actually a pretty good idea and very justified while also providing a trivial path to workaround the bans and get weed anyway. That this has become a somewhat normal position for politicians to state openly that they support "medical marijuana" but are against recreational use is just one of the absolute dumbest aspects of American politics despite there being a veritable see of stupid things to choose from.
Obviously the vast majority of medical marijuana users have no actual reason for using beyond wanting to get high. But to the extent that medical marijuana replaces opiates for chronic pain, this is a net positive. In all other ways, except maybe for the like three people who actually have the kind of cancer it works on, it’s a bad thing.
Disclaimer- I don’t like pot. I hate the smell of it, I find potheads annoying and contemptible in a way that alcoholics don’t affect me, and I Just Don’t Like Seeing It. If potheads would smoke weed in their living rooms I probably wouldn’t care very much, any more than the bottle of whiskey a night drinkers at home.
And I think that’s the real crux of my objections to weed. It’s the inability of our society to say, ok, this is a bad thing we don’t approve of, but it’s not worth really cracking down on. If it became legal advertising for it would be everywhere, public places would stink like it constantly, and heavy users would get a platform for bitching about discrimination against them. I don’t want those things, and they’re what happened in other states that legalized the stuff. I think there’s probably also some technical arguments about driving, and adolescent use, but they’re not my real reason.
But circling back to my second paragraph- our present society doesn’t recognize ‘stop celebrating things I hate, it’s really annoying and offensive, just get it out of my face’ as a legitimate complaint. There’s something missing there; if I went to a mosque and set up a booth entitled ‘Mohammed was a pedophile’, I would have no right to complain about getting my ass kicked and being physically removed(I’m given to understand that radical Muslims in the US tend to not actually go to mosque very often, so I wouldn’t expect a beheading). But that’s a general principle, and the need to promote things I hate is one of those annoying parts of modern society.
I think in the US we've managed to find this balance with cigarettes. Smoking is perfectly legal, but banned in most places where non-smokers would be forced to encounter it and advertising is highly restricted. I am a big fan of weed but I see no reason why anyone would need to consume it publicly nor any reason why we need to tolerate garish advertising for it.
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I agree, but it's because liberal societies struggle to just say some things are bad but allowed (or tacitly tolerated). For centuries, this was the default treatment (at varying times) of a huge number of different things, from gambling and prostitution to homosexuality and adultery. At varying times the acts themselves may have been illegal or legal depending on social mores, but enforcement was often rare (or waxed and waned) and the idea wasn't really to prevent anyone at all from doing these things, but to keep them underground. Society should discourage gambling whether it is or isn't legal, that's the big issue with Draft Kings ads aimed at teenagers during football games.
A similar change happened with consent-based frameworks for sex, which have caused huge problems since the sexual revolution since they either make highly unethical behavior technically legal (in which case liberal society encourages it, which led to the worst excesses of the sexual revolution), or (as has happened more recently) they lead to the state flipping and becoming the sex police and handing down questionable sentences based upon limited evidence, as with Title IX trials. Actual adultery seems like one of the last areas where (most) people can agree it's extremely shitty but not a crime.
We struggle with the concept of legal self-harm. Medical cannabis is no more justifiable than medical alcohol was during prohibition, but the fact that the latter was a thing has become a joke about enforcement all the same. In some ways it even reminds me of the Canada euthanasia debate, is the state capable of legalizing medical euthanasia without encouraging it? These are tough questions.
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It's really interesting to me that someone could post regularly on this board and yet still enjoy cannabis. I'm envious of your mental robustness tbh.
A strong plurality of people posting here could fairly be called "anxious overthinkers" - the board is a bilge pump for excess thought, and eg expressing any worry whatsoever about AI risk (whether the worry is grounded in real things or not) ought to be a criterion for anxiety diagnoses.
I smoked a fair amount of weed in my teens/early 20s, took plenty of other recreational drugs, and a near-universal thing I've heard from peers with a similar profile is that around age 25, they started to find weed disagreed with them. Specifically, it makes them/me really unpleasantly anxious. Weed to me now is solely a tool I would use if for some reason I wanted to give myself a panic attack. Maybe I'm a little more dramatic in my dislike than normal, but it's very normal to find weed unenjoyable from mid-20s onward.
So what's your secret? Youthful brain? No prior history of smoking? Iron resolve?
I actually would quite like to like weed again, and agree with the demerits of drink that you outlined - so if there's One Weird Trick you can share, please do so.
Exactly the same for me. Smoked more often than is healthy for several years as a teenager/early-20, for a couple of those years basically daily, and always enjoyed it. Stopped completely for a year or two and now a single puff will trigger a panic attack. Did not realize this was a common pattern. Would love to know why this happens.
Because weed builds up psychotic potentials in your subconscious. Be thankful it only results in a temporary panic for you (so far).
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I have always loved weed, though as I've gotten older the side effects have gotten more intense. Same as others already mentioned:
I typically create my own "Green Dragon" tincture. This allows precise dosing, eliminates damage to your lungs either through burning flower or vaping, it's easier to socialize with people who haven't tried weed before, and is a great excuse to make a citrus cocktail for consumption.
Like others mentioned, just taking a lower dose can be almost as fun with far fewer side effects. I'm an extremely cheap date at this point, and go through maybe a quarter ounce a year when partaking 1-2 times per week.
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Biggest piece of advice is to control the dose. It's like alcohol. If I pound six shots in a row I'm probably going to throw up and feel like shit the next day. If I drink two glasses of wine over the course of four hours I'm going to feel great and have no ill effects. Unsurprisingly weed works the same way.
If I overdo it and get anxious then I practice mindfulness. I find it's easier to do this because you know the anxiety isn't "real" so you can sort of go "I know why I'm feeling this way, I'm just going to accept it and observe it instead of fighting it." I feel practicing mindfulness in this way has helped me manage anxiety better when sober as well.
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I'm the same - I enjoyed it for a couple of years in college and then it just became a panic attack trigger. I'm always amazed that some people are able to use it as a treatment for anxiety.
Similar experience but I always thought this was due to the types of weed commonly sold changing
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I never smoked much weed as a teenager, I typically refused it even at parties unless very drunk, certainly never smoked by myself or just with a few friends, so maybe I had a puff or two 3-4 times a year between the ages of 15 and 18? Between 18 and 25 I pretty much didn’t smoke at all, so I only really started as an adult. I’ve also never smoked cigarettes or mixed tobacco and weed (which is how most British people consume it), but I’m not sure if that has any effect on this.
The only time I’ve ever experienced the anxiety spiral was on one of the few occasions I tried cocaine as a teenager. I get moderately anxious (palpitations etc) on very high caffeine doses and once or twice on ADHD medication, which I no longer take (as discussed in last week’s thread). I suppose that makes a recommendation difficult. Do you find the anxiety sets in very quickly? Does it happen after a small amount of THC or only if you get stoned?
I’m an extremely neurotic person. The last time we did one of those five factor personality quizzes on the friday fun thread I was literally 99th percent neuroticism, so I’d say I’m pretty anxious. But weed calms me down, clears out my head, makes me think of ‘nothing’ (or just what I’m doing in the moment, whether it’s watching TV or making dinner or talking). I do think it’s different to alcohol or LSD which have a much stronger happiness effect (I’ve never been a sad drunk), weed doesn’t make you happy. But it does clear my head. What’s your experience?
I stopped because after a while it started making my heart beat really fast. It always elevated my heart rate somewhat, but initially it was more like 90-120 beats per minute. Later on I would take one puff and it would immediately go to 200-250 BPM. That just doesn’t seem healthy from a cardiac standpoint.
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On the thing about motivation, I never learnt to source weed or how to make a joint so that I do not become a pothead. In fact I do this for all intoxicants on purpose. So I do not know how to make any cocktails or de seed the weed my friends have or source any other things since I know that I will end up being an addict.
What is medical weed like as compared to the kind you can get on the streets? is it harder or does it make you sleepier? I have never tried that or vape pens with weed in them because of health hazards, anyways, I can never smoke anything ever again since my throat is super sensitive, I will say that weed is quite fun.
The only concern I have with intoxicants is habitual usage and it causing mental issues, since many people end up being functioning addicts who see a noticeable dip in their baseline sense of happiness. The chick I was into is a cokehead who went from default happy to depressed after a bunch of her hookups got her ghosted.
Also for adhd, do try out meditation, worked wonders for me.
tl;dr: they're the same weed.
Longer: The effects depend on the strain. Ratios of THC:CBD in prescriptions appear to be up to the doctor's discretion rather than legally mandated, and in some states medical weed is taxed less (or not at all) compared to recreational purchases from the dispensary.
Street weed isn't always homegrown, you'll often find that someone in a legal state sourced your flower/cartridge/edible from a dispensary. Before recreational weed was legal in my state, my dealer got their supply from a friend with a medical card in California. I've also bought from a friend who grew it in their garden. The point is that "medical" and "recreational" and "street" are largely just rule-based distinctions about how you got it, with the additional qualifier that dispensary weed has some assurance that you're actually getting the weed you want.
Sourcing street weed (or drugs in general) tends to be a matter of "knowing a guy who knows a guy" and who'll vouch for you not being a snitch. I met my dealer via my roommate, who I drank with regularly on a dry campus. Something something #networking.
Obvious caveat: my perspective is US based, I'm not familiar with international weed legalities. I've also stuck to dispensary weed once it was legalized in my area because convenience.
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If you had coke those hookups could have all been with you. Embrace the chemicals. You don't have to use them, but you should understand why people enjoy them and like to party. I mean if you're on ADHD meds you already know that drugs can be good in the right dose.
lol coke is amazing though I am afraid that doing it a bit too many times will make me addicted. I love intoxicants, this is why I stay away from them unless I have friends or a pretty girl around. I do wish to try something psychedelic soon.
I am not on adhd meds, they did not do much, and meditation somehow seems to work better with me.
Also that girl is fucking weird. I would have hooked up with her had I met her irl but cut contact as soon as I realised that she would see other dudes. This was in 2021 march, way before I learnt about PUA and started doing the same.
Well yeah PUA works, I have two friends that took it all the way and did very well, they have worked into a marriage and a serial monogamist at this point, but that never would have happened if they didn't "get it" first. It is upsetting to me that it works so well, but I am a romantic at heart haha.
I am confused that you just said
"Also for adhd, do try out meditation, worked wonders for me. and
am not on adhd meds, they did not do much, and meditation somehow seems to work better with me."
Which is it man?
It did well for me tinitially but petered off quite bad afterwards, I felt a much higher sense of sustained relief because of a regular meditation practise than with meds. I do acknowledge that i miscommunicated this stuff so sorry lol. I wanted to encourage others to try out meds since they help, they helped me but in the long run, I found meditation to be the ideal thing.
I was a romantic too but I realised that there are plenty of fun things I can learn from ladies and for that I will have to keep romance on the side. At least that is the mentality I have since I know that I will get married in the future.
PUA is awesome, especially for people like me who were low on confidence and all, changed my life. I do not have a large lay count rn but I shall soon.
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