Of all the things that solved the majority of my problems, it was the one thing I was always warned about the 'dangers' of: Cannabis.

I was always warned about it being a gateway, that it was some big demon that would destroy my life and prevent me from being successful or happy. It would lead me to abusing it, becoming a hollow person. This is still repeated by the media, by the general population...

Hell, even my ex mate was concerned about me using it because I used to abuse alcohol years ago... And to an extent smoke weed every day when I was younger. To be fair, these concerns specifically were valid about using something as escapism, so I can't fault that...

But then I started to use it daily to cope with some emotional shit... and after about a month or two of that... I stopped. For a whole week. Then I started to feel my anxiety creeping back up and realized something. I had no anxiety when I was high... nor for a good while after I had quit. It slowly began to creep back, but not as intense as before.

So I began to experiment, trying small doses of THC:CBD 1:1's, and then my anxiety would just be gone for... 2 days?

Speed up to today, I just need to smoke or take an edible a couple of times a week, and my anxiety stays away entirely.

I'm now generally happy. I have been clothes shopping, I feel happy about my appearance. My mind feels clear, I can feel a wider range of emotions and overall... I feel better as a person. I'm -happy-. I still have moments, but we all do. that's part of having emotions... but overall I feel GOOD. My anxiety is just.... utterly gone. Mind you what I'm describing here is the majority of the time when I'm not high.

All it takes is a bit of cannabis for me here and there, and its done more to help me control the anxiety than the emotional deadening SSRIs I was put on (that we had to stop because of emotional deadening. x.-.x) with the worst side effect being I run out of snacks and have an otherwise fun night gaming and chatting with friends.

So is cannabis a magical cure all? No. But, for me, it fucking helped more than most things and I am going to be happy as fuck about that. Because holy shit I can actually LIVE life and not just live anxiety. It's fucking glorious.