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Originally Posted by shimmy23
I'm ignorant in this topic.
How does marijuana actually help treat PTSD? How does it help with other mental issues?
I've only smoked a few times and that was nearly 15 years ago. Never got into it. It just didn't appeal to me.
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I can only account from my personal perspective as I don't know anyone else with PTSD that is a cannabis user. In my experiences the anti-depressants that I was prescribed did only one thing. Remove ALL emotion. I wasn't sad, I was no longer depressed, but I also felt no joy, love or anything for that matter; I was an emotional zombie. No facial expression. No real concern for anything in life. I was just going through the actions of day to day life.
I stopped taking the antidepressants (cold turkey - I do not recommend this! You WILL lose your damn mind) and just relied on cannabis usage. The difference was night and day. My PTSD would cause anxiety attacks and sometimes simple triggers would cause me to either want to go into a fit of rage or a full on mental break down. Cannabis usage reduced the affects of the triggers. I could still recognize the things that would potentially start the panic attacks but it's as if they no longer had the same result. I went from being a zombie to being able to smile, laugh and enjoy life again.
The nightmares/night terrors associated with PTSD are no joke. I can assure you there is nothing more frightening to a female, that is sharing a bed with you, to be woke up in the wee hours of the morning seeing you punching the floor trying to kill someone in your sleep. This caused lots of problems with my ex-wife toward the end of our relationship. She told me once that she didn't feel safe sleeping in the same bed with me. Cannabis suppresses REM cycle sleep to where the nightmares do not occur as often. I went from having episodes in my sleep 5-6 times a week to maybe 2-3 times a month.
It's truly amazing at the difference in my life after stopping the meds and using cannabis. Cannabis also affects everyone differently. I'm very much a type A personality and very high (pun intended) functioning cannabis user. Some simply can not do this. It allows to me to focus more on tasks and become more motivated to accomplish things. This may also simply be due to the species of cannabis that I used in the morning/day time (Sativa) which tends to have more of a invigorating uplifting effect. Either way, it should be treated as any other type of medication. What works for some, doesn't work for all.