I just read an interesting blog post on how medical marijuana could be used to treat OCD. There are medicinal helpers for this disease, but pot would never work for me.
Mood music:
http://youtu.be/pjloMejBQEU
Here’s an excerpt of the article, from the official website of hemp legalization advocate Jack Herer (originally published on the All Voices site):
OCD is a treatable disease. With adequate therapy and correct counseling by experienced psychiatrist and physicians, the intensity of the disease can be decreased in little time. Effective treatments for obsessive-compulsive disorder are now easily available, and fresh researches are yielding new and improved therapies that can help people with OCD and other anxiety disorders lead productive, fulfilling lives.
Some doctors even say that Medical Marijuana (Cannabis) can also help in eliminating the disease. Dr. Breen of Southern California insisted that he has been successful in treating two patients with OCD via medical Marijuana. He shared, “Today I had two patients who have been successfully treating their symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder with medical marijuana. One was a 46-year-old man whose symptoms are primarily having ‘to check things all the time.’ He explained having to walk back to his car all the time to check his door locks etc. The second was an 18-year-old male who had the compulsion to try and touch the ceiling in a room. In both cases their symptoms were disruptive to their daily lives.
Let me be clear: I personally have nothing against pot use. I’ve seen alcoholics do far more damage to themselves and others than those who smoke marijuana. I’m also dumbfounded that we don’t use hemp a lot more often as an alternative fuel source and other things, like paper. Keeping pot illegal does nothing to curb drug use. It’s as useless as Prohibition was in the 1920s.
It may even be helpful to those suffering with OCD.
But it is not for me.
The reason is simple: I have an addictive personality. I can get addicted to just about anything with destructive results. My main problem is with flour and sugar. Alcohol is a close second.
I smoked plenty of pot in my late teens and early 20s and I know how I react to it: I binge on any kind of food available to me until I’m ready to explode. Then I pass out and, when I come to, forget what I was doing. I must have liked that enough to keep doing it for a time. But then I kept binge eating long after I stopped enjoying the feeling I got — if I ever did at all.
I also bristle at the suggestion that a drug can “eliminate” the disorder. You never completely get rid of it. You just learn to manage it in a way where it no longer makes your life unmanageable.
But if a little marijuana helps someone else get there, who am I to judge?
I’ve known a couple of folks who have self-treated their milder OCD with GAD this way. It only seems to work while they were mostly under the calming influence of the cannabis. Later on it actly exacerbated the GAD. You could see them feeling even MORE anxious than before when the cannabis was no longer in their system and then it would trigger the OCD to go off as a “comfort action” brought on by the anxiety. Their symptoms got worse from the use of cannabis. Also, I find it odd that a substance known to promote paranoia in some of its users could be helpful in these cases. I get the feeling if they did much larger long-termed clinical studies on this, the precentage of success wouldn’t be as “high” as you think. I see nothing wrong with the medical use of marijuana; especially when it brings back a certain amount of quality back into an ill person’s life. I do think folks need to be cautious of it’s latent effects and agree with you Bill about it not being right for persons with addictive behavior.
At first I tout I was going to hate you for this post, but your cool.
I have a chronic muscular connective disorder and live in constant pain. I am a vet on disability so I have to settle on county health department doctors. Being “in the system ” really sucks for me as a recovering addict. Clean since 1/11/1997.
So I get prescribed heavy pain meds and I hate them, but without I am curled in bed for days at a time. I smoked pot until the county doctors started drug testing me every month. They say it is to make sure I’m taking the pills and not selling them. They go on to making me sign a ” drug contract ” stating I will only take their drugs and not pot, as I was honest with them about my past and current drug use.
But POT HELPS! I could cut out so many pills that are eating my liver if I could smoke again. Taking what I do now, I still feel like, and am, an addict. Seeing doctors making false claims makes it harder to eventually have medicinal marijuana. Sorry for the rant, I’m hurting and it’s pill time.
Sorry to hear about your suffering, Michael. You are in my prayers and I hope you find a solution. If medical marijuana helps for you, I’m all for it. I just don’t think it’s the answer for me. Take care.
If you didn’t even mention CBD-rich strains in your medicinal marijuana post treating OCD, Im pretty sure you know not what you write about.
CBD is the anxiolytic, too much THC would just make you go incredibly paranoid and anxious all of the sudden. Thats why you binged on it and food, give the medicinal variety of the marijuana plant that has a bigger CBD to THC ratio, like indica plants of the Afhgan variety for instance, or even CBD bred plants, I’m sure they might help you if you give it a try.
I KNOW that it would not work for me either. Don’t get me wrong, I fully support decriminalization/legalization. For many people mild to moderate use of Cannabis is a God send, however, when I use marijuana, about half the time it is wonderful, and the other half, it sets my obsessive thinking into overdrive, and can bring about some high levels of anxiety. If it helps others, more power to ya, but it’s not for me.