I have a med evaluation appointment in a week. I’d better get my thoughts together.

I’ve been using pot for almost eight years. It changed my life. I use pot to help me sleep, increase my appetite so I can eat healthy balanced meals (I have terrible stomach pain from anxiety), as a pain medication, as an anti-anxiety medication, as an anti-depressant, and just generally to give me a slight pause in between experiencing something and needing to react. Without the pot I respond reflexively to a lot of things in ways that are problematic.

I don’t know what to do about this cocktail.

I am at the point of diminishing returns. I have to consume so much and it is so expensive that it takes too much time and money away from my life. At the very least I need a solid several months off. I tried taking time off earlier and it failed hard.

I need a bridge. I need a different crutch on my way to walking.

Isn’t this what harm reduction is about?

I have dramatically improved my relationship with food over the last few years. I get far less diarrhea now. I have periods of relatively normal bowel function for the first time in my life. I’m going to be working on that in an ongoing way for a while, though. I’m seeing a nutritionist.

I need help sleeping. That’s the first and most important key to this lock. When I go off pot I stop sleeping. Over the counter sleep aides aren’t very effective. I build tolerance really quickly and it just goes up and up. I think a week of sleep aide is a pretty good nightly dose. I may or may not be able to get enough sleep that way.

I need help with my anxiety. I am terrified a lot of the time and it manifests as me being bitchy. I can’t do that to my family or friends. My life is safe now but I haven’t talked my body into understanding that yet. I’m 10 years into safety after 25 years of problems. I’m seeing improvement but I’m not done.

I think that I should probably stick with St. John’s Wort and/or 5-HTP to replace the anti-depressant. I’ve tried most families of anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, and many anti-anxiety meds. I can take some but not many. I have horrible side effects from medications that end up being much worse than just living with the problems.

I’m hard to medicate.

Long term I’d like to be able to do serious international traveling. The pot isn’t very helpful under those circumstances either.

Ideally I’d like to find two systems that kinda sorta work but aren’t great. One being using pot for all of the above. The other being some complicated system of other meds that are used as needed while I go on long fast periods.

I think I will be a life long pot user. I think I need to have options for when pot isn’t an option because sometimes it isn’t.

I’m not sure what that is going to look like.

But I need to be able to take 6+ off from pot and have that work. I need to be able to do that for efficacy reasons.

My tolerance is just…. not sustainable at this point. I’m back to where I was before the break a few months ago. I don’t want to pay for this every month and I’m doing lung damage.

Balance the harm.

Try to reduce it.

Try to manage the risks so that you still get the upside without so many penalties. Life is just a game, right?