Very. Why? One of the main reasons is the predominant cultural opinion that says its safe. It is hammered into our heads by the cultural myth makers in the media. And if you think I am for more restrictions, I am a libertarian that thinks it should be legal!! Lets not, however, ignore its risks!
Right now, we have a huge societal push to make marijuana normative. The writers for TV and movies create characters that laud, joke, and rely on marijuana. It is culturally pervasive in our entertainment and mass media. These writers often rely on it themselves and use their characters to justify their own use. As of this writing – I live in LA and have interacted with people in “the industry.” It’s pervasive here in LA and probably where you live as well.
This undercurrent of the supposedly benign nature of marijuana is wholly unjustified scientifically. Just because it may cause less violence than some other drugs like cocaine, crystal meth, heroin etc doesn’t mean that it is safe. What concerns me most about marijuana from a medical perspective is the damage it seems to do the brain’s reward centers. (1)(2).
I am not, however, going to focus on the medical studies that show damage, nor its seeming beneficial use for chronic pain or cancer, what I am going to focus on is the concept of self-medication. People self-medicate using all sorts of chemicals from caffeine to alcohol to marijuana and others. They do it, however, mostly subconsciously.
Most of my friends that use marijuana use it when they feel like they need it even if they don’t express it that way. For many users, they are self-medicating in the attempt to create an internal biological balance. We are all familiar with the concept of balance. After a long day of active work, we seek relaxation. After lots of relaxation, we seek activity. After lots of socializing, we often want some alone time. It’s the natural duality of our life. Our bodies even have built into them a sympathetic nervous system that governs the fight or flight and the parasympathetic which governs the rest and recharge. It’s the natural yin and yang of life.
When we self-medicate we are seeking to come from one extreme to a balance. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) through the yin and yang concepts has probably the most profound understanding of this on a physical/emotional / and spiritual level. We will focus on the physical in this blog post.
Marijuana is extreme in substance. That means, for people who are in overdrive all the time, in the yang mode of existence all the time, marijuana can bring some balance by giving them yin. In my friends, this is the primary mode of use. Sugar and white processed flour is also yin, which can also be seen as a way to try and balance. Submission is another form of balancing as seen in the extreme in S&M play: the man in yang overdrive all the time who feels the need to submit and be tied up.
I think you see what I am getting at without taking the examples to further extremes 🙂 There are healthy ways to seek balance and unhealthy ways. Perhaps marijuana is effective in the short term for balancing. But is using marijuana to balance your energies good for you? Firstly, the marijuana used these days is super high potency and should be considered a drug in line with any pharmaceutical. Secondly, if you are in yang mode all the time and need to balance yourself, there are other ways to do it. You just need to first become aware of your need for balance and then you need to be your own healer as is your birthright and seek out yin activity or foods.
There is qigong, tai chi, certain forms of yoga, deep breaths, certain forms of meditation, long relaxing baths, prayer, walks in nature, hugs, and intimacy, staring into your loved one’s eyes, and the list could go on and on. See a Traditional Chinese Medicine Doctor for help with this.
The “mind-expanding” drug ethos of the 60’s, which I am afraid this is a child of, has not lead to one iota of increased mental or emotional expansion, in fact, it has been mostly the opposite. As far as the use of marijuana by traditional cultures as a justification, just know that there has been a total disregard for the sacred, entheogenic aspects of these drugs along with the well defined spiritual path that characterized its use, in favor of new and stronger strains of drugs used for escape, balancing, or something to deaden the brutalities of life. Shamans look at this type of use as frightening, dangerous, and disrespectful.
As a doctor who sees my path of healing work as teaching people to become their own authorities, through confronting all 4 pillars of healing, marijuana as it is used by Americans today, is often a self-deluding stumbling block on the path to healing and self-awareness. You have all the power of balancing inside of you, you don’t need external substances, you need more awareness of your situation, courage to look at things as they are, and the wish to become whole.
Before you go, leave your thoughts below . . .
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References
Meghan E. Martz, Elisa M. Trucco, Lora M. Cope, Jillian E. Hardee, Jennifer M. Jester, Robert A. Zucker, Mary M. Heitzeg. Association of Marijuana Use With Blunted Nucleus Accumbens Response to Reward Anticipation. JAMA Psychiatry, 2016
Francesca M. Filbey, Joseph Dunlop, Ariel Ketcherside, Jessica Baine, Tyler Rhinehardt, Brittany Kuhn, Sam DeWitt, Talha Alvi. fMRI study of neural sensitization to hedonic stimuli in long-term, daily cannabis users. Human Brain Mapping, 2016