Today is day two of taking a hemp oil supplement to try to lower my anxiety. I went with a friend yesterday and had him run in to a dispensary to get me the product. We went to get a bowl of Bun Bo Hue after, and I placed the pills on the table and looked at them while we ordered.
Ingesting a substance of any kind for the first time, I always feel hypersensitive to the effects but I didn’t notice much, which was what I expected after everything that I had read. I will admit to feeling a little anxious about eating a product that contained cannabinoids, even non-psychoactive ones due to my years of sobriety, but I checked in with a couple of people I know who are sober and with one exception, they all agreed that if it didn’t produce a high and I was taking it to try to alleviate real symptoms that I should go ahead – if I felt comfortable with it. So in a little Vietnamese restaurant tucked away in the Tenderloin, I opened the package and swallowed one down with a sip of iced coffee.
After about an hour, I felt a little bit of energy, as if I had just drank a small cup of coffee. I definitely felt better than I did the day before, but it’s hard to tell how much of it was placebo or the pill.
Or neither. Supplements are sold specifically with the FDA label “Not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease or condition,” so while what I was taking definitely contained cannabidiol (CBD), there’s been no large-scale FDA trial to determine its efficacy in regards to treating anxiety. Which is not to say that it isn’t effective for combating anxiety, just that the jury is still out. It could be snake oil, as are a lot of supplements but considering I’ve been trying to attack this problem in a variety of ways with limited success, I figured that if there’s a slight chance that this stuff will help then it’s worth trying.
So after a couple of hours, I went to work. I felt a little bit more alert, though the iced coffee with condensed milk might have had something to do with that as I haven’t been drinking much coffee or eating sugar the past couple of weeks. My brain didn’t seem to race as much and I definitely felt a little bit more present. I also felt ridiculously thirsty, though nothing like the cottonmouth that comes with spending an afternoon taking bong rips.
Somewhere in the middle of my shift, I stopped noticing the slight alert effect that I had felt after taking the pill though I did seem to feel less anxious the rest of my shift. By the time I came home and took my shoes off for the night, I noticed absolutely nothing.
Some people in sobriety say that any medication that changes how you feel – no matter how slight – isn’t sobriety. The first year or so that I spent getting clean I took the semi-synthetic opioid Suboxone to gradually taper off my addiction to heroin as well as block any opiates I might take from having any effect. Some people at the time (and since) said that sobriety means not taking any drugs, under any circumstances. Except there was no high from the Suboxone whatsoever, and if I didn’t take it I became dopesick. When I finally had some time and experience living sober, I gradually came off of the drug and while it was hard, it was far more manageable after a year or so of sobriety.
A few people said that I should reset my sobriety date to when I came off of the Suboxone, but I disagreed then and I disagree now. Taking medication can be a slippery slope for someone with a drug addiction, but it’s all about the intent. If I get a compound fracture and my tibia is poking through my shin, believe me when I say that the morphine they’ll inevitably shoot me full of at the hospital isn’t a relapse.
I didn’t get sober so I could have to suffer needlessly and it’s been a couple of months full of some absolutely agonizing days.
I’m trying everything I can to make myself feel better and I didn’t get high so far today, so I’m chalking this one up in the win category.
Time to make lunch and go to the shrink, another tool I’ve got towards achieving a little peace.
