“I’m not going in there. I don’t belong. I’m going to stand out like a sore thumb. They’re going to know and laugh at me. I’m staying in the car.” 

This was a conversation I had – with myself – my first time going into a recreational cannabis dispensary.  

Walked in and they checked my ID. I was nervous. Pretty sure they could tell I was sweating.
Do I make eye contact? Should I have looked things up? How do I know how much to get?! I’m 29 years old, why is this so hard? But it was. It was nerve-wracking. 

Oddly enough, that’s why I was there in the first place. I needed something for my anxiety. 

My only real experience with cannabis was after a friend gave me edibles to manage my anxiety when working at McDonald’s, half a decade before. I would take a small sliver every Friday after work around 3 o’clock, I was the breakfast manager. After about an hour, I would notice my mind started to slow down. I stopped obsessing about what I did, a conversation I had, or an error I made during the week. 

I was able to turn my mind off so I could read.
I was able to clean my apartment without it weighing me down.
I was able to breathe. 

In my mind, I wasn’t “doing weed”. This was helping me. People who consumed weren’t like this. They were burnouts.

And how naïve --- how wrong --- I was!

-  -  -  -  -

 As a mother of two under three, I needed to manage that anxiety again. I needed help. My marriage was hanging in the balance. My mom died two years prior. I was suffocating. I needed to breathe…

I needed cannabis.

So, in I went. I looked around. There were some display cases showing a few products. Cannabis stuff was everywhere and I was completely overwhelmed. Don’t touch anything. You don’t belong here.

A name in a case caught my eye, Boaty McBoatface. Ha. That was funny. Mr. Bojangles and Glow both also caught my eye. Those are what I ordered. I paid my money, and home I went.

No one asked me any questions.
No one made conversation about my usage.
No one seemed to really care.
No one knew I was new to this, and out of my element.

I don’t remember what it was like. I don’t remember much from back then, and my indulging experiences. Everything was the same. It all made me feel the same, I think. With the education I have now, I know it’s not the case. But I have to look up the specs on those strains. I bought them blindly.

But that day, I decided to try cannabis…

And this is a decision that I will never regret.
A decision that has led to my life being more fulfilled, happier, more peaceful.
A decision that brought about a major change in my life, and my purpose found.

Cannabis has changed my life. And I’m forever grateful, but it took two years for it to happen.

Imagine how much sooner if someone had just asked me the right questions?