Healing a Relationship with Cannabis

Article by Stefan Burns - Updated August 2022. Join the Wild Free Organic email newsletter!

Cannabis is an amazing plant with many profound qualities. Using cannabis responsibly can profoundly change one’s life and assist with an evolution in consciousness. Because of its powerful effects on human physiology and psychology, cannabis has held a prominent place spiritually and medicinally in human culture around the world for thousands of years. It is a very powerful herb capable of changing perception of time and reality, and though its use is most likely to cause an awakening of consciousness, it does possess some narcotic properties which have the potential to be abused.

I have gone through many different phases of using cannabis in my five years with the plant, from initial exploration to only using it spiritually and then overusing it on a daily basis, and in this article I’ll share what I’ve learned in the process of healing my relationship with cannabis back from overuse to conscious use.

Smoking the Devil’s Lettuce

The alternate label of “Devil’s Lettuce” for cannabis was coined sometime during the late 19th or early 20th century as an anti-cannabis movement sprung up. No doubt the abusive use of cannabis by some morphed into a widely held belief that cannabis had no valid recreational, medical, or spiritual use. Dark negative labels were placed onto the plant, casting a shadow over its potential to heal various ailments and awaken human consciousness. Cannabis (and psilocybin containing magic mushrooms) is still characterized as a schedule 1 drug under the United States Controlled Substances Act which states that “it has a high potential for abuse, no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision.”

While cannabis does have a potential for abuse, it’s not a high potential, especially not when compared to the other drugs on the Schedule 1 list that deserve to be there like heroin and bath salts. Points two and three, that it has no valid medical use and a lack of accepted safety practices, are blatant lies by the United States government. Cannabis has been used medicinally for thousands of years and has an extremely strong safety profile.

A further issue with classifying cannabis as a schedule 1 drug is that it’s changed the economics of growing cannabis. Cannabis cultivation was driven to the black market, and overtime high-THC strains became dominant. Whereas a 15% THC strain used to be considered very powerful, now local dispensaries in legal states regularly sell cannabis with THC concentrations above 30%. THC is the main psychoactive in cannabis, and when cannabis is not balanced in its cannabinoid ratios between THC, CBD, CBN, CBC, and others, the narcotic properties of cannabis are amplified. By labeling cannabis as a narcotic and criminalizing its usage, the United States government created the very thing they were seeking to destroy.

I lay out this history because in states and countries where cannabis is legal for use, or if someone has a hookup, they are usually at the mercy of the cannabis available for purchase. Most dispensaries I’ve gone to have at least one or two strains of cannabis that were grown outdoors and organically (and ideally it’s a 1:1 THC to CBD hybrid) but those options exist among dozens or even hundreds of other cannabis products that are out of balance in their cannabinoid ratios, may have been heavily processed and distilled, were grown with pesticides and fertilizers, and may have been grown under artificial lighting in microbiologically “dead” soil. Cannabis grown under unnatural conditions produces unnatural cannabis that has much greater addictive properties, can cause health problems, and may disturb mental health.

Cannabis and the Bioelectrical System

To understand how an abuse of cannabis can develop, and how to then heal that dysfunctional relationship to cannabis, it’s important to fist learn the basic of how cannabis effects the body.

Running parallel to the nervous system is the endocannabinoid system, and the two are both components of what’s known as the bioelectrical system. The bioelectrical system is what controls the flow of energy and information throughout the body, and its cannabis’s effects on the bioelectrical system that give it many of its healing abilities. For example consider how cannabis can stop epileptic seizures and Parkinson’s muscle spasms; epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease both being disorders of the bioelectrical system.

Cannabis’s activation and balancing of the bioelectrical system is also responsible for its ability to increase human consciousness. A person’s bioelectrical status is not the sole determining factor in their state of consciousness, but it’s typically the largest factor. The bioelectrical system has a very powerful influence on health, wellness, and consciousness, and cannabis along with magic mushrooms provide a pathway towards healing bioelectrical imbalances and then further evolving the bioelectrical system. The evolutionary path Homo sapiens has taken for millions of years now has been to further increase our bioelectrical abilities; our big brains prove that. This drive to evolve the bioelectrical system to better feel subtle energies is innate in us and encoded into our very DNA. In fact, bioelectric fields alter DNA expression and optimizing human bioelectricity has the ability to radically change a person inside and out.

Cannabis is Food for Human Consciousness

Humans have a strong evolutionary drive to increase their bioelectrical capabilities (as it has proven successful for our species) and cannabis is a herb that harmoniously activates the bioelectrical system when grown under biodynamic conditions.

The reason why so many people have broken and abusive relationships with cannabis is because they’re using low quality cannabis.

A certain amount of bioelectrical activation is required to reach certain thresholds of consciousness. This activation is dependent not solely on THC but also other cannabinoids like CBD as well as phytochemicals like terpenes. Cannabis that is grown removed from nature (sun, rain, soil microbiome, fungal networks, etc) is imprinted with less consciousness and energy than cannabis that is grown in harmony with nature. Even if grown in a poor environment, the genetics of cannabis still provides it some unique goodies like abundant terpenes and cannabinoids, and for people who instinctually are seeking out a way to evolve bioelectrically, lesser quality cannabis will still do more for them than a simple banana ever will.

Food allows us to draw the best parallel to what’s happening here. The nutritional quality of food has been declining for decades now as monocrop industrial agriculture has been destroying the soil microbiome and draining the soil of nutrients. The nutrient quality of a tomato from the 2010’s was remarkably less than the nutrient quality of a tomato from the 1850’s, and while the nutritional quality of most of our food has plummeted, our nutritional needs have remained the same. It might take eating two tomatoes to now receive the nutrition of eating one back in the day, and with some fruits and vegetables the number is much higher. Eating more and more food to receive the same amount of nutrition places unwanted stress on the body, which then can lead to inflammation, obesity, and disease.

Like our food supply, most cannabis now is heavily deficient in the nutrients the body desires except for THC of which there is now an overabundance. And so just like the overeating epidemic that we have, there is an overconsumption of cannabis epidemic that is occurring as people smoke/vape/ingest more and more in an attempt to reach those critical thresholds required for bioelectrical and consciousness advancement. More consumption that does less places a much greater stress on the body, resulting in physical and mental health symptoms. As cannabinoid receptors become overly activated, over time they downregulate in their action potential and the entire endocrine (hormone) system adapts in a way to encourage a cessation of use.

Armed with this knowledge it’s now clear to see how this unbalanced relationship with cannabis can be healed and again placed on the right trajectory.

Resetting Cannabis Usage

There are a few methods that are very useful in resetting a dysfunctional relationship with cannabis. I found my relationship with cannabis became dysfunctional when I began using cannabis once a day or more and I wasn’t using cannabis of the highest caliber. Everyone is different in how they use plant medicines, but in general I recommend that cannabis should be used sparingly and respectfully. Allow time in-between each use to really integrate the lessons realized from the prior use.

The first and most important thing to do in resetting cannabis usage is to completely stop using cannabis and cannabis derived products. This is known as a T-break, and where one person might require only a 2 week T-break, someone else might require a 3 month T-break or longer. Ceasing all usage of cannabis allows cannabinoid receptors to return to normal in their distribution and effect. If cannabis receptors are completely out of balance, even in someone switches from poor quality cannabis to high-quality cannabis, the system will still be overloaded and the beneficial effects of the good cannabis won’t be felt. Then if the effects aren’t easily observed, the person may think “bugger this, I’m not spending extra on this fancy weed! I’ll keep smoking my regular stuff, or even better let’s see if they have a higher THC strain available”. Only with a T-break can cannabinoid receptors and the entire hormonal system be reset to baseline, a necessary step.

After a t-break of sufficient duration, and you’ll have to be honest with yourself to know how long that will be, then the second step to healing a relationship with cannabis is to only use high-quality cannabis and to say no to everything else. The bare minimum as I see it is outdoor organically grown cannabis, and if it’s not possible to find a 1:1 THC:CBD strain, then get a hold of both a THC strain and a CBD strain grown organically outdoors without pesticides and mix them together for use. Being very mindful of pesticides is very important because smoking or vaporizing cannabis coated in pesticides volatilizes them and causes major health problems with continuous exposure.

After a successful T-break and now armed with high-quality weed, the next step is to break old habits by establishing a new intention behind using the plant and to create a ritual around that. Rituals are a powerful way to bring awareness into a situation, and for example you could create a ritual where you only use cannabis if surrounded in nature with plans to do yoga, grounding, or meditation (three bioelectrical activities themselves) during the high. Set an intention, say a few words about what you’d like the cannabis to help you do, whether that’s increase your level of consciousness or simply to help you relax, and then have a small amount. Wait and see how it feels, stay in the present and shift your awareness internally. If guided by spirit to have more, then have some more, but follow your intuition not past behaviors. By creating and following the right ritual, old behaviors can be broken and forgotten and in their place a new relationship to cannabis can blossom.

The final thing that can be done to help reset a relationship with cannabis is to change the method of usage. If you smoke cannabis then switch to using a dry herb vaporizer like those sold by Healthy Rips. Vaporizing is healthier and more efficient. If you vaporize excessively experiment with cannabis lotions and creams. Mix cannabis with other herbs like chamomile, lavender, or mint and see how they blend together synergistically. By changing the method of delivery you can experience new ways that cannabis can activate your bioelectricity which provides a new perspectives to examine your past usage from.

I hope you found this information useful, it’s a summarization of what I’ve learned about cannabis in my five years of use and how I reset my relationship with cannabis successfully where I no longer feel I “need it”. Please share your cannabis relationship stories in the comments below.

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