Maria, Marijuana, the weed, the pot, the herb the ganja… whatever you call it, it’s everywhere. Since the rise of cannabis associations here in Barcelona over the past years, high potency cannabis has been more and more readily available. Not Unsurprisingly I’ve also been seeing more increasing numbers of clients for cannabis addiction.
While in recent years attitudes towards the use of cannabis have changed with legalization happening in many states the USA for recreacional and Medical use, the negative effects compulsive compulsive or addictive use of cannabis is really quite striking
Loss of motivation, Focus, concentration and overall well-being are common experiences. Some people find that when they sit down and begin to smoke they just cannot stop. It’s easy to rationalize the use of cannabis as “medication” or harmless because it’s not alcohol or hard drugs but the fact it is that there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
Just like alcohol there’s a big difference between someone having a cocktail or the odd glass of wine with dinner once or twice a week and sitting down and polishing off a bottle every night. Treating alcohol addiction is a separate topic and something I will cover in a later blog, but I think it is really important to stress that if you are finding yourself smoking cannabis to relax every day or just to stop your mind from thinking, you may have a problem and there will be consequences.
What happens with so many compulsive cannabis users is that the psychological addiction to the state of relaxation (which is really healthy) is also overrun by the muddy thinking that comes with the habit. A person wants to relax but because they haven’t learned how to relax properly they turn into a substance to help them. Because you can´t have relaxation without the lack of mental clarity, it becomes a vicious cycle and quite often ends up in extremely low moods and depression. This leads to problems at work, school and social relationships.
Quite often users are unconsciously taking the drug to cope with other issues such as lack of confidence, low self-esteem, social anxiety. Unfortunately most people find that these issues often get worse overtime.
In my experience, most addictions stem from either unprocessed traumatic experiences or the inability to meet one’s primal human needs. Needs such as a sense of security, sense of control in one’s life, intimacy and as sense of purpose and meaning in life are all vitally important to maintaining a robust psychological resilience people that do this tend not to become addicted to habits and substances.
One of the things that I do with my clients (beyond just helping them stop the habit itself), is helping them get to the cause of why they are smoking in the first place. It’s not enough just to stop an addiction; to really make sure that you stay free, you have to be able to find all of those things that you thought the addiction gave you in different, healthy and much more pleasurable ways.
The good thing is that the powerful relaxation that a person experiences in a therapeutic trance is just the thing that allows the mind to relax and clear. Just like a muddy pond clears and settles into clarity alter a storm. In this state a person learns how to instinctively and automatically meet their human needs to move them forward in powerful ways. Learning how to sleep deeply and naturally connecting with energized focus and success that is a birthright .
If you or someone that you know think that your habitual use of cannabis is working against you, that I invite you to contact me and set up a free strategy call. Grab this opportunity to take your life in your own hands and experience something different.
