How Edibles Helped Me Cope With My Health Issues

A couple weeks ago I had the worst mental health I’ve had in a long time. I live with Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, which is is a condition that’s said to be caused by your cells rejecting the hormone fluctuations caused by your menstrual cycle — so instead of getting a little moody and craving ice cream during my period, I become a completely different person for the two weeks before it. With emphasis on dysphoria, I feel uncomfortable in my skin, get irritated by everything, pick fights with people I love and have suicidal thoughts.

For the past few years, I’ve been able to manage my symptoms naturally through daily exercise and a complete overhaul of my diet —lots of whole foods and less processed ones. Of course, this fluctuates as I’m a human who gets busy and forgets to workout, and who loves a good cheeseburger. But because of my change in lifestyle, my symptoms are usually down to being a little irritable and eating pizza the week before my period. However, this month, I’m not sure if it was that I ate cake for my birthday or that it’s getting colder outside so I was less active, but my irritability was anything but manageable. It was so bad that I couldn’t stand to leave the house and be around people — except when I was high.

I’d gone to a party the weekend before my symptoms, where someone gave me an edible. I hadn’t touched marijuana since high school, where I ate too many weed-butter baked goods and never wanted to touch them again. I’m the kind of person who ends up having a panic attack on the bathroom floor after smoking weed, so I didn’t think edibles were my thing. But I heard that when done right (not taking more and more because you’re not feeling anything) eating marijuana can give you a body high much different than smoking it. I’d also heard that people were starting to microdose edibles for their pain and mental health issues — meaning they’d take a small amount to treat their symptoms instead of eating the whole thing to get fucked up), so I was eager to do some…research.

I’ve spent most of my adult life trying various treatments for my mood — antidepressants, which helped my anxiety but made it impossible to orgasm, alcohol which made my anxiety worse the day after, and supplements which were just expensive pee as far as I was concerned. The only medication that has helped me manage my mood is the birth control pill, Alesse— but it’s far from a cure. Even though I’ve mostly had my PMDD under control the past few years, I was curious to see if microdosing edibles would help me take my symptoms from tolerable to non-existent. Maybe I could feel like myself for the whole month instead of only one or two weeks. Maybe marijuana was finally the thing that would work.

At the party, my partner and I decided to do edibles together. So I didn’t have a repeat of laughing at the TV for hours and throwing up the rest of the night, I split mine in half with a friend. While I’d been annoyed hours before at my boyfriend for doing something I no longer remember, once the edible kicked in a couple hours later, I started to feel much more relaxed and super into him. After the party, we went back to my place and made up — which felt amazing. Let’s just say marijuana makes you more sensitive everywhere.

While I admit I was a little too high for comfort that time, I had a chance to get the dose right when I decided to microdose edibles a week later. I spent hours on the couch as that’s all I could manage — and when I had to run errands, I couldn’t stand being around anyone. That night I decided to just take a bite of an edible instead of of half, and a couple hours later I went from a raging, irritable bitch to a curled up, happy kitten. I’m not kidding — I smiled ear to ear the rest of the night. It was impossible not to be in a good mood. I spent most of that week taking a bite of an edible each day, watching Netflix and eating too much takeout — what I would have done any way, except I spent that time sexting people instead of crying.

On the weekend, I was still feeling awful — but I was super restless from spending so much time at home. There was a cool party I was invited to, so I took a bite of an edible, and a couple hours later I was at the party dancing. As a side note, I wasn’t able to really talk to anyone because my thought processing was slowed down, but my anxiety was gone. This is probably because the type of weed was CBD Dream, which has 80% Indica and 20% Sativa. As another side note, I saw some people who were dressed up as animals, and yelled, “ Is this a Halloween party?!” when it was already into November…so the ability to think before I spoke might have been delayed as well.

It’s been a couple weeks and I’m feeling much better mentally, so I’ve stopped microdosing edibles for now. I don’t plan on using marijuana often for my mood as I prefer natural treatments like exercise and eating whole foods, but it’s good to know that if I ever do need to function through an extreme mood it’s an option. To those who have mental health issues, as well as a loss of sensation sexually or take longer to orgasm because of antidepressants, microding edibles might be an option for you. They can also be used for pain from cramps or endometriosis. There are many different brands of marijuana, so I’m looking forward to trying various ones in the future as it becomes legalized in Canada next year.