Weed Lifestyle

It is widely agreed that the harder you drive (stress) your car, the faster it breaks down. Our bodies are not so different.

The harder you use your body, the greater the wear, the faster parts of you stop working as well as they could. To be sure, there is an unavoidable and inevitable slowing down that comes with age and time. Hormonal fluctuations, cell division, loss of bone density are normal and predictable.  There are, however, a multitude of stressors over which we can exhibit a degree of control.  One such stressor is what is generically called “stress.”  We all have claimed to be “stressed out” at some point in our lives. Stress, as I use the term, is sort of an umbrella statement that encompasses anxiety, fear, sadness, anger, doubt–basically all the shit Yoda warns Luke about when facing himself-as-Vader on Dagobah.  These elements of our psyche create a state of mental disquiet that, if sustained for too long, manifest as pain and illness in our corporeal selves.

Physiologically, stress causes our bodies to dump cortisol and adrenaline into our bloodstream. This is what our 10th grade Health teachers referred to as your “fight or flight” response.  Now, this is very handy survival feature. If you’re smoking a joint in the woods and a grizzly bear with a shotgun pops out and says “run, Mother F#%&er,” those stress hormones are what allows you to run far and fast to safety.  However, once the threat (stressor) has subsided, our bodies return to a state of relaxed peace (sometimes known as the “feed or breed” state).

When we are in a state of prolonged mental turmoil, we remain in that “fight or flight” hormone dump.  Effectively, your body is burning the candle at both ends; without time spent in rest and relaxation, there is no opportunity for your system to flush out and regain homeostasis.  Inflammation is one of the physical markers of stress and is present with (if not the cause of) many painful symptoms.

Personally, I have found two behaviors to be of tremendous relief from stress: yoga and cannabis.

stress Source: http://twistedsifter.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/jade-mountain-st-lucia-infinity-pool-every-room-22.jpg

Yoga, without the intention, may as well be termed Eastern Calisthenics. Yes, the physical movements and breathing exercises provide a boon to circulation and a release of endorphins is always pleasant. But it is the unseen, yet deeply felt, calm that truly dissolves stress. It dissolves it by helping us to realize that stress only has the power we grant it.  When I was studying to be a yoga teacher, my instructor often said, “stress is not real if we do not react to it.”  By focusing on your breath, you are focusing on something actually happening in the present moment.  To truly focus on one thing is to be blind to all others.  By focusing on your breath, you are at least temporarily detached from the racetrack of stressful thoughts that normally occupy the mind.  Peace exists in the quiet moments between thoughts; with practice we can learn to spend more of our mental time in that space.

Cannabis also offers a break from stress in a similar way.  It is important to note that I am not in any capacity saying that you can just go get high and you’ll have the same experience as a great yoga class–although I often combine the two! The struggles and discipline found in yoga are not exactly mirrored in cannabis. Weed, however, can greatly diminish the intensity of the stress and help it seem smaller in my eyes. Cannabis is a time-shortener of sorts. I know that when I am upset, there is a cycle of negative emotion that I need to process in order to chill my ass out and look at the causes with a calmer mind. Smoking some pot can help me wade through the negativity and I am able to get to the resolution phase of the problem sooner.

In a society that rushes for pharmaceuticals as a form of managing symptoms, I would urge you to give some yoga and/or some marijuana a shot.