Life Without Sleep, No Life at All

This Huff Post article just came out discussing what sleep-deprivation does to a person. It got me thinking about one of the major driving forces behind my cannabis use and something that has literally changed my life for the better. For the lion’s share of my pre-cannabis life, I suffered from severe insomnia.

There were times when I wouldn’t be able to sleep for 3-4 days at a time, not one wink of rest. Most of the time, however, my insomnia manifested as a severe shortage of sleep. I would be lucky to get one full hour a night, and that usually came in 15-20 minute increments.

Alex Grey’s “Insomnia”

As humans, we are supremely adaptable. I had grown up with this insomnia, I had never known anything else. I would get frustrated as a child when sleeping over at a friend’s house because they would go to bed and fall asleep in minutes when I would lay awake for hours on end trying to will myself to sleep. It didn’t work. As I grew up, I just sort of accepted that this was my life. I was just going to be a waking zombie, stumbling through my life in a daze of exhaustion.

The first time I got nice and stoned I was 19 years old. I had smoked a little here and there throughout my high school days, but never really inhaled well or had enough to really even notice it. The first time I got high was my first bong hit. Sitting around a campfire with my buddy, a seasoned weed smoker who helped me with the mechanics enough to where all I had to do was breathe in. I remember looking at my friend and asking, “how do I know it’s working?” He just smiled and laughed at me. Minutes later, I had absentmindedly eaten an entire bag of Doritos and was half way through a box of powdered donuts, clearly high as a kite. My friend then stared at my face and mockingly said, “how do I know if it’s working?” I absolutely lost it. I was laughing clouds of powdered sugar all over myself and loving every second.

That was fun, but what really made me a believer and lifelong cannabis consumer was what that same friend referred to as the “coveted weed-nap.” I fell asleep so fast and so deep and slept for over 12 hours. When I woke up, it was one of the best days of my life. I actually logged some sound rest and my body felt brand new and freshly charged. That was it for me, that’s when I officially became a weed smoker.

It works. It’s safe. I had tried every conceivable medication and homeopathic remedy for insomnia and got absolutely nowhere, sometimes I got worse. Consider what sleep-deprivation does to a person. Consider that I have heard from multiple doctors that medicated sleep is better than no sleep. Consider that your body can only really heal and grow when you are sleeping. It is a no-brainer on my end: cannabis was my silver bullet to insomnia.

The thing that upsets me is that insomnia is a very real, very dangerous condition and it is very common, especially in our work-first, beat the competition American culture and it is not covered under MMJ applicable conditions. I suspect they did this as a way of making it harder for the bullshitters out there to just say, “yeah, I have insomnia gimme my weed.” As someone who found a veritable cure for zombification in cannabis I can wholeheartedly say that without sleep, life is just not enjoyable and I think it should be on the list of MMJ treatable conditions.

Extrapolate what proper sleep might mean for the health and happiness of our fellow people and it could potentially be a great boon toward achieving a peaceful atmosphere.