Education makes all the difference

That's my life, daily.  For the larger part of the day you'll find me pleasantly lifted and happy.  Few people are ever aware that I'm high, which is good because most people tend to treat you differently if they know you're even just a little bit high. That gets annoying pretty quick.

A lot of people make a lot of assumptions about people who use cannabis, even if they don't realize they've made an assumption, that they've bought into the stereotypes. Everyone knows stoners are lazy, don't think quickly, can't handle complex thoughts competently, forget everything and stay melted to the couch  eating cheese curls and brownies. While I think everyone who enjoys MJ has had smoking sessions that have left us couch-locked (ohhh Indicas, how we love you!), giggly and ravenous, that's not what being stoned is always like.

Many people don't understand the complexity of cannabis, and that's because the vast majority is uneducated about pot, another sad side effect of this blasted prohibition. Before I began smoking regularly  I was uneducated too.  I thought all pot was the same- it was "just pot", right? I didn't understand the different effects from different strains. I had no idea what indica meant, I had only ever heard of cannabis sativa. But I remedied my ignorance, I educated myself. I learned that sativas give you a head high and indicas give a body high. Even better: there are hybrid strains that give varying degrees of head and body high! Holy crap, what?! That was a great discovery, my mind was blown. Even better, there are a bajillion different strains within the different subspecies which have their own  positive and negative aspects. Also, how mild or strong your high is depends on how much you smoke and your tolerence. But what does all that mean?

It means we can tailor our use of weed to suit our lives, rather than just get high and need a spatula to peel ourselves off the couch. It means, if I'm educated about the strains I have available to me I can use them to enhance my life, rather than just exist in a stoned stupor. I can take a couple puffs of a sativa-dominant hybrid, like Bubblegum and play with my kids, clean my house, knit outside in the backyard and best of all, I'm less likely to succumb to the stresses of daily life as a rather isolated stay at home mom, less likely to get irritable with my kids, and less likely to feel overwhelmed by all the housework (clean ALL the things!).  On the other side of the coin, if I want to really chill after a stressful day or week, I know I can blaze a bowl or two of some Bubba Kush and within moments feel all the tension drain from my muscles,  be able to see the funny in the mundane and I'll sleep like a baby.

Yes, if I smoked an indica strain by the bowlful all day long I'd probably be pretty useless for a lot of things. I know not to do that though, I know which weed to use, when and in what amounts. That's the important factor here:  knowing how to use marijuana responsibly.  Knowledge is the difference between just living stoned and using marijuana to enhance our lives.