When I first heard about CBD, I was skeptical to say the least. I assumed that it just the newest way adults were getting high — just through a socially acceptable, fancy oil instead of the bong they had to leave back in their college days.
For those of us who are inherently anxious, marijuana isn’t always the best option. For some, it can help with anxiety, but for others (ahem, me) it can make you feel insane and super paranoid — no thanks, I’ll stick to margaritas and sangria!
A brief history of me: I’ve always been super neurotic — like, if my pediatrician put me on a neuroticism chart when I came out of the womb, I’d be 99th percentile, and he’d say “Why is this infant obsessively writing to-do lists in her baby planner?”
My neuroticism has helped me in a lot of ways, so I can’t completely hate it — it’s responsible for a lot of my diligence and my knack for organization — but sometimes, I want to turn it off. When I’m about to go out with friends or have a night alone binging a true crime series, I don’t want to be thinking about all of the things I want to get done, or that I should wake up at 6am to work out the next day. I want to turn the Type-A-ness off, and just enjoy myself — but for me, that’s always been easier said than done.
With the help of my doctor, I’ve been able to get a good handle on my anxiety that I didn’t have before. But even with help, it’s still a part of my life — I know that it’s my cross to bear, but it’s also what makes me me. I will never not be an inherently anxious person, but even with management of it, there are days that I can’t completely get ahold of it.
For those days, I found my solution: the thing I was previously the most skeptical about, CBD. One of my friends had a bottle of it at her apartment, and offered to let me try it one day after work. I had nothing to lose, so I bit the bullet. I expected to hate it, but about an hour after I took it, I realized I hadn’t even thought about it — nor had I thought about the things that were making me anxious. I just felt completely neutral — not altered in any way, just free of the pit in my stomach that was there previously. It literally felt like a miracle.
Since, I’ve began using CBD regularly — when my mind is going 100mph and doesn’t seem to be hitting the breaks anytime soon, I take a few drops, and it has made a world of difference. I will say this until I’m blue in the face: it does not make you high — and as a gal who cannot tolerate that feeling, I can completely vouch for this. “Neutral” is truly the best way I know how to describe it. It doesn’t sedate me or make me feel any unnatural sense of calm, it just brings me back down to neutral — which is exactly where I want to be sometimes.
One downside of it is that I personally cannot take it at night — if I do, I get nightmares all night long and wake up absolutely frazzled. But when I stick to it before 5pm, I’ve had no complaints. If oil isn’t your thing, there are gummies that you can take that do the same thing without the gross taste — win, win.
My Favorite CBD
I've tried a few different CBD oils, and this one is my favorite. It's a bit more concentrated, so you only need a few drops.
