Cannabis and Morality: The Right Questions

3 Shares

I still remember shaking as I picked up the phone to call home.

I was just caught smoking weed at my high school. I remember glancing up at the Police Officer standing in the corner of the principals’ office as I dialed. As scared as I was of him, it was my dad I was truly afraid of.

I was usually pretty good at getting out of trouble. This time was different. Long story short, my friends and I were caught on videotape smoking on the school campus during school hours. They even invited our parents to come to watch the film. The only thing worse would have been if they sold popcorn and candy to the event. This was bad.

I come from a deeply religious family. Our lives were expected to reflect the ideals we were taught and believed in. Rolling up a joint was not on the official list of biblically sanctioned events. A quiet gasp followed by thick silence was all my mom could muster to get out in those first few seconds. The shame I felt at that moment was incredible. I had let my parents down. I had let myself down. I had let my God down.

Cannabis was always presented to me as a sin, a true grievance to God. Marijuana was a drug and any use of it was wrong. In the way I was taught to see the world, even thinking about using it was wrong.

My perspective began to change many years later when I was diagnosed with Lyme and began treatment of the disease. I kept stumbling across articles discussing healing or relief from the symptoms of Lyme while using cannabis. I decided to give it a try.

My first experience was the worst. I picked up an edible from the local dispensary and ate half a cookie. I figured I would be fine since I had smoked in high school. No such luck. In a little over an hour, I turned from a heart full of hopeful excitement into thick disappointment. I sat there half-melted into the couch for what felt like an eternity. This was not the experience I had hoped for.

Years of questioning followed. Is cannabis use right or wrong? I would have good results followed by poor results. I would feel like it was working just to feel like I was making excuses for my use. It became truly nauseating at times. I would get sick to my stomach agonizing over the morality of using marijuana. The culture that shaped my beliefs towards this plant had scared me off it, yet I still found such relief and improvement while using it. Was I tricking myself just so I could get ‘high’? Is that what I was truly doing?

Fast forward to today and life looks a little different. I manage a company that creates CBD products and cannabis use has become a daily part of my self-care. Cannabis has replaced the over 60 pills a day I was taking. I use cannabis for depression, to help me sleep, to stimulate my appetite, to lower seizure activity, and many more symptoms. As a person with a chronic illness, cannabis has become a lifesaver for me and my go-to medicine.

I have realized that the world isn’t quite as black and white as I once thought it was. Maybe sometimes we are just asking the wrong questions. The question “Is Cannabis use right or wrong?” is misleading.

The answer is truly paradoxical because the answer is “yes” to both questions. Cannabis use is definitely right or morally acceptable for me. It is a plant. One that has replaced my need for the pills which once seemed to rule my life. It is a common-sense, respectable choice of treatment. However, it is also “wrong” for me when my usage or my dosage is predicated by my frustration level with life, attempting to escape, or my felt inability to cope without it.

When this happens, I find myself taking my usage into dangerous areas. Dangerous because when cannabis is seen as an answer, or more appropriately the answer to my problems, my life falls out of balance. Balance really is the key, isn’t it? For me, it is no longer about the question of “should”. That question stopped working for me and I had to come up with new questions which took me deeper into myself and reality.

Why am I using cannabis right now? Am I angry? Escaping? In pain? When am I using it? Do I have a legitimate need or is it just to numb myself? How am I using it? Is my dosage appropriate to my need? Is my recreational use at a good level?

Yes and no, black/white questions such as “should” always limit my available answers and come loaded with assumptions. One of these assumptions is that the answer today will be the same answer tomorrow. The reality is that the answer changes, It shifts. For a person with chronic illness, the dosage is an ever-changing target. I am not alone in this. Each one of our lives contains shifts up and down, forward, and back. Each moment is a new chance to ask fresh questions.

Over the years my beliefs have constantly shifted and grown. That is what they are supposed to do. None of us really have the answers and we are all in this thing together. Let us stop judging one another. Every perspective has value. It will take cooperation and humility to move forward and grow as people. We need each other precisely because we see the world differently, not the opposite.

Is cannabis use moral? Yes. And no. I say we stop asking questions that divide and start asking better questions…questions that take us past archaic ideas of right and wrong and into new ways of seeing. Personally, my sight becomes more clear when I am led by silence, truth, and self-contemplation.

Roll one up, pass it to a friend, and join me on this journey…

–Lonnie Graves, Content Specialist – GCRC Publications