Written by Cannabis for PTSD, ADHD, Depression, & Pain – Franks Thoughts Were Eating Him Alive – Literally:
“I’m 43, I grew up with mentall illness – Bipolar 2, PTSD, Seasonal Affective Disorder, and ADHD. I didn’t mentally fit in with the little kids growing up, the parents and teachers never quite understood me. At 17, I used cannabis after a big depressive episode. It took all my mental pain away and allowed me to feel normal and to not worry for weeks about suicide. I noticed the other people in my teenage circle who used cannabis would fall asleep or play video games, basically lay around and talk. It made me motivated to work, play, talk and not be depressed, I felt great!
I told my doctor at my youthful age of 18, the same doctor I have now, that cannabis works better on my depression instead of mental crazy pills. He laughed and laughed and told me “It does not help, it’s a bad drug”, or something of that nature. He then prescribed more mental crazy pills because my current medicine didn’t work. I had to move on with life. My ex wanted to move back to Texas in 2001. I had to restart my career again. I got a job as a county corrections officer, then 9/11 – the World Trade Center attack happened and we moved back to Washington state again because my ex didn’t like Texas anymore. I then went into the Army Reserve to offer my service even though I was on 10 different crazy pills at the time. The Military didn’t care when I showed them my bag of pills, they made notes in my charts but didn’t care. There was no interview of any type to see if I was fit to serve.
I was about 5 months into being a weekend warrior when my unit got activated to go to Iraq.
I showed the doctors my crazy pills they got mad at me and told me I must have hidden the fact of these pills from them I said No, that it was in my file. They checked and it was. They then shut up about me being a liar and I went to see an army doctor for a mental evaluation.
When he was done making sure I was really crazy in their opinion, he told me “We’re sending you home, you out of the military, no need to go back to your unit”. I was done just like that, no official discharge papers and no accurate record, it’s not in my military paperwork like it should be. It just doesn’t explain things.
My ex wife then told me she was leaving me to be with my old boss from a tow truck company I used to work at that she currently works at now, so I went even more mental and went to a bad place and took even more pills.
We got divorced and I was now a weekend dad. I stopped the pills because they screwed me up – all of them screwed my mind and body. I started smoking Cannabis, not smoking all the time, just when my illness went goofy to stop my crazy thoughts and it worked. I had lots of odd jobs and I felt really mentally better when I couldn’t find Cannabis and I drank beer to stop my illness. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into with alcohol.
I did this dance for about the next 6 years gained some weight from the beer and poor eating choices – all the way to 260 pounds! I got a job at the same prison I had worked at previously, but now I was in the warehouse.
By 2013 my kids were almost adults, my mental illness was really messing with me but I held on for the medical benefits for my kids and the finances. In 2014 I met my future wife.
It took me a year of working side by side with her to ask her out to eat because i had to make sure she was going to accept my type of crazy! She’s the only woman I’ve been able to trust with my mental illness. We get along great and there’s never any yelling! I needed that and I needed it bad. She said It was ok that I used cannabis to help myself. She had seen my illness by then and was more than happy to see me medicated!
In 2016 I got my cannabis card for PTSD, and boy did it help. No more random parinioa! It cut down on my back, neck, migraine pain, but still, the crowds and people bug me, it does not stop that part for me. Skip up to now, I left the prison warehouse job and pulled my retirement.
My kids are 17 and 19 now and can handle themselves for the most part. I thought I left my job because I was sick of it, but now – it was mental illness hiding in my head. I can’t deal with random people too well, so I applied for disability and have been using CBD and THC edible mainly to stop my illness from killing me. Over the past 10 years, I’ve been rear-ended in car wrecks and have had 3 different insurance claims for the same back area and cannabis helps amazingly with that chronic pain, It kinda makes you forget it bothers you.
Funny thing is that my doctor, from age 17 that I still see today 26 or so years later, now agrees with me that Cannabis helps and does not hurt, It’s kinda ironic with all his medical studies. I knew then, and know now even more than he does about how cannabis helps people.”
Thank you for reading my story,
Frank Hammons, Seattle Washington
Wow, there’s no reason to add to this one,
Mike Robinson, Medicinal Cannabis Patient
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