Quick Tips #23: Weaning Off Antidepressants With Cannabis?

Question: “I just finished & loved your 'INFX Unveiled' webinar. Thank you so much for all the work that you do, and I'm happy to be on the waiting list for your group calls coming up! I'm wondering what your perspective is on healing and psychotropic, specifically cannabis. I am currently on a low dose of antidepressant for persistent social anxiety, but now that I understand myself better, I am wondering if I will need the antidepressant, or if I have just been so profoundly misunderstood by myself and others that it has generated anxiety. I want to be careful and not move too quickly, and I understand that you're not a doctor, but I am wondering if there is a common narrative among INFJs with anxiety and moving beyond antidepressants. I have a vision of experimenting with detoxing completely from the antidepressants and using weekly, planned cannabis sessions to heal and get perspective on my healing. Any words of caution or direction? Thanks so much!"

What a great question.

Thank you for that and thank you for your reflections on the INFx Unveiled program as well as the webinars that we are doing with them. Can’t wait to have you on the extra calls.

Firstly, I’m neither anti cannabis nor pro cannabis. My personal opinion about any substance that induces a certain reaction in our bodies is this:

If you put something in your body that’s not naturally there to induce a specific reaction, you need to understand what you are doing. And you need to accept the risk that comes with it.

So, know what you are doing. Have awareness of what is happening around you. When you have that awareness, you have all the power.

I personally don’t take anything to induce a specific trigger, or specific feeling in me apart from the occasional glass of wine. For me that is basically to stop me from over engaging in life and then running myself down.

Secondly, when it comes to weaning yourself off antidepressants, what I can tell you is this:

Most people who do the self-parenting work, naturally wean off their antidepressant, because they are getting so much more comfortable in themselves. Their inner parenting starts to kick and get stronger so they have much less social or other anxiety, fears and all those kinds of things.

With self-parenting people generally become the masters of their thoughts and the antidepressants just naturally fall away.

I’m not suggesting you get rid of your medication, but do your inner-parenting work and see if your doctor still feels it’s necessary for you to have the antidepressants.

Thirdly, in terms using cannabis for healing, it’s really hard to say whether it works or not.

How people respond to cannabis varies. Some people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or other severe stress conditions have found it been helpful.

If you live in a country where cannabis is legal, I really recommend that you go to somebody who has specific experience with cannabis. Find a psychotherapist or another health care professional who has used cannabis in a medicinal way in order to get a specific reaction or response from your body. Have them assess your situation and help planning sessions, if that’s the way you want to go.

Finally, I’m not a specialist in medicinal use of substances, but what I can say is we don’t actually need substances to get a response from our body.

We have access to all of our consciousness when we have access to our bodies and our cellular memory.

The key to this is self-parenting, regular meditation and tapping into your body through stretching. Try spending time in nature and around water or book sessions in a floatation tank.

I really recommend not to rely on just one healing strategy, but to use several simultaneously to help you through this time.

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