My Long, Hidden Relationship With Cannabis

I was a college freshman, freshly out from under the rule of stern, controlling, and abusive parents, and for the first time in my life I had room to breathe.

Somewhere in that first taste of freedom, I was introduced to marijuana – as we called it then. Or weed. Or dope. Or grass.

I’m 70 now, and these days I use the word cannabis. Age, it seems, brings both perspective and better terminology.

At first, it was part of the social scenery: joints passed in circles, shared laughter, the standard performance of young people trying on coolness and depth at the same time.

But very quickly, I realized the plant was doing something for me that had nothing to do with fitting in.

When I used cannabis alone, it soothed me. Though I didn’t have the vocabulary for it then, I had instinctively found my own plant medicine for trauma.

It took the edge off the anxiety, anger, self-doubt, and sadness that had been with me for years. Back then, my nervous system rarely seemed at ease. I woke with tension already humming in the background. I carried it through the day. I went to sleep with it still there.

Cannabis did not make everything better, but it made my inner life more manageable.

Long before medical cannabis was dressed up in the language of wellness, or policy reform, it had become exactly that for me: my medicine. Even then, I intuitively knew I was relying on plant medicine for trauma, although society viewed it very differently.

I have often thought it may be one reason I sidestepped the prescription culture of those decades. Valium was everywhere. Then came the antidepressant era… Prozac and the rest of the SSRI family… sweeping in during the late 1980s and after.

Those drugs have helped many people, and I do not dismiss that. But they also carry costs we understand more clearly now: cognitive dulling, emotional flattening, suicidal ideation for some, and that strange inner deadening where the anxiety may lift but so does the brightness of being alive.

Cannabis spared me from that route.

That does not mean it was simple.

For me, using cannabis in those years meant living a split life.

There was the outer life: competent, professional, respectable.

And then there was the hidden one: sourcing, concealing, arranging, staying careful.

Buying cannabis was rarely elegant. I remember cramped kitchens, dim living rooms, and men who looked as though they had been issued from central casting under the category of “questionable but functional.” An ounce weighed out on an ancient balance scale. A paper sack with a rolled baggie inside. My stash tucked away like contraband because, of course, that’s exactly what it was back then.

You took what was available. And mostly, you were grateful to get it.

The War on Drugs was ugly theater, and I moved through it with more protection than many others simply because I looked like someone the culture was less likely to suspect. I know that. But even with that privilege, there was always risk, always the faint sense that what helped me most had to remain unspoken.

Still, once I knew what cannabis could do for me, I was not about to walk away from it.

For decades, it remained the thing that steadied me.

And it accompanied me into every chapter of adult life.

After college, I went into journalism and then television news. During my senior year, I landed a weather slot at a local station:“Becky the Weather Girl,” which sounds quaint now, and in many ways it was. It was also television, so naturally it came with hairspray, urgency, and immaculately groomed anchormen speaking with extraordinary confidence.

To be clear, I did not work high. Cannabis eased my anxiety, but it also slowed the crisp, linear thinking I needed on the job. Live television is built for quick thinking, not contemplative drifting. But because THC is stored in fat and can linger in the body, it was most always in my system.

My routine was evening use: after work, after the adrenaline, after the “performance”. That was when I would smoke, calm my body, and sleep.

While coworkers went out for drinks, I went home to commune with the plant.

That may sound dramatic, but “commune” is the closest language I have. Alcohol took me away from myself. Cannabis brought me nearer.

But that relationship required stealth.

I learned to be discreet. In every city where I worked, there always seemed to be one person in the newsroom ecosystem, a producer, photographer, or fellow reporter, who knew someone who knew someone. That was how things moved back then.

And the secrecy did not stop at work.

In my first marriage, my husband knew nothing about my “cannabis life.” Nothing. I didn’t tell him until I was already preparing to leave. Which, frankly, tells its own story about both the marriage and the level of compartmentalization I had mastered.

By then, concealment was second nature. Cannabis was so socially discredited and legally dangerous that it shaped not only how I used it, but how I organized myself around it. Who I told. Who I didn’t. Where I could relax. Where I could not.

For a long time, this arrangement held.

Or more truthfully: it held well enough.

Cannabis helped me sleep. It helped regulate my unruly emotions. It took the edge off the emotional turbulence that made ordinary life feel heavier than it should have.

But eventually I had to face something more difficult.

Relief is not the same thing as peace.

For years, cannabis helped me feel better.

But the better feeling didn’t last.

Once the high passed, the difficult inner weather came back. The anxiety returned. The emotional noise returned. And after a while, temporary relief began to feel like too small a win.

I no longer wanted symptom management alone.

I wanted resolution. Healing. Change at the root.

I began to realize that true healing would require a deeper, more intentional approach to using plant medicine for trauma.

So I began searching in earnest.

I tried therapy. One psychiatrist told me my brain would rot from cannabis use, a statement memorable mostly for its complete lack of subtlety. I did find talk therapy satisfying. It felt good to be heard, even if the listening was billable.

But it did not move the deeper material. It did not explain why my emotions were so unruly, or why so much of what I carried seemed tied to trauma.

At one point I went back to school and trained in clinical nutrition, eventually becoming a registered dietitian. It made sense to me then: perhaps if I cleaned up the body, the mind would settle. And nutrition absolutely matters. Better food, supplements, steadier blood sugar, less inflammation, these things can support a person profoundly.

They can also make you look like you’ve got your life together.

But trauma, as I eventually learned, is not especially impressed by leafy greens.

So I kept going.

By the late 1990s, I was turning toward spiritual practice in search of something deeper. I studied Shambhala meditation. I explored Kabbalah. I worked with secular mindfulness.

Again and again, the promise seemed to be some version of the same thing: sit quietly, go inward, and inner peace will come.

For some, sitting quietly does lead to inner peace.

For me, it led to a front-row seat for more mental commotion. Silence was not soothing. It was confrontational.

When I sat still, I did not find serenity. I found pounding thoughts, dissociation, and the discomfort of being face to face with emotional pain I did not know how to process. For a long time I interpreted that as failure. I thought perhaps I simply lacked discipline, or depth, or whatever elusive quality seemed to make quiet practice restorative for others.

Only later did I understand that I was not defective. It was the imprint of trauma.

And later still, when I began teaching, I discovered how many other people had made the same mistake, assuming their difficulty with silence meant they were doing something wrong, when in fact their systems simply needed support.

That realization mattered.

What I had once judged in myself was not a personal flaw. It was a human struggle shared by countless others.

Somewhere underneath all of this, though, something in me kept moving forward. A small, insistent knowing. A quiet voice that said: This is not all there is. You have not failed. You just have not yet found what can truly meet you.

And as strange as it may sound, I believe cannabis, in its guise as a spirit plant, helped awaken that voice – or perhaps helped me hear the voice of my own soul more clearly.

Everything changed in 2014.

That was the year I encountered Emotional Liberation®, the method created by GM Khalsa, a yoga therapist, life coach, and longtime Kundalini Yoga teacher whose work led him to develop this approach grounded in what he recognized as the intelligence of emotion.

For the first time, my experience made sense in a new way.

I learned that emotions are not random disruptions, and definitely not evidence that something is broken in us. They offer intuitive knowing. They are part of an exquisitely sensitive human guidance system. They point. They signal.

They reveal what needs attention, what has been unresolved, what may still be living in the body long after the traumatizing events themselves have passed.

What Emotional Liberation® gave me was not just a new idea about emotion. It gave me a way to work with it.

Not merely to discuss what I felt.
Not merely to soothe it.
Not merely to survive it.
But to deliberately evoke, process, and release it.

I first learned what emotions are and why they matter. Then, with strong provocative verbal prompts, expressive movement, specific hand positions, and breath as a support, I learned how to access the unseen inner material that had been shaping so much of my suffering. I began to work not only with the emotions themselves, but with the trauma beneath them.

And this is where cannabis re-entered the story in a completely new way.

It ceased to be only a source of comfort.

It became a healing ally.

What I discovered was that cannabis, used intentionally and within the container of this emotional work, could help me go further. It helped hidden feelings rise more clearly into awareness. It deepened my body’s responsiveness. It made it easier to remain present with material that, in the past, had felt too defended, too painful, or too slippery to stay with.

This did not mean the plant replaced the work.

It supported the work.

That distinction matters.

GM himself did not work with outside substances. And yet, to his credit, he saw the value in what I was discovering with the cannabis-based adaptation. He honored the path I was developing.

As I began working with others, I saw that I was not alone in finding cannabis a meaningful support. Many of my students and clients responded to this pairing in ways that were strikingly similar to my own experience.

Over time, psilocybin also emerged as a supportive ally for some, helping deepen access to this emotional work. Witnessing these profound shifts solidified my belief in the real power of plant medicine for trauma. When held in a safe, intentional container, it truly changes everything.

The impact of this work was so profound that I committed to a four-year course of study with GM. I trained extensively in the therapeutic process of working with emotion because I wanted to understand this work deeply and offer it responsibly.

That choice changed my life.

Now, when I guide others, I bring the whole of my own path into the room: the anxiety and self-worth issue, the years of searching through therapy, nutrition, and spiritual practice, and finally the discovery that emotions are not enemies to suppress but messengers to work with.

Cannabis is not essential to this work. But for many people, it can be a valuable support. Used intentionally and with proper guidance, it can help quiet defenses, deepen awareness, and make emotional processing more accessible.

That, ultimately, is what this is about: reconnecting with the deeply resourced self, the part of us that holds resilience, wisdom, and the capacity to heal.

That understanding lives at the center of my monthly Elevation Ceremony, a complimentary online gathering where I guide participants through a process of turning inward, moving emotion, and reconnecting with the part of themselves that already knows how to heal.

You are welcome to participate with cannabis if that feels supportive to you, and you are equally welcome to come without it. The work does not depend on the plant. It depends on willingness, presence, and the courage to meet what is ready to move. Click here for more details and to register for our next one.

With Love,

Becca

P.S. There are moments when what we need most is not another insight, but a sacred container in which the soul can speak and the body can release what it has been holding. If you feel ready for that, I would be honored to welcome you. Read more and register here.