I suffer from clinical depression. I have chronic fatigue that causes me to stay in bed for upwards of 16-18 hours at a time. My mood swings and anxiety are so severe that without marijuana to inhibit and normalize my emotions I would cause serious damage to myself or my property. My normal life is just fluctuations between extreme anxiety, crushing depression, and blind rage.
That's why I started growing weed. Every time I can't control my emotions and I think I'm going to hurt or cut myself, a hit off the vape or a joint sends me right back into my happy place, and I am able to move on with my day. I have been on 8 different antidepressants, none of them have had a single positive affect, only negative side affects.
In 2009 I was arrested for growing 6 plants for my own consumption (I live in Texas.) The case was an ordeal that lasted almost a year and almost drove me to suicide. How can I do community service when my depression barely lets me go to school? When I can't even hold a job because I can't wake up until 5pm? Since then I have spent thousands of dollars on weed before finally starting up a new grow; realizing that I cannot live without it, but can't afford it.
Three days ago I received notice that there is a warrant out for my arrest. When I was arrested and charged with possession in 2009, I was also given a citation for drug paraphernalia that was never brought to my attention, and apparently my lawyer never handled it either. I owe $564 for failure to appear and bail jumping. I can be arrested at home, work, or school.
I drove to my lawyer's office, and he wasn't there. I called the school health clinic to schedule an appointment and they're busy. I broke down on the way home realizing I was alone.
I now look at what may very well be my last sane, controllable moments before the end. Between my medication, school, weed, and living expenses, I have no money left. In my grinder is .2 grams of the remaining marijuana I can get. Enough to keep me high for about an hour. Since receiving notice of my warrant my depression has progressed further than I could imagine. I haven't left the house or eaten in 3 days until this morning. My mind feels like it's in a cloud or a dream, like I've lost grasp on what's real anymore and what's not. I woke up today not knowing if it was morning or evening.
What absolutely kills me is that this .2 grams I've smoked could very well be the difference between me seeing my next birthday or being found next week in my bed with a plastic bag duct taped over my head. I feel calmer, my thinking is clearer, I feel like I will actually survive today. But in 1 hour once that high disappears I know what is coming. It's the anguish I felt on the drive home this morning. That nagging feeling in the back of my head looking at the knife on the kitchen counter, knowing that it could be hours before I'm running it along my legs, trying to distract myself from the debilitating emotional pain with physical.
The worst of it is that today I feel I have finally lost faith, and given up. Like most Americans, I wanted to believe that logic, reason, and common sense would prevail in all things. But as has been said so many times before, one need look no further than the marijuana prohibition beginning all the way back in 1937 to know that nothing makes fucking sense anymore.
That someone like myself whose medical condition permits me barely any recognizable form of a normal life; someone whose quality of life is measured in the number of suicidal thoughts in an hour; who is afraid to sleep because of night terrors; afraid to leave bed because there isn't a point to live; who has watched every academic, career, and romantic dream in their life shattered; who already knows the only thing to look forward to is a life of empty goals and regret; that someone like ME can be punished for simply trying to stay alive? For trying to enjoy some sort of quality of life that isn't so unbearable I'd rather terminate my entire existence than suffer another second of hell? This goes against every moral fiber of my being. I cannot accept the fact that I live in a society so cold and callous that it would shamelessly and unabashedly inflict pain, pain so intense and inescapable that suicide is the only reasonable choice in a person's mind, and yet here I am.
Broke from my disease, broke from my state, broke from my country. And still they want more. And I find that I am left with a terrible choice. I either pay the court, go without weed and eventually kill myself; or I can buy more weed to prolong my life until I'm eventually arrested at which point my life will officially be over, leaving me with no choice but to kill myself anyway as soon as I'm released.
All roads lead to the same path. I feel as if the courts are backing me into a corner, giving me no alternative but to kill myself like it's some sort of sick state sanctioned execution. And the worst thing is I want it. I would rather take the fucking duct tape and plastic bag over the choices I'm being presented by my government, a body that is supposed to be representative of its constituents like ME. Fuck protest, fuck martyrdom, fuck making a point. The fact that someone in my condition is being treated the way they are is a significant indication that something is WRONG. I am LITERALLY DYING, my depression is reaching a severity where it soon may become TERMINAL. And the harbinger of my pain and suffering are the laws and policies set forth by this state, put in place to PROTECT ME!
I give up. The fucking end of the rope.
William B. Travis, the Texas commander at the Alamo, signed his letters, "Victory or Death!" I believe I speak for medical cannabis patients across the world when I proclaim:
MARIJUANA OR DEATH!
That's why I started growing weed. Every time I can't control my emotions and I think I'm going to hurt or cut myself, a hit off the vape or a joint sends me right back into my happy place, and I am able to move on with my day. I have been on 8 different antidepressants, none of them have had a single positive affect, only negative side affects.
In 2009 I was arrested for growing 6 plants for my own consumption (I live in Texas.) The case was an ordeal that lasted almost a year and almost drove me to suicide. How can I do community service when my depression barely lets me go to school? When I can't even hold a job because I can't wake up until 5pm? Since then I have spent thousands of dollars on weed before finally starting up a new grow; realizing that I cannot live without it, but can't afford it.
Three days ago I received notice that there is a warrant out for my arrest. When I was arrested and charged with possession in 2009, I was also given a citation for drug paraphernalia that was never brought to my attention, and apparently my lawyer never handled it either. I owe $564 for failure to appear and bail jumping. I can be arrested at home, work, or school.
I drove to my lawyer's office, and he wasn't there. I called the school health clinic to schedule an appointment and they're busy. I broke down on the way home realizing I was alone.
I now look at what may very well be my last sane, controllable moments before the end. Between my medication, school, weed, and living expenses, I have no money left. In my grinder is .2 grams of the remaining marijuana I can get. Enough to keep me high for about an hour. Since receiving notice of my warrant my depression has progressed further than I could imagine. I haven't left the house or eaten in 3 days until this morning. My mind feels like it's in a cloud or a dream, like I've lost grasp on what's real anymore and what's not. I woke up today not knowing if it was morning or evening.
What absolutely kills me is that this .2 grams I've smoked could very well be the difference between me seeing my next birthday or being found next week in my bed with a plastic bag duct taped over my head. I feel calmer, my thinking is clearer, I feel like I will actually survive today. But in 1 hour once that high disappears I know what is coming. It's the anguish I felt on the drive home this morning. That nagging feeling in the back of my head looking at the knife on the kitchen counter, knowing that it could be hours before I'm running it along my legs, trying to distract myself from the debilitating emotional pain with physical.
The worst of it is that today I feel I have finally lost faith, and given up. Like most Americans, I wanted to believe that logic, reason, and common sense would prevail in all things. But as has been said so many times before, one need look no further than the marijuana prohibition beginning all the way back in 1937 to know that nothing makes fucking sense anymore.
That someone like myself whose medical condition permits me barely any recognizable form of a normal life; someone whose quality of life is measured in the number of suicidal thoughts in an hour; who is afraid to sleep because of night terrors; afraid to leave bed because there isn't a point to live; who has watched every academic, career, and romantic dream in their life shattered; who already knows the only thing to look forward to is a life of empty goals and regret; that someone like ME can be punished for simply trying to stay alive? For trying to enjoy some sort of quality of life that isn't so unbearable I'd rather terminate my entire existence than suffer another second of hell? This goes against every moral fiber of my being. I cannot accept the fact that I live in a society so cold and callous that it would shamelessly and unabashedly inflict pain, pain so intense and inescapable that suicide is the only reasonable choice in a person's mind, and yet here I am.
Broke from my disease, broke from my state, broke from my country. And still they want more. And I find that I am left with a terrible choice. I either pay the court, go without weed and eventually kill myself; or I can buy more weed to prolong my life until I'm eventually arrested at which point my life will officially be over, leaving me with no choice but to kill myself anyway as soon as I'm released.
All roads lead to the same path. I feel as if the courts are backing me into a corner, giving me no alternative but to kill myself like it's some sort of sick state sanctioned execution. And the worst thing is I want it. I would rather take the fucking duct tape and plastic bag over the choices I'm being presented by my government, a body that is supposed to be representative of its constituents like ME. Fuck protest, fuck martyrdom, fuck making a point. The fact that someone in my condition is being treated the way they are is a significant indication that something is WRONG. I am LITERALLY DYING, my depression is reaching a severity where it soon may become TERMINAL. And the harbinger of my pain and suffering are the laws and policies set forth by this state, put in place to PROTECT ME!
I give up. The fucking end of the rope.
William B. Travis, the Texas commander at the Alamo, signed his letters, "Victory or Death!" I believe I speak for medical cannabis patients across the world when I proclaim:
MARIJUANA OR DEATH!
