CAN CANNABIS CURE DEPRESSION?
THE RISK OF DEPRESSION
Some
professionals claim that depression is a symptom of other mental conditions but
truly ii believe that a person or animal for that matter is depressed when they
cannot feel hopeful about the future. Depression is also a side effect of
certain prescription drugs such as anti-depressants.
The list of drugs which can cause depression is a long
list but these include certain acne drugs, malaria drugs, steroids, asthma
drugs, anti-epileptic drugs, anti-inflammatories, birth control pills,
menopausal therapies, certain cancer therapies, anti-nicotine medications,
certain blood pressure tablets, cholesterol lowering meds, anti-anxiety and
anti-psychotic drugs, weight loss medications, insomnia meds and oddly a lot of
anti-depressants and so the list goes on.
According to a report published in BMC Pharmacology and Toxicology in 2014
British researchers had between 1998 and 2011 found a list of 110 different
medications which are associated with depression as a side effect.
So if you think that your prescription meds are
causing you to feel depressed please do not wait in silence, you must address
these concerns with your health care provider because you may end up having to
use more prescription medicines to address the depression if you are unable to
stop taking the drugs that are causing the depression in the first place which
seems a very unfair catch 22 situation for patients and we have to look for natural
ways to manage both health issues and mood disorders.
With all the
environmental negativity, stress and increase of poisons which we all have to
endure today, symptoms of this negativity will naturally manifest in many
different forms of behavior and thought processes amongst our diverse human
race.
This
is exactly why personalized treatment programs work more effectively because depression
is not a mental disease. It is a lifestyle disorder brought about by
intentional stress, negativity and the consumption of harmful and neuro-toxic
chemical substances found everywhere on earth, in our environment, our food,
water, soil, medications and vaccinations, everywhere, no one can escape these
substances not even on the North Pole.
ARE WE
EVOLVING EMOTIONALLY?
Humans have always been evolving and ii see this clearly
when ii look closely at the youth.
Children today are different to when ii was a child and even when my own
children were young and even now ii am looking to my grandchildren for further confirmation.
There are many studies you can look at on Indigo Children, Crystal Children and
even Diamond, Rainbow and Golden children.
All these studies indicate that more and more children
are now coming to earth with a higher wisdom and consciousness. They are highly sensitive and can sense the
deceit and negativity on the planet and many indeed find it over whelming and
too much to bear, and this how ‘autism’ is developed in young children. These children find the energies around them,
sadly even in their own homes to be undesirable and this is why we find so many
children ‘withdrawing’ but actually they are just looking for peace from the
negative environment which could be a simple thing like a television set
playing or music playing around the 741 Hz frequency vibration which is the
frequency of fear and negativity. Often ii hear stories from distraught parents
of children who have been diagnosed as autistic, where these small children
will develop the strength to physically pull a TV down from its shelf to the
floor and to me this is real proof of the effect of negative vibrations.
It might help some parents to be aware of frequency
vibrations as my experience with young children has indicated that they are
very sensitive to these so you must try to only play music which vibrates to
either 528 or 432 Hz which are the frequencies of love and harmony.
Whether you accept evolution as a science or not you have
to accept that children today are far more spiritually advanced and sensitive than
previous generations and there is a lot of solid proof of this fact because it
is not just a theory and this is a very important factor to consider when
looking for logical solutions for to treat depression. We absolutely have to
treat the inner and outer human when looking at both mental and physical
health.
According to the South African Depression and Anxiety Group almost
50% of depression cases are not even picked up by doctors simply because
patients tend to focus on the physical symptoms of their depression rather than
their emotions. Even this figure may be an underestimation of the true
situation.
WHAT IS
DEPRESSION?
Depression does not
discriminate on the basis of race and a person’s cultural background may play a
large role in the way in which symptoms are reported and interpreted as well as
how and if depression is actually being recognised and treated appropriately.
This is a big concern
to me for my brothers and sisters especially all our foreigners who have come
to South Africa looking for a better life.
The trauma associated with this situation of family upheavals and separation
anxiety must surely contribute to our nations’ state of depression.
Professor Dan Mkize a
Durban based psychiatrist believes that for a long time, depression has been
thought to not exist in and around Africans.
Sometimes depression is mistakenly viewed as ‘normal’ for certain groups
of people, for example older people, menopausal women and people with chronic
or terminal illnesses like TB, cancer or HIV/AIDS.
These are incorrect
assumptions and result in unnecessary endurance of emotional pain and suffering
for so many people who might otherwise be successfully treated.
Black people
naturally do not complain about how they are feeling and this is deep rooted in
the assumption that suffering is somehow convolutedly connected to being black.
Informal urbanisation and political chaos over the past few decades have led to
an increase in poverty, violence and disturbed marital and social relations
amongst our population. High levels of environmental stress and poverty
therefore account for a lot of the elevated prevalence of depression in our
communities. All of these things contribute to people not feeling hopeful about
their futures and this then in essence is depression.
In a lot of
communities depression is seen as a sign of personal weakness rather than an
illness especially where women are concerned which is a huge concern since
women are twice as likely as men to suffer with depression. What is even more
concerning is that according to the American
National Mental Health Association depression is 50% higher in African
women than in Caucasian women.
For me personally
depression, anxiety and panic attacks are not a sign of weakness but rather a
sign of having tried to stay strong for far too long.
One must just
consider what some of our communities are exposed to on a daily basis where
disasters are witnessed everyday like horrific minibus accidents, burning of
property, political street violence, shootings and on-going intimidation, ii
speak to a lot of people from communities on the Cape Flats and many people,
especially women, say they honestly don’t even know if they will get home safe
any given day as people are literally getting gunned down in the streets as if
it were a perfectly normal happening. It
would be fair to say that none of these types of occurrences fall within the
range of ‘normal’ human experience. And then we spare a thought for all the
terrible afflictions happening in the world right now and surely you can agree
the entire planet is depressed?
THE
WORST CASE SCENARIO OF DEPRESSION
It seems fair to say that the worst possible outcome of
depression would then be suicide and according to the World Health Organisation
a suicide happens every 40 seconds and an attempt is made every 3 seconds. These are truly disturbing statistics and
what is more disturbing is that these figures are not accurate as most suicides
and attempts are not even reported. So about a million people around the world
end up sacrificing their lives each year with 20 times that number (20 million
people) attempting to do so, and these figures are growing each year. So
clearly suicide is something we should actually all be talking about?
In South Africa hanging is the most common method of
self-sacrifice, followed by shooting, gassing and burning. Over the past few years in Cape Town there
has been a drastic increase in people throwing themselves in front of trains to
end their personal misery. This
highlighted the reality of the impact of this situation on the actual train
drivers as well which in Cape Town a lot of the time are also women. It was also interesting to learn that it is
mostly men who are throwing themselves in front of the trains and this is in
line with the WHO’s statement that men are more at risk of suicide than women.
If a person reaches a stage in their lives where their
only option is to end their own lives then clearly they were depressed while
contemplating this option, so ii do struggle to believe statistics that claim
that only 60% of South Africans who commit suicide were depressed because
surely any human being considering ending their life would then automatically
be depressed because they could not feel hopeful or positive about their
futures. So while it is true that most depressed people are not suicidal, the
reality is that most suicidal people are depressed. And as we have seen this
represents a lot of people.
Suicide figures are alarming across the globe,
but particularly for South Africa where the suicide rate for children aged
between 10 and 14 years old, have more than doubled over the last fifteen years.
Personally ii have had to endure this experience with my own children where
many of their school friends have indeed taken their lives over the years.
My beloved niece Jami Lee ended her life today two
years ago at the tender age of 21 after a horrific experience of abduction and
sexual and mental abuse. It is virtually impossible to measure the value of a
life cut short by suicide and one cannot determine the impact a person like
Jami Lee might have had on the world around her or even on the people whose
lives she may have touched. To this day and onwards ii constantly meet people
who had crossed her path and it delights my soul that she continues to spread
love in her eternal pathway of multi coloured butterflies.
WARNING
SIGNS
In this increasingly stressed environment we live in today a lot people brush other people’s sadness off with “Oh she is just looking for attention” or “Oh he has been threatening for years” and so on…
Up to 50% of people who kill themselves have
previously attempted suicide and those who make serious attempts are at much
greater risk of actually carrying their thoughts out.
It is said that 75% of all suicides give some
kind of a warning of intention to either a friend or a family member so all
suicide threats and attempts really ought to be taken seriously.
Personally ii now find that ii have more dead friends than alive
and sadly the majority of my lost loved ones in fact committed suicide and ii
always find it interesting how people choose to end their lives. For example ii
recently lost a dear friend who after years of desperately fighting depression
cable tied himself to the shark net at Fish Hoek beach to end his own life and
was found the next morning by my Rastafari brethren while out fishing early
that morning. May JAH bless his soul eternal!
It
is the ‘pressures of life’, that need to be properly understood, what they are,
where they come from, the impact they have, and how we can change the structure
of society to free humanity from them.
Why
do we have such damaging ‘pressures of life’? Surely we should not be living in
a world that produces such detrimental forces. Something in our world society
seems terribly wrong when a million or so people kill themselves every year,
and where suicide is the second highest cause of death amongst under 20 year
olds. Does this have something to do with a shift in consciousness? Where
people especially young people are looking at our world and the system which
controls our lives with pure disgust and realising that it is our leaders who
have in fact failed us time and time again.
It
is said that we live in an 80% negative environment around the world. Both men
and women are expected to conform to certain patterns in society which is
pushed upon them via the education system, peer pressure as well as corporate
media.
All
of these efforts are in the sole interests of certain conglomerates who seem to
own everything and is further facilitated by governments who seem to lack
principles. And these efforts quite
literally suck out the abundance and diversity out of life itself.
WHAT
IS THIS MODERN SOCIETY ABOUT?
People
everywhere are expected to want the same things, wear the same clothes, believe
the same propaganda, aspire to the same ideals and behave in the exact same
way. This is also known as the “rat race” where every possible inhabited place
on earth is viewed as a marketplace and every person is a consumer to be fully
exploited, again all in the name of gluttonous greed for profit.
So now
we have a situation where materialistic values which only serve to promote
individual success, greed and selfishness totally drench the world and we have
values that divide and separate humanity and lead to social tension, conflict
and illness.
Men,
women and children who simply can no longer cope with these ‘pressures of life’
and who feel the collective and individual pain of life so intensely, are naturally
inclined towards introspection. A lot of people including myself find this
world far too noisy and its values too crude and corrupt. These same people
also find the demands of ‘strength’ not weakness, ‘success’ not failure and
‘confidence’ not doubt, virtually impossible to meet. Most people cannot even
understand why they are expected to conform to these expectations and often
failure to meet these expectations result in depression.
Perhaps
it is time to build an altogether different, healthier model, a new way of
living in which true and lasting values of goodness shape the systems that
govern the societies in which we live, and not the harsh, ideologically
reductive corporate weapons of global living which are sucking the beauty,
diversity and joy out of life.
What
we really need right now is values of compassion, selflessness, cooperation,
tolerance, understanding, and above all LOVE.
We need to redefine the meaning of modernity and to redefine the meaning
of happiness because all around the world we have exchanged happiness for
pleasure, love with desire, unity with
division, cooperation with competition, and in so doing we have created a
divided society, where conflict rages, internationally, regionally, communally
and individually.
Symptoms like worrying a lot,
irritability, difficulty in relaxing, insomnia, an exaggerated startle response
and a variety of physical symptoms such as headaches, abdominal distress, a dry
mouth, trembling, dizziness, sweating, urinary frequency, diarrhoea and
suicidal thoughts all form part of the greater bouquet of depression.
WHAT
IS SO SPECIAL ABOUT CANNABIS?
Cannabis has the ability
to alter behaviour, mood perception and consciousness and often promotes the
meditation of sharing, humour and creativity, and feelings of euphoria or
positive vibrations.
The
healing properties of Cannabis include anti-cancer, anti-nausea, pain killer,
appetite and metabolic regulation, anti-spasm, anti-inflammatory, muscle
relaxant, antimicrobial, neuro-protection, anti-oxidant, anti-anxiety,
anti-psychotic and so many more.
Cannabis also promotes uninterrupted sleep patterns
which is essential to overall health and well -being. Insomnia is usually a big
problem for people suffering with depression.
It was only the initial observation
that so many depressed patients were consuming Cannabis that created the whole
"Cannabis-causes-depression"
commotion in the first place. So if you went to the doctor with any mental
illness, including depression, they would ask if you've ever used Cannabis
before. Then they would automatically blame the Cannabis as the source of the
patient’s entire problem, and claim that Cannabis triggered psychosis... which
is complete utter absurdity as there is absolutely no scientific or other proof
of this despite hundreds and thousands of positive case studies around the
world.
Only in recently studies has it been
correctly established that in fact these patients were actually successfully
treating their symptoms with Cannabis and that most patients were getting
effective relief. It also makes a lot of sense that people who use Cannabis
successfully to enhance their moods will naturally feel a little depressed if
they cannot get hold of Cannabis because firstly their EC system will naturally
be deficient and second they will have memories of how poorly they felt before
using Cannabis. Cannabis makes you feel better and naturally promotes your
overall health physically, mentally and spiritually.
A lot of people believe that Cannabis may contribute to
depression and suicidal tendencies.
Fortunately for us there is enough evidence to prove that in places
where Cannabis laws have been relaxed rates of suicide have actually decreased.
After all, since suicide is stress induced and Cannabis takes stress away it does
makes sense that Cannabis would let people release and reduce their stress
resulting in less depression and suicide. Scientists and researchers all over the
world are now suggesting that Cannabis could treat depression and be much more
effective than other drugs by having far fewer side effects. Such suggestions
indicate that Cannabis is helpful in the management of psychotic symptoms
characterized by a loss of contact with reality, such as those experienced by
people suffering with depression because of its anti-psychotic properties. It
is wonderful that scientists are now discovering Cannabis medicine but truly if
you look to nature you will know that we have all known that Cannabis has been
used to treat depression for thousands of years already.
The most wonderful thing about Cannabis is that it works perfectly well
with prescription medications and in fact alleviates most of the horrible side
effects of these medications such as nausea and depression.
A lot of people will argue that Cannabis has not been
properly tested and for me this is such a ridiculous statement because in fact
Cannabis has been more researched than any prescription drug currently on the
market. In testing prescription drugs
these people will use words like placebo and double blind placebo controlled
drug trials and so on but in reality they are really just testing these drugs
against well … nothing in fact… and further, most of these drugs are only
really ‘tested’ for a period of about 4 years before being passed for
approval.
Cannabis on the other hand has been used in Chinese
medicine for over 5000 years and since the official discovery of the EC system,
scientifically tested and re-tested officially for almost 30 years, for a
variety of medical conditions including depression. No one can honestly deny the mounds of
research and scientific evidence collected in such a short space of time and it
really saddens me that more conventional practitioners are not beginning to
educate themselves in the science of Cannabis medicine.
Furthermore Cannabis has been used and tested in
conjunction with many different prescription drugs and therapies including
cancer, epilepsy, diabetes, schizophrenia, hypertension, hormonal, renal,
liver, blood and cardiac disorders and so many more and there has never been a report
of any incompatibility with any so called approved drugs. Personally ii always recommend a window period
of 2 years before a patient leaves their prescription drugs but ii do find that
most patients wean themselves within about six months.
So it seems
that the art of clinical observation in the field of medicine has been lost and
the pharmaceutical industry has just become more and more consumed with
criminal mischief.
The production of Endocannabinoids in our bodies affect
our cognition, emotion and behavior and has been scientifically linked to
reduction of pain and anxiety, increase in appetite, and general feelings of
well-being and so in tests carried out on rats researchers found that chronic
stress in fact reduced the production of Endocannabinoids. So stress makes you
Cannabinoid Deficient. By administering Cannabis to these rats it was found
that symptoms of depression were alleviated. It’s the exact same with humans
give a depressed person a little bit of Cannabis and they will definitely start
to feel better. Let me just be clear that ii am now referring to Cannabis
Medicine dosing and not Cannabis for puffing purposes.
This then proves that normal
Endocannabinoid functioning must be restored to help stabilize moods and ease
depression. This also then proves that
Cannabinoid deficiency is ultimately one of the causes of depression in the
first place, and it is therefore vital to be aware that we have a physiological
system known as the Endocannabinoid system (EC System) which needs Cannabinoids
from the Cannabis plant to nourish this system in the same way as your immune
system needs vitamins and supplements.
The Endocrine system is part of the body’s main
control mechanism and controls our hormone system, and just like the EC system,
the main function of the Endocrine system is also Homeostasis and so these two
systems work alongside each other in defending the body from unnatural
imbalance from external environmental sources.
Homeostasis is the number one factor in the biology of
all living things and is best described as the ability to maintain a stable
internal environment despite constant fluctuations in the external environment
and the ability to maintain homeostasis is necessary for survival and medical
disorders result from the failure of the body to maintain homeostasis, also
known as homeostatic imbalance.
Cannabinoids are responsible for promoting homeostasis at
every level of biological life, right from the sub-cellular, to the organism,
and perhaps even to the community and beyond.
It is also interesting to note that the Endocrine glands
are directly aligned to the spiritual chakras, which is not a physical system
but rather a system made up of aspects of consciousness. Reiki healers and
other new age ‘light and energy healers’ would focus on the chakras when
carrying out their healing methods, and always with great success, which is
proof that the connection between mind and body healing is essential to overall
health.
It is no coincidence that the position of each of the
seven chakras directly corresponds to the position of the particular Endocrine
gland which it affects.
The position of the EC system as being an important
regulatory system in the function of brain, Endocrine and immune tissues, quite
literally makes the EC System a bridge between body and mind and by gaining an
understanding of the Endocannabinoid System, we are beginning to see a
physiological engine which can go a long way to explaining how our positive state
of consciousness can promote our health in the same way as a negative state of
consciousness can destroy our health.
An interesting observation is that it has been noted
in numerous studies that the expression of Endocannabinoids does not relate to
the distribution of Cannabinoid receptors in the brain, suggesting that our Endocannabinoids
could also be interacting with other receptors and are involved with other cell
processes as well. We now know that Endocannabinoids are the most numerous of all
the neurotransmitters they are literally everywhere waiting to be fed in return
for excellent physical, mental and spiritual health guaranteed!
Considering that the EC System is responsible for the
well- being of the nervous, immune and endocrine systems, perhaps in lay man’s
terms this indicates that both the EC system and Cannabis indeed have a most profound
effect on the human body and mind and ii do believe that we are only starting
to realize the powerful benefits of the Cannabis plant.
WHAT
CAN WE DO?
It
can be extremely difficult to know how to respond to someone suffering with depression
or even yourself dealing with depression. Because people suffering
from depression often suffer from difficulties in thinking, perceiving the
world around them, and controlling their emotional responses, and so it is true
that depression can be difficult to treat.
Currently, treatment comprises of
therapy and antipsychotics, however, treatment with pharmaceutical medication
is far from perfect. Because patients taking these drugs have to deal with a
range of side effects, such as drowsiness, uncontrollable movements, and weight
gain, and oddly more depression, and these side effects can result in many
patients failing to take their medication properly.
Research shows that an alarming 42% of depressed
patients do not take their medication because of the side effects and this
means that there is a large and unmet demand for new and natural treatment
options.
We give thanks because we now live
in an era where there is hope where there was no hope before. With personal responsibility and self
discipline we can all heal ourselves of any medical condition be it physical,
mental or spiritual within the body working with natural remedies like
Cannabis.
Perhaps more
important than education and research is the actual unlearning of certain
aspects of human behaviour. We need to
unlearn the negative behavioural traits associated with the ego and strive to
become more in touch with the positive behavioural traits of our intuition
which is governed by LOVE where the ego is governed by FEAR. Humans only have two emotions Love and Fear
all other emotions stem from these two.
Also we seriously
need to think hard about what we are consuming. In previous papers ii have
written extensively about the effect of sugar on the brain and how it affects
behaviour negatively and artificial sweeteners are even worse. And remember
that alcohol works the same way as sugar and alcohol is a depressant and this
is exactly why so many people end up crying hence the South African expression
“dronk verdriet” (depression by drunk-ness) because it brings out negative
emotions, often with violence. This pretty much summarizes bipolar condition
which really is manic depression. Personally ii have been battling bipolar
condition most of my life.
We must stop blaming the
system and Monsanto and MSG and we must take responsibility for our own
situations because in reality as humans we have become too busy too lazy too
preoccupied and too distracted to notice that we do not even know where our
food comes from and we have blindly accepted non organic and processed foods
and big business has simply taken advantage…we are responsible for this
situation ourselves and it is only we who can then reverse this situation.
IS
THERE HOPE FOR THE FUTURE?
Freedom is about being left alone by the government so
we may enjoy the fruits of our labor and praise our God.
To be free requires that we are all given a fair
chance in life to achieve our full human potential in order to be hopeful about
our futures and most of the inhabitants of earth are neither equal nor free as
yet.
My Master,
Brother Judah, used to always say to Sister Jami Lee and ii
“Sisters if we really wanted to be free we would
already be free!” and we spent a few years pondering long and hard on
this profound statement of our Master.
In the last
five years of her life Sister Jami Lee worked very closely with me on a number
of papers and truly JAH did inspire her with high wisdom and so in Blessed Love
ii must dedicate this paper to her honor for without her contributions ii would
surely never have finished this work which has taken me two years to produce, so
ii give thanks to The Most High for the life and times of Sister Jami Lee (Noloyisa).
JAH bless!
SO, WHAT IS THE SECRET TO FREEDOM?
More so now than ever before from the lessons ii
learnt from my niece ii believe that the secret to Freedom is actually
Courage. The courage to have the
intention to be happy in other words to quite literally ‘think’ ourselves into
happiness.
Obviously this is no easy task or else surely everyone
would be doing it. We are living in the
darkness where our environment is intentionally manipulated to manifest as a
negative environment brought about by stress, which is why so many of us tend
to struggle so much.
Living in the rural Transkei with my Xhosa family who
could not speak any English taught me quite a bit about this concept. No matter what the weather or whether there
was food and water or not, ii could not help but notice that my people were
always happy always laughing and singing and this made me realize that Xhosa
people have truly mastered the art of thinking themselves into happiness, in
their own minds, and to me this takes true courage.
In order to be truly free we have to free our minds
from the physical and mental slavery around us and take control of our own
thoughts so that they may manifest in positive meditations and vibrations. Only once each and every single one of us
comes to realize this will we truly be free, collectively all of humanity, and
when this happens then finally we will have peace on earth and we are guided in
the scriptures to be careful how we think because truly our lives are shaped by
our thoughts.
In Proverbs 4 verse 23 Jesus Christ says:
“Be
very careful of your thoughts because your thoughts control your life.”
Be Blessed Be Healthy!
In loving memory of Jami Lee Salgado (Noloyiso)
In loving memory of Jami Lee Salgado (Noloyiso)
SOURCES:
South African Depression and Anxiety Group
American National Mental Health Association
BMC Pharmacology and Toxicology
Xhosastyles.blogspot.com
University of British
Columbia
Hebrew University Medical
Centre Israel
Tel Aviv University Psychopharmacology
Israel
www.healingfromtheheart.co.uk
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