Cannabis oil to stop heavy drinking - Fred and his Dry January

A Dry January

Medical cannabis oil is changing our lives. We want to share with people how amazing it is so are Steeming Fred's experiences giving up alcohol. It would be more appropriate for Fred to record his own experiences but he's asked me to do it so please excuse my writing in the third person. And if you are interested in trying the miracle substance that is cannabis oil, I would urge you to make your own, as Rick Simpson advises.

Fred is happy for me to share his experiences; he reads and contributes to these posts before I Steem them. And in order to take responsibility, I have to state that for much of my life, I have been a fairly heavy drinker. Over the past year I've used cannabis oil myself to stop drinking altogether, pretty much - and had no withdrawal challenges at all and don't miss the stuff - but it's not as if Naughty Fred is the problem child here.....

Fred is a very non-violent and peaceful man in general, very quiet, very laid back. He has been drinking for entertainment all his adult life. He was heading for the fridge around three in the afternoon to start tippling and would stay at it until around midnight. Every day.

My partner is fortunate in that he is not (or does not appear to be) drinking to escape anything more painful than "boredom", although his parents went through a phase of hitting the wine (never each other) that lasted a few years when he was a teen. But once we started growing cannabis, and distilling our own alcohol for solvent, the potential for him to hole up in the office with his hooch and a stash to smoke while gaming for hours (weeks, even) arose and he was starting to get stuck in. This is not great for any relationship. I'll be honest: we had a(nother) massive row about it on Jan 1 so made a joint decision to transcend this deadlock by turning Fred Coming off Alcohol into one of our cannabis oil experiments.

We also figured that, as we were entering the healing arena by making medicinal cannabis oil for family and friends, we needed to respect the cannabis plant and the people who are using our oil. And getting tanked up is not respectful and does not really go down in most healing circles. An alchemy teacher once told me that the great alchemist Paracelsus was a complete pisshead but I have yet to verify this.

How heavy is Fred's drinking? I do not know how heavy half a litre of spirits a night is. Is it a lot? It's nothing compared to what some people put away but would knock others out. Heavy or not, it was getting too expensive to continue anyway. We had switched to distillation for financial reasons surrounding our oil-making yet Fred was getting so into the moonshine it was becoming a little embarassing to check out all the bags of sugar and yeast at the supermarket!

We had an interesting experience at the checkout: I was stacking umpteen packets of sugar and yeast high on the belt and noticed that a husband and wife in the next aisle were doing exactly the same. Were they stocking up for a Church bake-in or, like us, bootlegging? Once it's in your consciousness you notice others doing it - and there appear to be more than a few of us who are into home distillation, fellows we would never have noticed at the checkout before. Anyway, it would go something like this:

Me (with a guilt-trip sigh): "Not moonshine again, honey?"
Fred: "Financial reasons!"
Me: "I don't know how you can drink that hooch - smells like your socks."
Fred (knocking some back): "Mmm - it's not too bad with fresh orange juice!"
Me (wincing internally at the cost of fresh orange juice): "Are you sure it's safe?"
Fred: "I explained to you that there's no methanol to worry about - this is the pure stuff. This is better than anything you can buy in the shops - so much purer. Cheers!"
Me: "Hmm.....brain wipe, more like."

We agreed that Fred would drink on his January birthday - I enjoyed tucking into a bottle of red wine that night and he hit shop-bought cheap rum. He felt a little hungover the next day. He also drank one day to alleviate a bout of heavy hayfever and stop sniffing, which worked very well. We're not keeping any alcohol for drinking in the house so there are no temptations: I'm soaking raisins in the leftover rum and will use them in a cake or ice cream.

Fred tells me that so far, for him, using cannabis oil has been a magnificent way to stop drinking. The reason, he suggests, is that once you are high on oil, you forget to drink altogether - so you are able to break habitual patterns. He now walks the dogs stoned instead of tipsy. He has had a few urges to drink but they have been short-lived.

He is feeling fantastic, he wants to say, particularly because cannabis oil helps you sleep. The quality of his sleep has improved and it has also been wonderful for me to see him enjoying having a lie-in after working late.

He is also looking so much better. There was something about the combination of alcohol (particularly hooch) and smoking joints that turned Fred's eyes bright red - we were worrying that the neighbours might notice his new Baskerville look: the last thing we want to do is give away the existence of our grow room!

All the time that used to be spent drinking needs filling, though, so Fred has taken up guitar again. His sweet music is raising the vibration of the house.

At first, Fred was terrified to give up drinking; he feared withdrawal symtoms. But as there have not been any, and things are going so well, we've agreed to opt for moderation in favour of asceticism so he will be drinking officially for one day a week (Wednesday) in February. We'll report back early next month to let you know whether this decision will bring downfall and disaster - will Fred need to strap into the wagon again in March or will it be plain sailing? We'll let you know.