Anxiety, stress, nervousness, etc...... Call it what you will, but anyone who has suffered from anxiety &/or depression calls it hell on earth.

I was always an anxious child, stressed about everything. Dentist, Doctors, storms, it seemed like I was fearful of everything and would get so worked up I would end up making myself sick. I tried many different medications, therapies, and coping mechanisms over the years but nothing ever seemed to quiet the constant nagging in my head saying that I wasn't good enough, I was crazy, and worst of all that my family would be better off without me.

At 10 years old I was diagnosed with scoliosis, & when I found out that I needed to wear a brace .... I lost it. I fought every step of the way and ended up "winning" that war. No brace, my life wasn't over...

Cut to my 20s when I was first prescribed narcotics for the chronic back pain that had taken over my life.... I was told by my doctors that they were relatively safe, although they did have a potential for addiction they were the best option for me to control my completely out of control pain. Never was I told that opiates have so very many devastating side effects. Organ damage, out of control mood swings (for which they tried to prescribe even more meds), digestive issues, and the scariest of all was the brain damage and something called opioid-induced hyperalgesia. The opiates were making the pain worse.

As you might have already read in an earlier post (read that post here), after being told by a pain specialist I would never be off of the meds and needed to be on Fentanyl or Morphine, I was fed up with the medical system and made the decision to quit taking the meds completely. I would find another way. I was fully prepared for the pain and possible withdrawal that would come with this decision, what I was not prepared for was the extreme anxiety that would flood in without warning. For years I had been unknowingly medicating my underlying anxiety disorder with the narcotics I was using to control my pain. Opiates make you numb to nearly everything in your life so it makes total sense but I was completely unprepared for the tsunami of anxiety and depression that threatened to consume me.

On one hand I was 100% determined to never take another pain pill, but on the other I was all of the sudden crippled with all of these dark and scary thoughts, & all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and disappear. The thought of even getting up to walk to the bathroom seemed too much to accomplish Several times the panic would set in so much that I literally thought I was going to die. What was wrong with me? All I wanted was to feel normal again and all my brain kept saying was "This is it.... This is your life now... You will feel like this forever".

When I tell you that CBD saved my life, that is not a metaphor it's exactly what it did. Even though it took months for my brain to heal from the years of poison, little by little I could feel the changes taking place within me. I taught myself new coping mechanisms, learned the foods and vitamins my body needed to heal, took my CBD consistently and religiously, and rose like a Phoenix.

I'm telling you this story to let you know that you can overcome pain and anxiety. It takes some work, sheer force of will and CBD is an amazing and non toxic tool to help your body do what it was designed to do. Don't be afraid to take your life back & your health into your own hands... in the beautiful words of Hillsong United "Fear is just a liar running out of breath"