When I was in business school, I was diagnosed with major depression, and then re-diagnosed with bipolar disorder several years later. Throughout the years I’d tried dozens of medications to varying effects; some of them never worked, some worked and made me feel terrible, and most of them stopped working after a few years and sent me into a psychiatric hospital for adjustment and observation.
After the most recent stint in the looney bin, I began to wonder if I could handle the ups and downs of medication changes over the course of my life. Then it happened that a friend told me that he’d been managing his depression with marijuana as Bipolar Disorder Treatmet. Lightbulb!Like everyone else, I’d smoked weed in college and had walked around saying, “Oh my God, I’m SOOO high,” at varying intervals before someone gave me a bag of Cheetos. Since then, I’d smoked whenever it was offered but had never gone out and bought it myself.As it happens, my roommate’s friend John* is what you’d call a weed enthusiast. He smokes nearly every day, sometimes for recreation and sometimes for the pain in his reconstructed shoulder. He’d brought some smoke to the apartment on a random Friday night and I became curious, joining them instead of abstaining like an upstanding citizen.John, happy to share his knowledge, began telling me about the strain of marijuana that he’d brought over.