Coping With an Anxious Brain: My Experience Using Delta 8
There are a lot of positives to working in the industry that I do and a lot of those positives are ones that I myself have gotten to experience. When the Rapture Vapor store and I Adore CBD stores combined into one just a short time ago, I was introduced to a new beginning and a healing journey that I get to share with others.
Just four years ago I had stopped smoking cigarettes, something that would not have been possible for myself without vaping. I felt better. I could get up in the morning without coughing up a lung. I could walk up flights of stairs without feeling like Kung Fu Panda. It opened so many doors for myself to begin feeling better and while I could spend a while talking about how much vaping has helped me, I’m really just including it because that’s one half of my job now. Now, I get to vicariously feel it all again when someone walks into the shop and begins the journey for themselves.
The other half of my job now includes another healing process- both for myself, and others that come through our door. And with those people that come through our door I’ve had the opportunity to learn, to teach, to compare, and to feel open with my own individual healing process in the day to day. It’s all very hippie and self love-y. Typical.
One of the conversations I have with those new to hemp/cbd/delta products is the classic - “Does it actually do anything?” - A question I also asked when I first began using the products. I take away a lot in my chats with customers but one sentiment that seems to come up again and again is this… If it’s not the “real thing” then it doesn’t do anything. And if you would have asked me four years ago, you would have heard the same thing come out of my mouth.
But now I’m older, probably more gray, maybe wiser ( I did just have to look up the correct spelling for gray after retyping it 20 times- so maybe not) but definitely more anxious. Roughly 40 million people in the U.S are diagnosed with anxiety. And that is just diagnosed. And that is just citizens over 18 years old. It is the number one mental disorder in America. So many people suffer from it every single day. I am one of those people and I have been for a really long time.
I’ve tried a ton of things, medications, exercise, not being anxious (a personal favorite), change in diet, less caffeine, more caffeine (a personal favorite) - I’ve tried a bunch. Now I had been into cannabis for a while but as time went on it began to worsen my anxiety. If you ever want to see a human fold into themselves, give me some real strong stuff and just wait. So I had stopped. It was a sad time. I had given up the giggles, the 2 a.m cereal runs to the kitchen, the feeling like everything was okay.
But the calm was gone with traditional marijuana. So, for three years I stopped but when I started working here I had many conversations with people that had been through a similar situation and they were here once a week buying Delta 8 products. Finally, I decided to give it a whirl. That first night I can’t even tell you how excited I was to feel the peace again that I had once felt in my youth. The anxiety that usually heightened melted away, I was laughing at The Office through squinted eyes, and then fell asleep.
When I woke up I just wondered how. How could this product be so different and yet still give me some semblance of that old feeling that traditional marijuana gave me without the chest clenching, the “in through the nose- am I breathing? I can’t tell.” And through learning the products I learned why, that delta 8 is primarily indica derived, a strain of the marijuana plant that hones in on your body more than your mind. That’s not to say it is not psychoactive- it is- but the feeling is a lot milder than that of traditional Delta 9 THC.
Delta 8 occurs naturally in the breaking down of the plant and is extracted from the CBD portion of the plant, another reason that the “high” is a lot more mild than other cannabinoids on the market. Everybody is different, but if anything I said here resonated with you, then I think it’s worth a shot.
And at Rapture Vapor we’re always here to talk, whether if it’s for information or assistance in your own journey, the crew are here.
Stop in anytime,
Bryce.
Rapture Vapor is a smoke and vape store located in the Ohio Valley Mall in St. Clairsville, Ohio (Near Wheeling, WV, Washington, PA, Tri-State area)