P.T.S.D. /. Trauma / Herstory

I began to use this drug to self medicate when I was 13 yrs old.  It was also the thing to do back then.  However, at the age of 27 / 28 I began to experience the need to be in recovery and stop the use of all drugs & alcohol, so I did.  I found in my searching & working through 12 step programs, why I used it, how it helped me, and how it harmed me.  I would never suppose to tell anyone what to do in a medical situation, as I am not a medical professional.  I will share my personal experience with anyone interested.  I found throughout the years of staying drug free & attending different 12 step meetings, reading many books written about different emotional/mental/physical issues that the use of street drugs for self medication was not the answer for me.  Of course this is decades ago, before medical THC was available.  Even if it were offered to me today, I would decline the medication.  The reason for this decline is because of my personal experience using it on my own all those years without professional medical supervision.  It worked for me as a young teen to help me survive the trauma I was experiencing.  I could smoke a little and forget what my true reality of living was.  When I would experience a P.T.S.D. attack or a panic episode, smoking some would settle me down and make life and my emotional reactions to it, tolerable. I also, still continuing today, cannot sleep at night, & when younger if I would wake unable to go back to sleep, would smoke a little and be able to go back to sleep.  I used it everyday from the age of 13 until the age of 27-28, when I began to try to live without it.I found in my first years of living sober that I had created a completely different personality with the help of the use of the THC.  I was able to be the gal who could withstand reality of living on the streets in the city as a teenager.  The gal who could take the tough knocks life punched me with when I lost my whole family at the age of 16.  (Mom died suddenly and the rest of the family didn't want the responsibility of caring for me or my kid brother.)  It took me 2 years, but when I finally turned 18, I got my kid brother out of foster care & out of the State's system and became his legal physical parent.  He was 13 by then, & I 18.  There is a lot of life lived & trauma survived throughout all those years.  The THC helped me survive it by keeping me in a place of safe denial.  When I began a new life of sobriety I found I had hidden all the good parts of my life along with all the bad parts of my life.  I couldn't trust anyone including myself.  I couldn't make true intimate connections in relationship with other human beings.  I still struggle with all of it now at 51 years of age with grandchildren.   I saw a lot of counselors but never anyone truly educated or experienced in P.T.S.D. or Trauma issues.  I minimized the effects  on my life from the trauma I experienced.  I still ask myself why I am such a wimp about the things I experienced, and this is wrong.  Yes, there are people in this world who've experienced much more devastating life experiences than I have.  But, that is not the point.  That way of thinking is just me looking for a place to hide from the reality of how it all effected me.   Minimizing & awfulizing  my experiences are just ways for me to try to deny the work I still need to do to heal from the trauma.  There is a good book which began my understanding of my symptoms and my condition titled, " Broken Toys Broken Dreams," by author Terry Kellog ( Spelling?).  Also another book titled, "Trauma and Addiction."I just found out that there are trained trauma therapists and that I need one.  I was experiencing P.T.S.D. & panic attacks the 1st few years of sobriety back in the late 1980's early 1990's.  I worked hard on my emotional issues, my messed-up way of perceiving life, my immature emotional states, and was diagnosed with clinical depression for which I was properly medicated for a few years.  The medication stopped working after a few years & all the other newer meds did not work.  I found that I needed the drug (THC) to feel, & to not feel.  I found I had been raised, although by my self without parents, with the drug there with me at every new experience.  It helped me talk my way into jobs to support my kid brother without a High School Diploma.  It helped me through any & every emotional or other life experience I needed help to get through.  When I stopped using it to save me from my inexperienced, ignorance, and innocence I was terrified.  I had to re-learn how to live life completely.  I desperately wanted to hide somewhere but there was nowhere to hide anymore.I did well with a very little counseling and a lot of personal work on my own for the first 7 yrs of sobriety.  But then the panic began to return, just in little bits during waking hours, then at night the dreams were bad, and strange, and the inability to sleep returned.  Then my mind made up elaborate excuses for the rationalizations to leave the life I had created in sobriety, and I believed every lie it told me.  I did not understand I was going into a trauma episode which was out of my control. nor was I aware of anything wrong with my perceptions or thinking process.  My emotions were going off kilter but I hid all of it from most everyone in my life for my ego as I figured I should have been weller by then, with all the hard work I did and the deep recovery issues I had begun to heal.  It was just not acceptable to me then to be sick.  It felt like the old days like there was something bad or wrong or flawed with me and I was just weak.   I had a complete break-down, trashed all in life I had built up in those 7 yrs of recovery, an old personality, the one that kept me sane back then came back to keep me sane & safe again and i moved back to where all the trauma happened in the first place with the idea that I could go back in time somehow and pick the better path than the one I had taken.I was suicidal, I drank alcohol for 3 months but never god drunk.  I believe the God I found in recovery or the Great Spirit of Creation kept me from the experience of the alcohol working.  For if the old way of using had worked I don't think I would have made it through that 3 month insanity period alive.  I believe the fact that I found no relief in the use of the old ways of surviving saved my life. I had a dream where an old friend who died in sobriety came to me and told me that the truth would set me free no matter what that truth was.The next day after the dream I literally woke up in my old home town 1000 miles away from the new life I had built and honestly wondered how I had gotten there and what had happened to me.  I got on a plane, returned home and began sobriety and recovery again.  That was back in 1997.  I had no real P.T.S.D. or panic attacks again until about a year ago.  It all came rushing back again.  I miss placed the causes of it for a few months and then realized on my own what was happening again.  I was informed finally that there are trained trauma therapists and I would need one if I was ever to really get the chance to heal from this.  I found one but it did not work for me with the 1st one I found.   We must trust our guts and keep vigilant with whether we are making excuses to run or if the therapist is just not the right one for us.  This one was not a good one for me. I have many other health issues which have taken priority over the finding of the new therapist, but I am actively seeking the new help now.  I am taking a medication for the panic attacks which has kept away any full on P.T.S.D. attacks so far.  My symptoms are raging.  No sleep at night unless medicated and that doesn't even work well.  I am too vulnerable to be intimate with my partner at all.  I am not even really able to talk about much of the painful realizations with my partner nor friends or family.  I can detach enough to speak about some realizations of symptoms in an intelligent manner but I must detach completely emotionally to talk to them about that.  Even then I can feel the out of control emotions attempting to surface and take my sanity away, if sanity is what you could call it.  It's more a control than sane. I have been immobilized by depression and exhaustion with trying to keep control of the emotional part until I find the therapy.  I will not use any drugs nor alcohol to relieve symptoms except for the doctor prescribed panic attack medicine and I am only taking that because I have a heart condition which has been complicated by the panic attack symptoms and I end up in the emergency room at hospital if I don't take it. I still will not presume to tell you or anyone what is right or healthy for you to do.  I am only sharing my personal and unique experience with my belief that the use of the THC would not help me because I used it for too long to hide from reality.  I believe it may help many different medical conditions when used with professional supervision and under the right conditions for the right reasons.  It saved my life and my sanity back then when I had no other way to deal with the trauma which caused my emotional & mental conditions.   It was my best friend and savior back then.  I thank God it was there because I don't believe I would be alive today to have this story to share with you. There would have been no children born, and I would not be a young Grand Mother today, helping to raise beautiful little people to make our world a better place to live in for the future.I have no idea if this long post will help you or not.  I felt the heart/God tug to tell you the whole truth, and so I have.God Bless, may Grace be with you, and may you find your way to healing and a happy, joyous, life full of loving and great accomplishment in your life.  We are all worthy of this Grace and you shall surely have yours.In Love, Light, Truth, & Service,'Stubborn' TerrieAnnralop