Slowdown Farmstead

Here we are, again. Your intrepid duo rambling on about all things relationship. Hope there might be a little nugget or two in here for anyone that listens. We had fun. :-)

Each moment in a life, a string of different lengths. Some are rough, unpleasant in our hands. Others are luminescent, soft and warm and we want to hold onto them, shove them in our pocket. Own them. But even they must end.  Everything -  a beginning and an end. Some longer. Some shorter. All of them into the tapestry of a life.

Up and down, over and under. One string around the other. Nothing symmetrical. Nothing smooth. There are frayed edges, lumps and gaps where some pieces had trouble melding into the others. And if time, or the passion of the weaver’s fingertips, lags, we would see gaps, but in the end there can be no separation. In the end we come to understand. It all comes together. 

The threads that compose a life. Strips of embroidered cloth from the hands of an ancient Slovak ancestor. Each flower a prick of a needle in the hand of a woman I will never know. A woman I will always know. Gilded, metallic thread, a rarity, an extravagant devotion.

The stalks of dried wheat, threshed by my uncle, made into a bed by child me. A bed lofted to the heavens so that I could get closer. A bed where prairie birds sang me a lonely lullaby.

A piece of sinew, always there, unravelled from my heart when my father left. Hard now, structure. Reinforcement. Sinew coated in the sap of Mother Pine who held me in her limbs. Up I went, into the very tippy top of her body, crying out for a daddy that never heard me. She held me though. I will never forget her strength under my soft, vulnerable underbelly. 

There are pieces too, of umbilical cord from the children that died in me before they could be born. Three rounded curls of hair from baby’s first haircut, each its own shade of brown from black to gold. There are letters from school officials, coiled tight into the rest. Melded. Hard to see now, brittle with age. There are fatigue green strings, burned off before inspection, that found their way in, interwoven all over the place even still. The military that showed a lost girl what she was capable of.

There is the viking steel, stripped down and winnowed to a thread. It runs up the middle and it offers the structure and stability to hold everything together. Wool encircles it. Softness and warmth. The wool from each animal we have known and cared for and been nourished by. Grasses from the land of endless skies. Patches from a thick lumber jacket. The feathers from a fishing lure used on a day I almost died. You’re still here, it reminds me.

In one spring morning our lives ever altered. The death of our daughter. Here, says the world, take this one - this string made of coarse, darkened hemp. There’s no end on that one. A thick cord more than string. Thicker and coarser than anything else. It is endless and it is ours.

Two weeks later, a mother cow births two perfect little heifer twins that she promptly stomps in fury and fear. Those little creatures, surely meant to die, live. They thrive under our care. I milk their mother and give that milk to them. They run to me. I sit in the hay with them in the old barn. Sunbeams pushing through the ancient boards. I cry. I laugh. They push their wet noses into me and there is elation and devastation. 

The blackened cord remains, thick and heavy with grief.  But I am handed another thread now. A small thread, a whisper of an offering. It’s made of luminescent spider webs woven into a delicate silken thread. It breaks with a breath. Make these fit together, says God. I don’t know how to. I vacillate between the two, holding the rough rope and the filament of web that I have to squint to see. I look at each so quickly, vacillating between the two, that the edges become frayed. The anguish is there. The joy is there. They are each profoundly there.

Time rolls on as time does. People like to say time heals all wounds. That is a lie. Time does no such thing. Wounds are healed with love. Love and sunlight and bird song. Wounds are healed when their threads are wrapped around the others. One needing the other to become what is meant to be. There is no tapestry composed solely of soft pinks and joyful oranges. There needs to be structure, growth. If we leave out the rough and the heavy there is only the aesthetic acrylic softness. Faux warmth. Faux beauty. A facsimile that will never shroud us in meaning on the day they come to wrap you in the tapestry that is your life.

In time, the mother cow came to care for her two little calves. She fed them and wandered the grassy woods with them. In time they came to recognize the language of cows over that of mine. That is how it should be. But weeks ago, one of those heifers, the sweetest one, named Honey for just that reason, had a leg injury. “Unfixable” said the cow vet.

We tried. We waited. We realized.

I went out to her this morning to say goodbye. I fed her alfalfa, her favourite of all and I scratched her tail and her brisket exactly as she liked me to do. I rubbed her spine and she leaned into me. I scratched behind her horns, a spot only a human hand can reach. I suspect that’s why they are domesticated to us. Fingers that fit in the indent behind a horn. I see no other possibility.

I told Honey stories of my gratitude for the miracle of her life. I told her what it was that she brought to my world in a time that was, I thought, an insurmountable grief. An endless ball of black cord that I can now see, upon closer inspection, is composed of many different fibres. Each one braided into the whole. Dragonfly wings, threads from hockey skate laces, long, thick coils of golden hair. And when I listen, I can hear little girl giggles and big girl shrieks of joy. I like to touch it. I touch it every day.

I prayed to God for a true and swift shot from my husband, a man taking on the heavy load because he would rather carry that than the shame of allowing someone else to pull the trigger.  And I thanked her for her time in our world. For being the sweetest thing, part of two, that laid in the hay with me, all of us coated in summer’s light. I would weep and trace their hooves still soft and sweet from their mother’s watery womb. They, reminding me of the great, wondrous mystery of this world in a time when I was certain I wasn’t cut out for it.

Her string, made with those braided cobwebs and flecked with auburn tail hairs illuminated with the radiating skies of summer, now ending. 

But it’s still there. She’s still there. Not an isolated piece, but part of a whole. I will see it, all of it, in the end. The end - the grand unveiling of it all. Wrap that heavy cloth around my shoulders and bury me in the depths of the earth. My body will hold the weight. I  will take it all, every last thread, every last flaw knowing there is no lying in the sunbeam of an old barn with new life if I have numbed the heart that holds it. 

What is hardest, coldest, most heavy turns into what is the most dependable to wrap the softer, easier bits around. They need that, those sweet, gauzy parts. Without, they just unravel and slip away without any notice. 

I will miss that beautiful beast. She was a friend when I really needed one. I am forever grateful for the tenderness she carried into my darkened world. For her soft hooves. For her joyful excitement when I was near.

Thank you, dear, Honey, keeper of secrets, dryer of tears. Godspeed.

Slowdown Farmstead is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I nabbed that husband of mine, tied him to a chair, and plunked a microphone in front of him. Success! In this go around of our ‘dynamite’ talks, we discuss where we are in our preparations to eat solely from our farm this year. We also talk about working with people, paying cash, and the theme of the night in the ER on his previous shift.

When I told my husband, Troy, that I was going to be writing a piece about the art of dawdling, he replied, “I better read it. I don’t think I know how to dawdle.” And then after a pause he asked, “Have you ever seen me dawdle?” No, I don’t suppose I have. But maybe I’m not supposed to.

I submit that a resolution to embrace the fine art of dawdling may j…

A famine of common sense and courage can only bring about a glut of cowardice and lunacy. That’s just the way the world works. Starve reason, feed the unreasonable. Take a look around, we all know it. Everything that was solid has been diluted. All the touchstones, shifted. All the rules eroded. Anything that was tho…

Here are a few of the links I mentioned in the show:

* “Wildcrafted Vinegars” by Pascal Baudar

* Chelsea Green (apple ideas)

Holy moly there were a lot of questions for this months nutrition/kitchen/food themed questions and answers. I’ve had to break it up into two separate blocks. I recorded this first part earlier in the week. The second part will come out next Saturday and will be for paid subscribers only (as are the posts taking questions). I consider it a little perk and a thank you for your support. I didn’t address any off-theme questions so please resubmit those when we do the next Q&A.

I’m going to be taking a digital sabbatical for a week. I need to just reground myself after a very challenging week. In the next couple of weeks we will be harvesting rabbits, chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, and beef. We’re also hoping to be successful in our deer hunt. There’s also my garden to retire after I continue nursing along my fall vegetables, storing said vegetables, completing the root cellar, bringing up the wood etc.. We have a little grand baby waiting to make his/her entrance into the world in November and we need to have everything well done by then.

Mostly, I just need some time for a little stillness. As summer retreats and fall rolls in, I am going to be taking a hard look at how to structure my days as I sit down with hopes of having one, (two??) books completed come next spring. I can do it, I know, but it will require a lot of concentrated discipline and structure. I’ve been thinking of moving my Substack offerings to once weekly during that time. Maybe that would be better for some of you? Feedback is most welcome.

Here are the notes with the resources I shared in this podcast:

* Huberman Lab podcast #84, “Sleep Toolkit: Tools for Optimizing Sleep and Sleep-Wake Timing”

* A great book on adaptogenic herbs, “Adaptogens: Herbs for Strength, Stamina, and Stress”

* Marius Fabre black olive oil soap from France (what I clean with). Super concentrated, lasts forever. This is just the Canadian source I use.

* Ziva meditation

* Essay on health, my take on it anyway “Nobody Wants my Health Advice”

* “The Amazing Liver and Gallbladder Flush” If you look up what people say you will read that this book will kill you and you will read that it saved people’s lives. Your call. I’m not recommending anyone do it. For me, it was, and remains, a tool I will keep and am grateful for. But we are all different creatures. You decide for you.

I don’t want to write this essay, but I am compelled beyond my capacity to ignore. I write this essay for every parent who doesn’t know about this threat to their children. I write it for anyone, anywhere that might just know the person or people this is intended for. I know they’re out there, I just don’t know who they are. And I write this because my daughter, Mila, who died by suicide on May 10th, 2021, insists that I do.

Suicide is multifactorial. A vile symphony of parts that come together in a mighty clash of a finale. I will share with you the story of our daughter, Mila. Illuminated and iridescent Mila. Soft hearted Mila. Funny Mila. A girl with a mind capable of feats beyond a mere mortal. She was a champion of the underdog, a girl who never understood cruelty for gain. She played hockey and rugby and milked cows and wrote stories. She was the shepherdess of barn cats and the milker of devoted cows. She loved board games (winning board games, mostly) and raw cream and she loved her sisters and her family. Mila who, in a matter of less than six months, tried smoking marijuana for the first time, became addicted, developed marijuana induced psychosis, and took her own life.

“Took her own life.” Really? In the anguished months since that time, that part still seems like a lie. She did that? Mila? The grounded, happy, common sense girl did that? It’s a misalignment of facts, but not because I’m in denial - there is no denial in the world I live in. It’s a misalignment of facts because I wonder who was in control of the gears in her brain when she died? Her? When someone ends the life of another we have degrees for it. We use different words depending on whether they were in their right mind. If the murder was planned, for how long and how intricately? Or were they responsible for a murder but not in their mind? Circumstance dictates whether we label it manslaughter or murder in the first or second or third degree. When someone ends their own life, it was them, they did it and that’s that. 

Only with our daughter, it wasn’t her. It was a ravaged brain, hijacked by a product that masquerades as the innocuous pot we knew growing up. That innocent joint, ridiculously ridiculed, passed around at a Van Halen concert, a puff or two each. That joint that had somewhere between 2-4% THC. How could pot be anything but a good time? That’s certainly what the mammoth cannabis industry wants us all to believe as they expand into ever-growing markets.

Those joints, that marijuana flower, are not what many of these kids are smoking today. They’re smoking distillates and vapes and resins and waxes and dabs and things called shatter. They’re smoking laboratory creations meant to drive addiction and set off dopamine avalanches in their still developing brains. These products, some in the 99% THC content range are meant for obliteration, not a gentle groove to some mellow beats. They’re a laboratory creation meant to addict. They want us coming back for more.

In the late fall of 2020, Mila wrote in her diary about her frustration with lockdowns and her dwindling friend group. According to the mandates in our province, she wasn’t supposed to be socializing at all. Some parents forbade their kids from participating in the clandestine friend gatherings. In her small friend group, their get togethers often involved smoking and consuming drugs. She wrote of her boyfriend, and other friends, always being high on pens and that she was “pissed off” because their limited interactions were wasteful for her - other kids high and laughing and her sitting there “bored”.

Pens, as we have come to learn, are the vaping pens that many of the teenagers in our area purchase from the First Nations reservation, a place they call “the rez”. There, pot shops are run openly without governmental oversight. These stores look like Apple stores, glossy and white and legitimate. These kids, and in fact many of the adults that frequent these stores, have no idea that the products on the shelves are not tested or regulated. Many of the kids here have figured out which stores don’t require ID and will make “runs” to make bulk pot purchases.

In a regulated cannabis store in Canada there are limits on quantities that can be purchased, the amount of THC a product can contain, and the labelling and the testing of the product must fall within government parameters. In “the rez” pot shops, none of that exists. Kids without ID can purchase as much product as they want of whatever they want. I asked the police how this continues and was told, “politics”. In the next breath, from the same policeman, I was told that it is known in the policing community that these shops are connected to organized crime that involves human trafficking, gun running et. al.

In November of 2020, Mila wrote, again in her diary, of trying the pen for the first time and “loving it”. A month later she wrote that she couldn’t sleep anymore. Within a few weeks she was using the pens everyday and then, throughout the night, to fall back to sleep. All of her normal brainwave patterns and hormones were askew. The artificial surge in dopamine would crash her dopamine levels below baseline and she would feel unbelievably despondent and need to raise those levels again. Soon enough, the deadly combination of her unique biochemistry and these diabolical lab concoctions melded into insomnia, irrational thinking, and hallucinations. But her friends all seemed fine so it couldn’t be the drugs, right?

All of these things were well hidden from us. We knew there was something wrong, but when we spoke to her she chalked it up to Covid lockdowns and her concerns about her future. She wouldn’t get vaccinated which meant that while her friends were excitedly planning where they would live in the residence buildings, she was looking at rental places where she would live alone off campus. It was an incredibly difficult time to be in her grade twelve year with so many unknowns. Hockey, a sport she had played since she was four years old, had ended as did rugby. Sports were another victim of mandates. We could understand her level of stress and so her explanations seemed reasonable.

Then she decided she didn’t want to go to university at all. Then she wanted to travel the world. Then she wanted to move out east. For a young woman that was always incredibly responsible and surefooted, her decisions were puzzling to us. When we tried to speak to her about her weight loss and her moodiness, she insisted it was because of all of the above. Final exams and the stress of not knowing and maybe she shouldn’t even go to university. We encouraged her to take a year off, let things settle down with covid restrictions, save up some cash. She had always been incredibly mature, honest,  and responsible. We had no reason to believe anything else was going on other than what we discussed.

In the new year she was caught skipping school and had privileges taken away. It was the first time she had ever been in any real trouble. A week later she told us she was moving out. We were flabbergasted. Her older sisters were flabbergasted. All of us spoke with her, tried to figure out what was happening. She broke up with her longterm boyfriend and then was devastated that she had. We spent hours and hours trying to understand what was going on. We spoke. We listened. We struggled to find sense in a voice that didn’t even seem familiar. To all of us in our family, she insisted that she wanted to spend the last few months of grade twelve closer to the city, living with a friend, so she could have a more robust social life. She had always loved living in the country, loved the animals and nature, but now it was only “limiting”. She wanted out. It was so unusual and out of character for her. Of course, in hindsight, knowing that she was chronically using pens and edibles and her brain was no longer clear and concise, it makes sense. But then, none of us understood what was happening. 

She moved into her friend’s house and the drug use increased exponentially. When I tell you of things she said in her diary, it’s not because we had to go looking for it. She left it for us. She wrote notes to us in it. She wanted us to have it. She was often so obliterated by these “pens” that she, an honour roll student and a kid with a 98% average, couldn’t spell or form words in its pages. She left us her diary because I believe that she knew we wouldn’t have ever understood otherwise. 

When they told us she was dead I was certain she was murdered. There could be no other explanation. Nothing else was even within the realm of possibility.

In her diary, she writes about things she’s seeing and hearing. Later, her friends told us about her calling them, terrified and shut in a closet, because she believed there were people outside of it trying to hurt her. They also told me that our house was haunted and shared stories of what she told them. When I asked them why they didn’t say anything or recognize that as her needing help they said, “I thought she could see ghosts.” 

They thought she could see ghosts.

I can think of no better sentence to exemplify the woeful education we have given our young people when we decided to legalize this drug in our country. Her friends had no idea how much trouble she was in. But did I even know? I didn’t know any of this before. We have two older daughters who didn’t have access to these highly concentrated products when they were teens. Pot wasn’t legal then. They smoked pot a few times, could take it or leave it. I was never a fan, but didn’t think much else of it. I didn’t even really care if they legalized it. I figured it was the same stuff I had smoked back in the day only now it would be regulated and safe. That’s not at all the story.

Calling these highly refined and concentrated resins and edibles “marijuana” is like calling opium a poppy or crack a coca plant.  It is nothing of the sort. In fact, there’s no marijuana flower even in the final product of these pens and edibles and dabs and whatever else they sell. Instead genetically engineered plant has been highly processed, the THC extracted with solvents and chemically manipulated into a super concentrated offering meant for maximum effect. The marijuana industry is a mammoth behemoth, a multi billion dollar industry. Notice how we’re hearing of these things more and more. There has been a huge shift. Why? Who stands to profit in the normalization of lives lived in an altered reality?

There are endless studies on the growing prevalence of cannabis induced psychosis which, in 50% of the cases progresses into schizophrenia. I will fill the bottom of this essay with all manner of references to studies including ones on this topic and a whole host of other side effects of using these concentrated THC products. I will include support groups where thousands upon thousands of parents have come together to grieve their beautiful children that all died by suicide after having their brains hijacked by THC. And I will point you to the books written by the heartbroken and the fed up. What I can’t do is point you to the governmental resources for kids and that’s why I’m writing this. It’s the only reason I’m writing this. If I, a pretty checked-out mom when it comes to everything from organic food to the goings-on of my kids to the chemicals in the synthetic clothing I avoided for them, could be so blindsided, it can happen to anyone. I want it to happen to no one. Ever.

In the last few weeks of Mila’s life, she couldn’t sleep for more than a few minutes at a time. She reached out to a drug counsellor at her school and shared her delusions and hallucinations with him. He told her to moderate her usage. That’s the model they use, “moderation”. She was having a medical emergency and it was missed. A week later, feeling there was something more serious with what she had shared with him, the counsellor tried to reach out to her. It was too late.

On the morning of her death, our daughter called a drug addiction crisis line. They said they would email her a link to a drug program. She wrote of the conversation in her diary. “Too little, too late” she said.  The link came via email the day after her death. 

What is most excruciating to us is that in the end, she saw herself as irredeemable. Broken. Fucked up. She was so deeply lost in a mind run amok that she couldn’t even recognize the difference between herself and the poison pulsing through her body, overriding her beautiful brain, stealing her sense and her peace and her joy. Instead, she saw it as her utter failing at life. Inescapable.

And now we live our days here. Every day, every moment. Inescapable. And still, we must love and be open to love. This essay is me loving even in the pain. My deepest desire is to have these words find the person they are intended for. My hope is that some of you might click on some of these links, might read some stories from other parents, might come to understand what is happening to too many of our bright and beautiful. It is trite to say, if one person can be saved, it’s worth it. I don’t want one person, I want every single one of those beauties ripped back from the clutches of a greedy industry gone wild. Every one.

Please share if it’s within you to share. Please talk about this with your children. There are a myriad of resources below. I do not need sympathy. This is not about me. I ask, instead, for your efforts to educate yourselves, to protect and educate your babies, and to inform others on the realities of what is no longer “just pot”. 

Lastly, this is not a debate. Smoke pot if you want, I really don’t care. If you do, hopefully you can see beyond your defences of a habit to a bigger picture that involves the futures and safety of our young. I’m not here to judge anyone’s choices, I’m here to spread this very intimate and painful part of our lives because I am being asked to, because it’s the right thing to do, and because Mila has been speaking to my heart.

For you, Mila. I did as you asked.

Resources & Notes

As I said, suicide is multi-factorial and we believe that the circumstances around covid, including limitations on socializing, the closing of schools where we live, the ending of sports activities, and the restrictions on Mila’s future plans for schools all played a role in setting the stage for her use of high THC vaping pens and the chemicals in those pens were her annihilation. We believe that the covid mandates and shutdowns set the stage for Mila’s use of THC. I wrote about this on Heather Heying’s Substack, Natural Selections. You can read that essay here.

A year ago, we compiled hundreds of pages of studies, documents, and evidence and submitted it to our provincial coroner with an official request for a coroner’s inquest. Included in this package were the results of the chemical analysis we had done by a federally regulated laboratory on the vaping pen products that were in Mila’s possession. If you are a professional organization and would like access to the entire package with the intent purpose of sharing it or researching further to share on your platform, please email me with those details via the email address on my about page.

This package is not intended for personal use as the investigation is ongoing. For everyone else: the vaping pens were saturated with illegal, banned chemicals and some dangerous levels of heavy metals. Our hope is that the coroner will investigate this issue. We wait, but we don’t wait powerlessly.

Updated to add: I am including here the pesticides and heavy metals that exceeded the safety limits in the vaping pens we had tested. Of course, this was one sample from one store so cannot be interpreted as what’s in all vaping pens. There is likely a lot more in some and maybe less in others. There were many more pesticides and heavy metals prestent that fell under the “acceptable” level. These are just the ones that exceeded those values.

Pesticides exceeding safety values: Azoxystrobin, Bifenazate, Boscalid, Cyprodinil, Dichlorvis, Fludioxonil, Fluopyram, Imidacloprid, Malathion, Metalaxyl, Myclobutanil (500 times allowable) Paclobutrazol, Piperonyl butoxide, Propiconazole (300 times allowable), Pyraclostrobin, Pyrethrins, Pyridaben.

Heavy metals: aluminum, boron, bismuth, copper, nickel, tin, zinc

Books:

* “Tell Your Children” by Alex Berenson. Every parent should read this book.

* “The Dangerous Truth About Today’s Marijuana: Johnny Stack’s Life and Death Story” Laura Stack

* “Smokescreen: What the Marijuana Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know” Kevin A. Sabet, Ph.D.

Organizations, Advocacy, and Parent Support Groups:

* International Academy on the Science and Impact of Cannabis (their website is loaded with studies and information)

* Johnny’s Ambassadors - Youth Marijuana Prevention, “I want you to know you were right. You told me marijuana would hurt my brain. It’s ruined my mind and my life, and I’m sorry. I love you.” — Johnny Stack to his mother, 3 days before he died by suicide.

* Moms Strong - “telling our stories, unmasking the marijuana charade”

* Every Brain Matters

* Parent Movement 2.0

* Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM)

* AALM excellent video on this page called “Chronic State” that addresses the genetically modified plants commonly sold today

* POPOT Parents Opposed to Pot

* Institute for Behaviour and Health

Articles and other media:

* Marijuana Killed My Son (if no others, please read this one)

* Marijuana induced psychosis, what is it?

* Facts about Cannabis Induced Psychosis

* The Complex Link Between Cannabis and Psychosis

* A Panel Study on the Effect of Cannabis Use on Mental Health, Depression and Suicide in the 50 States

* Get Help, extensive list of resources for parents

* Cannabis Induced Psychosis in Teenagers and Young Adults: Risk Factors, Detection, Management

* Editor of ‘Cannabis in Medicine’ warns of high THC use and increased psychosis

* California Cannabis Markets - Why Industry Friendly Regulation is Not Good Public Health (JAMA)

* When Cannabis Goes Wrong: Mental Health Side Effects of Cannabis Use that Present to Emergency Services (up to 50% of people presenting to ED with psychosis go on to develop schizophrenia)

* Video: Colorado Family Blames High Potency Marijuana for Son’s Suicide

* Video: Is Marijuana Linked to Psychosis, Schizophrenia? It’s Contentious but Doctors, Feds Say Yes.

* Video: THC the Human Consequences

* Marijuana Legalization Was a Mistake. Highly Concentrated Pot is Destroying My Son’s Life.

* Access to Cannabis Should Not Occur Prior to Age 21, according to a position statement by the Canadian Consortium for Early Intervention in Psychosis

* Know the Drug

* America’s Invisible Pot Addicts

* High potency THC may lead to psychosis, suicide

* Podcast: High Truths on Drugs and Addiction with Dr. Roneet Lev interviewing Alex Berenson

Studies:

* Extensive list to cannabis related studies by category

* Cannabis smoking increases the risk of suicide ideation and suicide attempt in young individuals of 11–21 years: A systematic review and meta-analysis

* Association of cannabis potency with mental ill health and addiction: a systematic review, the Lancet

* 30% of marijuana users have a marijuana use disorder

* Consensus paper of the WFSBP task force on cannabis, cannabinoids and psychosis

* Meta-analysis of the Association Between the Level of Cannabis Use and Risk of Psychosis

* Proportion of Patients in South London with First-Episode Psychosis Attributable to Use of High Potency Cannabis: A Case-Control Study. Lancet Psychiatry, 2015; 2(3): 233–8.

* Increases in Frequent Vaping of Cannabis Among High School Seniors in the United States, 2018–2019

* Aberrant hippocampal shape development in young adults with heavy cannabis use: Evidence from a longitudinal study

* Adolescent cannabis use and later development of schizophrenia: An updated systematic review of longitudinal studies

* Cannabis use disorder and suicide attempts in Iraq/Afghanistan-era veterans

* Cannabis use may be associated with suicidality in young adults

For ten years I lived with the symptoms of Lyme. Lest you think that was a passive experience, allow me to share with you what we threw tens of thousands of dollars towards after the “healthcare system” totally and utterly failed me. Alright, let’s see, we sought out professionals and specialists both domestically and abroad. We travelled across borders…

The written version of this essay, also sent to your inbox, has the video I speak of in this narrated version. Unfortunately, Substack doesn’t let me upload video on the same page as audio offerings. I hope you’ll take a peek. It’s a wonderful example of how calm the herd and the whole process …