“I’ve been given so many labels, but CBD made me feel normal again”

Founder of the cannabidiol brand, Euphoria CBD, talks to Cannabis Health about how CBD has helped him turn his life around and move on from the trauma of his childhood.

23-year-old Matthew Cobb says he has seen “way too much” for someone his age.

At the age of 12, Matthew was taken into the care system, suffering from serious mental health issues stemming from traumatic events in his early youth.

Throughout the course of his childhood, he was diagnosed with PTSD, autism spectrum disorder, multiple personality disorder and bipolar and was given medication in an effort to treat his mental health.

“I took medication from a very young age,” Matthew says over the phone.

“I suppose a lot of it at the time was my mum trying to find a reason as to why my behaviour was the way it was.”

His doctors prescribed him medications such as Ritalin, Concerta XL, sertraline and olanzapine to cope but none of them worked for him and the side effects were, at times, crippling.

“Prescribed medication was very prominent in my childhood. They didn’t really do anything for me but I was forced to take them every day,” he says.

“There was not one [medication] that I could take and feel myself. Some of them made me angry, some of them absolutely tore me apart and made me borderline suicidal.”

Eventually, the side effects became too much, and Matthew decided to stop taking prescription medication at 15-years-old.

Having first encountered cannabis at the age of 13, he began to solely rely on “medicating” through the drug. In his late teenage years, Matthew says he would often consume upwards of £70 worth of cannabis in one day.

“It was the only thing that gave me some sense of normality at the time. The fact that ‘stoned’ was the closest to normality that I could get at 17-years-old was a problem,” he says.

At the age of 18, Matthew stumbled across CBD for the first time in a local convenience store where he saw a pack of CBD flower for sale.

“I saw this thing that ultimately looked like cannabis. I’d never heard of CBD before,” he recalls.

He bought the 0.5 g pack and went to the local park to roll a ‘CBD joint’ and was astounded by the effects.

“It was just a feeling of constant relaxation. I didn’t feel paranoid. I didn’t feel like anyone was judging me,” he says.

Later, Matthew began to experience more profound benefits as his consumption of CBD began to positively impact his mental health.

“I started to notice that my depression was easing off and I was starting to feel better in myself,” he continues.

“It was completely different to smoking cannabis. I wasn’t getting high anymore, but I was sleeping again and I was eating properly. My head didn’t feel so up in the air, I didn’t feel manic.”

For Matthew, smoking cannabis was never about getting high. He just wanted to feel “normal”, and cannabis was the only substance he could find that got him close to that feeling.

“I had a lot of issues that I didn’t understand, a lot of issues that didn’t make sense,” he says.

“I was heading in a massive downward spiral and [cannabis] was the only thing that took the edge off.

“It was about making me feel some sense of normality. I got that with CBD, so it almost made cannabis null and void.”

With a renewed clarity of mind, Matthew realised that he had to make a change in his life.

“In two years, you’re going to be in prison or you’re going to be dead,” he thought.

Matthew says he hasn’t picked up a cannabis joint since the first time he tried CBD and from that moment, he was himself for the first time in his life. He no longer recognises in himself the mental health issues that he was diagnosed with as a child.

“My view is I don’t have any mental health issues,” he says.

“I was given many different labels, but they would change week to week; ADHD, bipolar disorder, personality disorder this, personality disorder that, depression.

“I had had a label for everything, but my life now is pretty normal.

“CBD has taken those labels away. It has given me something that no medication could; it’s given me – me.”

Having experienced first-hand the benefits of CBD, Matthew launched his own brand, Euphoria CBD, in July 2020.

It is set to launch a range of new products throughout 2021, including e-liquids, soap bars, bath bombs, moisturiser creams.

Frustrated with the lofty costs of CBD products, he set out to make high-quality cannabidiol affordable. Recalling a time in his life where he was struggling to make ends meet and pay for the supplement that had such a huge impact on his life, Matthew aims to make CBD accessible to everyone, regardless of their income.

“CBD is something that comes with benefits for so many different people, but the problem is that people don’t realise how much poverty there actually is in this country,” he adds.

“People can’t afford this kind of product, it’s just not possible. My goal is to provide an affordable product that genuinely helps people.”