“It made me feel human again” – Medical cannabis and anxiety

Struggling with severe anxiety brought on by the pandemic, Sylv has spent the last year taking anti-depressants, which caused acute side effects and withdrawal symptoms. Now she is taking medical cannabis, which she says is “making her feel human” again.

“My anxiety wasn’t horrific until the start of the pandemic,” says, Sylv, 41.

Sylv has suffered from anxiety for a number of years and has learned how to manage the condition and keep her mental health under control.

But in March last year, as the country was plunged into lockdown, she was hit with a wave of anxiety that she hadn’t experienced before.

She was taking the beta-blocker, propranolol, at the time. It was “perfect” for managing her anxiety, but would often trigger her asthma, a common side effect of the drug.

As Sylv sat at home “wheezing” from her asthma, she started to panic, believing she had caught Covid-19.

From there, she says, her mental health began to spiral out of control. She soon found that things as simple as going shopping, would leave her crippled with anxiety.

“The fear I had about leaving the house and going out was what affected me the most,” Sylv says.

“It became so strong that I felt uncomfortable touching things and I would get so anxious that it would make me nauseous.

“At one point I was in the queue at a shop, and somebody was standing too close behind me. I came home and I burst into tears.”

Sylv tried multiple medications before being prescribed Venlafaxine, a strong anti-depressant that came with an array of “awful” side effects.

After being signed off from work for six months, Sylv rarely left the house for fear of triggering her anxiety and, as a result of her medication, started experiencing nausea, headaches and insomnia. She would regularly be awake for 36 hours at a time.

Sylv worked as an admin assistant for a care agency. Due to the nature of the job, it was impossible for her to work from home.

In November, she says she felt ready to try to return to work again.

“It was very hard having to go to work in those circumstances. I did try and get a bus in one time, but it was horrible,” she says.

Caring for the elderly on a daily basis meant talk of the pandemic was all around her, which only fed into her anxiety.

“We had some clients and staff members that had Covid, so when I was at work it was constantly being mentioned. It was just continuous, 24/7, it was all that was talked about,” she says.

Sylv managed to work for two months until it became too much. The Venlafaxine was “dulling” her brain to the extent that she wasn’t able to focus on her work and she was signed off sick again in January.

Shortly after going on sick leave, Sylv’s doctor increased her dose of venlafaxine to 225 mg. This time, she noticed problems with her vision and a loss of balance caused her to fall over.

And it wasn’t just her physical health that was affected. While taking Venlafaxine, Sylv says she lost the “zeal” to do things she loved. An avid cook before lockdown, Sylv says she didn’t cook a meal from scratch for almost a year.

In February, her friend suggested she give medical cannabis a try.

“I didn’t really believe it to start off with, but I looked into it and decided to go for it,” she says.

Sylv chose The Medical Cannabis Clinics for her prescription and was accepted onto the Project Twenty21 scheme that offers to subsidise costs for eligible patients.

Her first prescription came through the door in March.

“It was like being six-years-old on Christmas Day,” she says.

Sylv was prescribed with two strains: 30gm of CMC, a balanced CBD-THC sativa and 30mg of MVA, a THC-dominant indica.

The two types of cannabis together helped “immensely” with her anxiety and also relieved the chronic back pain that she had been suffering from for a number of years. She felt the benefits immediately.

“Literally from the first puff, I could tell that the quality was good and it was doing what it was supposed to. It’s like your mum coming up and putting a blanket around you, that feeling of being comforted,” she says.

With the help of medical cannabis, Sylv is now coming off venlafaxine, but with that, has come extreme withdrawal symptoms.

First, she started to experience “brain zaps”, also known as paraesthesia.

“It affects the nerve endings in your head,” Sylv explains.

“You suddenly feel something like an electric shock going through your head.”

Her nausea also reached a new peak, to the extent where she had to stop driving.

“I drove to my corner shop, which is a two-minute drive away. On the way back, I was trying to stop myself from vomiting in the car,” Sylv says.

Thankfully, Sylv is close to coming off venlafaxine completely, replacing the anti-depressant with her new prescription.

“Medical cannabis, for me, has been life-changing,” she says.

“My dad says I sound so much brighter. I feel joy. It enables me to laugh and feel relaxed and I find that I enjoy things more now.”

Sylv and her friend have now started a help group on Telegram, an instant messaging platform that allows users to create an anonymous account.

The pair are helping others gain access to a medical cannabis prescription, providing peer-to-peer support and explaining the process to people who might otherwise be unaware.

“Medical cannabis has improved my wellbeing, my motivation, my self-confidence. It has made me want to share what I have with others and help people because I feel very privilege,” says Sylv.

“We’re trying to reach people who are self-medicating, who maybe need a hand and give people the information they need so that they can check for themselves and see if they qualify for it.

“We’re trying to give back a little bit and inform people that there is such a thing as medical cannabis.”

Sadly, as a result of her struggles with anxiety over the last year, Sylv was made medically redundant from her job in early April and her husband was made redundant less than a week later.

Now facing a difficult financial situation, Sylv is uncertain about what the future holds for her prescription, which costs her £300 per month.

Even with the help of Project Twenty21, her medication, which makes her “feel like a human being again”, is at risk.

“If I have to stop [my prescription] because I can’t afford it, it will feel like a leap backwards; from almost being back to my normal self to somebody that might not even be able to go out of the house,” Sylv adds.

“It’s going to feel like a limb has been cut off; it’s like a lifeline.”

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