I live in California and need advice

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I have extreme anxiety issues to where i dont even hang out with the friends i do have because im paranoid of what they think of me which ends up causing depression when i think i got no true friends and i have a hard enough time socializing without having all these other troubles on my plate. I have looked up medicinal ways to help me overcome my problems but their side effects will just add more troubles on me and will be harmful in most cases and i tried 5 years of therapy that focused almost exclusivly on socializing but that didnt help. i used to smoke marijuana for a few years i stopped when i lost my friends but when i smoked it i noticed it erased my anxiety, which in turn erased my depression because it was anxiety caused, and it allowed me to socialize with my peers now my dilemma is should i try to ask my mom to take me to my doctor so i can get as card? ive done extensive research on marijuana for a couple years now and i firmly believe it is the healthiest choice for my body because it doesnt have the harmful side effects of the other drugs. i mean come on anti depressants make you even more depressed if your a teed like i am. but i want your opinions on what to do.

It sounds reasonable to me. Just wondering--is there any way to take marijuana without smoking it?

Yes, it's called hash brownies.

Are you at least 18? If you still need your mom's permission for this, then I imagine she'd want to know how you'd know the effect of marijuana on your anxiety. And of course, the minute you tell her what kind of things you used to do with your friends she'd get a heart attack.

In sum: Wait till you're at least 18. And you better prepare a pretty convincing argument for your doctor.

there are plenty of ways to "take marijuana" without smoking it. vaporizing it is much healthier. you can also cook with it. if you're feeling particularly lazy, you can just spread some cannabutter on toast. you can use the marijuana you've already vaporized to make butter (though, that often gives the butter a popcornish flavor. works great on corn bread.)

be sure to research the doctor you plan on getting your recommendation from. there are a lot of really crappy people who give them out illegitimately and that can get you into trouble.

also: marijuana has side effects, just like any drug. people who pretend it doesn't are pretending. if you're at an age where you need a parent's consent, you may want to reconsider other options. i know that sounds like a copout, but it's really not. we don't really know all of the long term effects of marijuana use but i can tell you for certain that, while it does alleviate my anxiety, it probably exacerbates my executive dysfunction.

if you do decide to go this route and use cannabis as a medication, treat it like a medication. don't smoke it. don't use it for fun. either cook your own butter or buy premade butter from a dispensary. figure out the best schedule to use it so that you can benefit from it without negatively impacting your obligations.

i really can't stress this part enough: consider other options. marijuana can be a lot of fun and that's not a good thing for a medication. if you decide to go that route and then decide to "have fun" with it, you may find yourself emotionally dependent on the intoxication.

good luck.

Or, tell your Mom you want to go to the doctor for anxiety issues. And use measured disclosure regarding what you and your doctor talk about privately. And your Mom should respect this. Tell her something, be truthful regarding what you tell her, you just don't have to tell her everything. If the doctor gives you a prescription, you can just tell her: 'Mom, the doctor recommends that I use medicinal marijuana on a controlled basis.' And you can just leave it at that.

Doctors tend to be lousy listeners, and that's the fact of the matter. They usually have their mornings and afternoons scheduled so tightly that they have to go fast. I have had some success with writing my questions and issues on a piece of paper. This doesn't always work, but I feel it increases the odds. I keep it to one-half of one piece of paper, three bullet points and that's it. And I print neatly. So perhaps . . .

'I'm fairly sure I have Asperger's Syndrome.'

'I have severe social anxiety.'

'I would like to talk with you about the possibility of a marijuana prescription.'

And be prepared to have a real conversation with the doctor. And he or she might say no and that's fine, and you might learn about another possibility in the process. However, you always have a right to a second opinion with another doctor. It does sound like you've put a lot of thought into this.

Don't have personal experience until my early 40s and then only sporadically. However, from what I understand, smoking gives a much more modulated dose that you can adjust slightly up or down. It's quick feedback. Need a little more, you can take a little more. Take a little much, okay, you can now backoff. Whereas ingesting has delayed feedback, so it's easy to have no effect and then find that you took too much. The vaporizer sounds like it might be the healthiest way.

Somewhere I read in an anthropology book that marijuana may have been one of the first plants cultivated by humans because hunters-gatherers liked that it relieved boredom during long periods of waiting for small game. And of course the first human cultivation was likely just weeding existing plants. And the gathering part provided about 50% of total calories and did so in a much more steady way than the hunting part, and hunter-gatherers had much more equalitarian societies as far as equal rights for women until maybe the 1950s! And they tended to work only about 4 hours a day on average, and esp with the hunts, they seemed to have a pattern of doing something and then talking about it, a pattern which I really like! The one fly in the ointment was occasional famine, and yeah, actually, that's quite a fly in the ointment.

Anyway, I think humans have a long history with marijuana. And, compared to the somewhat-flawed somewhat-good clinical testing of modern drugs, this is also an avenue to knowing something. And then, like anything else, and like I often preach to myself, take a medium step, get feedback, take another medium step, etc.

I am 17 and i was diagnosed with Aspergers syndrome in the seventh grade i have been in therapy for years based almost exclusivly on getting me to socialize better but the treatment is only partly working and my issues that i mentioned earlier seem to be getting worse no matter how hard i try to fix them with willpower and im very paranoid over most medications and their side effects thats why i researched my options and thought this is probably the best choice.

Even some of the better therapists take a left-brain, analytic approach to social skills. And if you're like me, you probably have loads of left-brain skills, which can be valuable, but you'd probably more profit, it would be a bigger open field for you if you were to add some right-brain, feel-and-texture skills.

When I lived in Vegas for two years, I tried not to get involved in conversations at the poker table (played better poker that way, although I still broke even overall). Instead I would try to get my fill of conversation by going over to the sports book where they had big screen TVs and comfortable chairs.

'How's the game?'

I might sit a chair away from someone, and a very straightforward lead-in. And I say this as I'm sitting down to avoid a big build up and then kind of blurting out. Just a very casual, how's the game. About 1 out of 3, the person would respond with enough animation and length that we would get into a conversation. The other times, maybe he got busted on some sports bet, maybe he's majorly sleep-deprived, maybe he's overly socialed with the buddies he came with. That is, it's more about him than it is about me. Nothing always works socially (I have to remind myself of that, and I'm not sure psychologists really get that point).

'How's the game?'

'How's the Colt's defense playing?'

Currently I'm not really socially skilled to continge the second question to whether the response to the first question is generally positive. But all the same, that's about as complicated as I now believe I should be. Before, wow, it was almost like I was auditioning, some real complicated point like I was in the middle of ABC Monday Night Football broadcast and making some careful analysis. I was putting some of the best of myself out there, and naturally, yeah of course I was hurt if the person didn't respond in a positive way. When again, this guy can be busted, sleep-deprived, over-socialed, etc. So, I really think social skills are more about undertrying. Being willing to ping-pong back and forth in an inherent imprecise way (right-brain feel-and-texture).

Now, yes, being 17, it is going to be harder for you to get a prescription for medical marijuana. You know that, I know that. And, yeah, I worry about side effects, too, esp. since doctors are so blase about them. (and me, I am affected by side effects, including antihistamines). Okay, if you could get a doctor you could halfway talk to. And, if it's heavy-duty side effect, downshift to half a dose, the day you're calling and making an appt maybe several days hence to talk about the dosage. I don't view this as going against the doctor. I view this as part of good communication and part of the process.

And just an idea, maybe an early start to college? Or a community course on paramedics, or songwriting? A chance for you to meet people slightly older than yourself, like say around age 19. Looking back on it, I missed that my own senior year in high school.


NOTE: I made a post a while ago entitled Clinical drug trials as ‘clunky’?

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt137888.html

Basically, per a seemingly very solid article in Mother Jones, in the research studies for a schizophrenia drug, the pharmaceutical company at various times stacked the deck, giving a low dose of a competing drug, a too high dose of another competing drug, and then the right dose of their own drug. And then, not surprisingly, their drug "won." Plus, the so-called Institutional Review Boards was a joke. So, yes, many of the concerns with Big Pharma are very valid indeed.
That said, I guess it can be looked at as a mixed bag. Some terrible studies, some okay studies, hopefully anything too glaring would jump out. And, you could ask your doctor for an older, more well-established drug. And then feel-and-texture. Start with medium-low dose and take it from there. And human biochemistry being very complicated and, for example, a depression medicine which works for one person might not work at all for another, and presumable the same is true for medicine for anxiety. You need to have a doctor who is not into "being right" and who instead has the patience to adjust medicines and try different medicines as you go along. And actually you only need a doctor who is halfway a good listener (but that is harder to find than one might think!)