[szvsw]

Not really a good idea IMO to recommend psychoactive solutions without consulting with a dr. Obviously MJ is relatively tame and safe, but insomnia can have a lot of other underlying factors/comorbidities which can also elevate risk for substance abuse (eg depression, OCD, etc) or improper self-medication, and developing a dependence on MJ as a sleep aid in those cases isn’t great. Can also quickly develop a tolerance etc, so if you are just using it to knock yourself out and not putting in other work to improve your sleep, it can quickly lose its effectiveness. As tame as MJ is, it’s still worth treating it with at least some amount of caution and respect when it comes to using it medically in conjunction with anything that borders on the sphere of depression and mental health IMO. Dual diagnoses are a thing after all!

It also might be totally fine and work out well for a lot of people (and possibly even better than other pharmacological solutions like ambien), but IMO you should probably not recommend MJ as a self-medicated sleep aid. If you are having serious sleep issues, see a doctor, and they may very well recommend trying out MJ, in which case go for it! Not trying to be a downer (ha) or anything, just trying to be realistic and at least ask people to be self-critical before adopting a self-administered psycho-active solution to a medical problem.

[ein0p]

Hence the disclaimer. All I can say is it worked for me. I make no further claims. I’ve also found doctors to be borderline useless for stuff like this. You might even get a prescription for addictive (and psychoactive) sleeping pills which you’ll then be taking for years. At least with MJ you can just stop taking it.

[szvsw]

Yep, I hear ya and mostly agree, that’s why I made the point about ambien. Not trying to sound like a Nancy Reagan or anything. I was just trying to caution against self-medication, because it’s not uncommon for people to not realize that there are other factors affecting their sleep health. It might be the case that MJ actually also ends up being a good treatment for those things as well, which is awesome, but it also can go the other way, and it becomes a mask/crutch etc. Just advocating for people to investigate the causes of their insomnia and think critically about whether or not a psychoactive solution is appropriate for them, possibly in conjunction with a doctor or therapist and if not then at least with some form of accountability if necessary, like a friend etc.

MJ works for a lot of people and is, generally speaking, perfectly safe. For some people it’s not appropriate, and I think that’s at least worth highlighting.