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Hi. I'm Ophelia. I'd like to talk to you for a moment about stoned parenting.
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Many of you responded yesterday to my tweet about my daughter threatening suicide. We are parenting in a unique situation. 10 has a whole range of diagnoses that come with varying behaviors and throught patterns. There are furniture-flipping rage tantrums most days.
She battles sleep issues and is up several hours in the night every night. She hasn't EVER slept through the night. She gets into stuff while we sleep - steals my phone and orders stuff online, plays with knives and tools from the garage, mixes soaps and chemicals in the laundry
stuff. She hoards food. Ice cream in her desk. Chocolate pudding smeared all over. Fruit cups with the juices sucked out and old moldy fruit still in them. Every. Fucking. Day. Our house is a series of locked doors, security camera, and posted reminders.
She has very black and white thought patterns which are insanely hard to navigate. There is yelling and fighting every day. The only difference is the degree of escalation. She lies compulsively. She's a kleptomaniac.
I'm no picnic either. I deal with major depressive episodes and generalized anxiety. I live with PTSD and fucked up trauma response. When I'm sober, my tolerance for the daily bullshit is in the cellar. Weed makes it possible to parent her with more patience and kindness.
I listen better when I'm high. I'm more patient. I laugh more and am distracted less. I'm more forgiving and more likely to apologize. It cancels out all of the extra noise in my brain and lets me focus on home schooling and relationship building.
Weed has fewer side effects than any of the antidepressants or anxiety meds that I take on a regular basis. It makes me more relaxed. It has improved my sex life. It helps me sleep. And, it makes me a better version of myself.
So yes, I'm stoned in this picture with my 8. We are doing math and laughing and being silly.
The stigma around weed needs to be remedied.
The stigma around weed needs to be remedied.
