Why I left academia to teach people about cannabis - By Emily Earlenbaugh, PhD (@emilyearlenbaugh)

People often ask me why I left academia to pursue a life of education in the cannabis industry. For me, the answer is simple. Cannabis changed my life - and helping others find the same transformation is more fulfilling than anything I was doing in the academic world.

Before cannabis, I felt sick on every day of my life. With multiple chronic pain, anxiety & fatigue conditions, the best way to describe my health is that my body is on high alert… all the time.

My childhood was painful. With constant anxiety, and an overactive immune response, I was nauseous every day - not to mention exhausted, with a tense, aching body, unfocused mind, allergic responses like runny nose, sore throat and acne, and a seemingly unending line of recurring flus, colds and mysterious illnesses. As I got older, it only got worse.

I grew up on the east coast, in New Jersey, where cannabis was not a medical options at the time, and was put on several heavy prescription medications by my doctors to manage my symptoms. These helped but after a few years, the prescriptions stopped working. In fact, they stopped working and started giving me even worse symptoms than I started with.

Unfortunately, I was chemically addicted to the medications at that point and I couldn’t stop them without going through a lengthy and painful withdrawal process. If I stopped taking these medications abruptly, I put myself at risk for potentially deadly seizures.

Luckily, by the time these prescriptions had stopped helping, I had moved to California for graduate school, where cannabis was an option. With help from cannabis, I was able to replace and withdraw off of the dangerous and addictive prescription medications completely.

Cannabis was completely life changing. I went from being so sick, I was unable to get out of bed most days, to working full time and still having enough energy to spend time with my friends and family.

However, during this process, I found there was a huge learning curve, before I was able to figure out which cannabis products actually worked for me.

Sometimes the cannabis would work incredibly well, and other times it seemed like it was making things worse, giving me negative side effects like anxiety or headaches. It was a learning process that involved a lot of uncomfortable highs and money wasted on the wrong strains.

Eventually, I started to utilize some of the tools I had discovered through my academic research. My doctorate and academic expertise is in the philosophy of science and specifically research methods used to study subjective internal states like happiness, well-being, or pain. With cannabis, I was needing to track my own subjective reactions to different types of cannabis.

So, I created simple methods to research my own cannabis experiences and track the different variables involved. Soon, I had narrowed in on the strains, methods of consumption and environmental factors that worked well for me, and those which did not. When approached mindfully, it wasn’t very difficult to find what worked best.

Now my experiences with cannabis are positive every time because I know exactly what I need, and when I need it. I know what works with my biochemistry, and what gives me negative side effects.

After finding so much benefit from the cannabis plant, personally, I felt called to work in the cannabis industry and help others navigate the process of using cannabis to enhance their own wellness. I educate through writing articles at publications like the San Francisco Chronicle, Cannabis Now Magazine, and Dope Magazine, consulting and creating online courses that teach patients about how to better utilize their medicine. While my work in academia was interesting, my life in cannabis is both fascinating and much more fulfilling. Now, I not only see how my life was changed, I get to see many lives changed on a daily basis.

Now, I’m going to start bringing more education about cannabis science and culture to the Steemit community. There are so many aspects of cannabis to discuss. I may cover its use for specific medical conditions, how to customize your cannabis regimen, getting started with cannabis or how to navigate cultural norms in the cannabis community, just to name a few.

//What cannabis topics would you like to discuss and learn about? Comment below!

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🔥🔥🔥 Emily is our first freelance @KushSmokers author and we hope everyone enjoyed her first Steem article. She is new to the Steem community and was introduced to it through the #KushSmokers onboarding program, so please take a second, follow Emily, as she will be posting on her own account as well as under the @KushSmokers handle, alongside many other new high quality authors such as Emily in the near future!🔥🔥🔥

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