085 | My Relationship with Cannabis: How It Helped Me with Healing, Integration, Creativity & Self-Love
“Cannabis has played a huge role in my life and in my path overall.”
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Cannabis is a slippery slope: It feels like addiction and over-indulgence are always around the corner. But for the most part, I’ve developed a practice and relationship with cannabis that has been supportive to my life. In this episode, I reflect on my relationship with the plant, how it’s changed, and the role it played in my overall healing journey.
While getting high is fun and has its place, cannabis really taught me to enjoy my time alone and explore my inner landscape. It’s also been instrumental as a creative and expressive tool while producing this podcast. I also present the advantages and potential pitfalls of cannabis, and finding a personal balance with usage. The episode further touches on my change in cannabis consumption patterns over time, my favorite consumption method, and cannabis usage in a social setting.
In this episode, I talk about:
The role of cannabis during my healing journey
Learning to be alone & love myself
My personal relationship with cannabis
Cannabis as a tool for psychedelic integration
Cannabis for creativity and podcast production
Social consumption of cannabis
Cannabis instead of alcohol
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Where to Find Lana:
I was introduced to psychedelics in my early 20s within rave culture, and few years later I began to use plant medicine ceremonially.
Many circumstances aligned leaving me shattered, and I began the journey of putting myself back together. Plant medicine & psychedelics saved me from depression, anxiety, and a life of feeling unworthy. This is now my life’s work and I have devoted myself to sharing psychedelics and plant medicines with others because I have personally experienced how effectively they can catalyze growth, healing and connection.
This idea for Modern Psychedelics came to me during a journaling session in early 2020. I was learning so much about psychedelics at the time (while experiencing the benefits firsthand), and I had a deep desire to talk about these topics with people in the field. Upon launching the Instagram community, the page grew tremendously over a short period of time and continues to have high levels of engagement.
I am a 3x certified professional life coach, and I work with people who want to better their lives by deeply integrating insights from their psychedelic experiences. I believe that we don’t have to spend our entire lives healing, and that the purpose of life is to live in the present moment.
Looking for a professional coach to support you on your psychedelic path?
Look no further! Along with being the host of the Modern Psychedelics Podcast, Lana is a 3x certified professional coach who works with people on the psychedelic path.
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Lana Pribic: [00:00:00] Hello everyone. Welcome back to another solo episode with me. So I hope you've been enjoying these more frequent solo episodes. And I really want to start sharing a little more about my integration process with you guys, because I know that.
The journey is certainly an important aspect, but the integration is actually where the work happens. So that's kind of my intention with this episode. And I know I share a lot about the heavy hitters on my, on my podcast, Iboga, Ayahuasca, you know, high dose recreational experiences and more recently 5 MeO.
Obviously these, these experiences need integrating and I don't really talk as [00:04:00] much about how I work with medicines during the integration process. Um, And that's where Cannabis comes in for me. Cannabis has played a huge role in my life and in my path overall. So in this episode, I want to share with you guys my relationship with it and how it's helped me during my healing and also how it's helped me with my creativity and producing a lot of the episodes that you guys hear.
Spoiler alert! I wrote out the, you know, the, not the script, but the talking points for this episode. Well, I was stoned on cannabis. So case end point. So let's get into my relationship with cannabis. So yeah, like I'm definitely not like a connoisseur, like, I don't know about strains, you know, I'm not like someone who's like so deeply ingrained in the cannabis world.
I have a lot of friends that are, I'm definitely not. And nor am I really like. a very long time a weed smoker. I [00:05:00] didn't start seriously consuming cannabis until I was like 26, 27. Like I kind of dabbled with it, but I never really liked it or understood it until like later in life. And I feel like cannabis culture has like these two sides, right?
And there's no in between. It's like, you're either. a huge stoner, or you're scared to consume cannabis because it'll make you paranoid. And I kind of feel that I'm somewhere in between. And maybe there's a lot more people who are somewhere in between and, you know, um, want to come out of the shadows. But yeah, it's something that I definitely struggle with sometimes and have to find my balance with over and over again.
Like, I definitely enjoy cannabis, but I'm also very cautious not to enjoy it too much because it can be habit forming, like, that's the reality. Cannabis is habit forming, it builds a tolerance, right? And it can completely lead to dependency. It's something that kind of just makes everything better, like, honestly, [00:06:00] it just makes everything better.
So I know that, like, as someone who has a very addictive personality, I've been, I've had to be Very careful with this one. So I kind of want to yeah, just shine some light on that for you guys and there's been times where you know, I've You know, it's been like Friday night to Sunday night and I've just been like stoned the whole weekend.
I'm just like What am I doing here? Like, why, why did I just spend my entire weekend high on cannabis and I have to like really catch myself and kind of like navigate the ways that I slip and I kind of like fall into these patterns of dependency with it. But that aside, It's been really instrumental for me.
It has helped me heal. And there's three points that I really want to highlight for you guys here. Um, cannabis has helped me integrate bigger psychedelic experiences and keep the integration process going. It's helped me love myself and [00:07:00] connect with myself and It's helped me produce my podcast and really get to the heart of my message and what I want to say during solo episodes.
So let me get into like the specifics of those three points. So yeah, the integration of big psychedelic experiences and keeping integration going and flowing. So cannabis is something that just opens up my perspective and it opens up my mind and allows me to like really, yeah, have this bird's eye perception.
where I can consider things from different angles and think about things in deeper ways than I would if I weren't under the influence of cannabis. It also allows me to process the experience and to reconnect with the experience. So this is, this is kind of how I work with cannabis during integration.
So I will usually take, um, you know, a break with cannabis before a big. High dose experience and then I'll take a break from cannabis after a big high dose [00:08:00] experience for, you know, at least a week, but I try to do as long as possible when I reintroduce cannabis, um, back into my, you know, regular rotation after a big experience, what I've noticed is that I'm already kind of.
far along in my integration process and like making sense of it. And, you know, I've done the journaling and I've done the processing and I've done the, you know, question asking, and I've had some insights come through. When I consume cannabis, it lets me go so much deeper that it's actually kind of mind blowing how much deeper it allows me to go with understanding the insights that I already kind of have a grasp on.
I just, it's hard to explain, but it just lets me go so much deeper and like. Sometimes it'll put me back into the feelings or the space or just like the emotional connection that was present during a high dose experience or high dose ceremony. [00:09:00] So ways that I kind of create space for this and how I work with cannabis is I'll do it like on a night where I'm just home alone and hanging out and I have a lot of space and I'll either like throw on some music or I'll cook a meal.
And I will like have my journal out, but I just create space and I do something that allows me to get out of my mind and into my body. And then what happens is really interesting as I'm kind of out of my mind and in my body, this like flow of insights just starts to come through. And it's almost like it's not coming from my mind.
It's like just being like float in and channeled through. And yeah, it just feels like profound. wisdom. So that has been so, so helpful for me during integration. One of the ways that cannabis has helped me during my overall healing journey is that, yeah, it helped me love myself and connect with myself.
So you guys may have heard me share before that. Really the crux of my healing journey was this abandonment [00:10:00] wound, this wound that hurt because so many people in my life have abandoned me or left me or not wanted me. And the journey of healing that was really a journey of coming into self acceptance and self love.
And Cannabis really allowed me to create space for myself to honestly, yeah, like, fall in love with myself. Like, it really allowed me to spend quality time one on one with me and my spirit. With me and my soul. With me and my inner being. My nights in with cannabis, like, smoking alone, have shaped me. They really have.
They've allowed me to just, like, approach myself with this fun playful energy and to approach my healing journey with this fun and playful and kind of like light energy. And it's like, it gives me the mental spaciousness from my [00:11:00] like default mode network, really. It gives me the mental spaciousness from those kind of programmed thoughts and ways of thinking.
And it allows me to think in a new way. And when I'm in that space of thinking in a new way, I start to really build a different relationship with myself, right? I start to build this different curiosity with myself, this different sense of, yeah, like wonder, like. I wonder what that could be about. It's as if it allows me to drop the judgments and instead approach myself with curiosity.
And when you put this into a container of spending time with one self. It's really powerful. It's been so instrumental for me. And especially because I was coming from a place of who I am is not enough. My work with cannabis allowed me to enjoy my own company so much. And to really see like, Hey, this person's actually really [00:12:00] awesome.
This person's actually really fun. This person actually has, you know, a lot of ideas and thoughts worth exploring. And it kind of just lightens the mood and allows me to approach myself from a lighter space and kind of just like removes the pressure and allows me to just enjoy what I'm doing. I hope that all made sense.
I'm really just like channeling a feeling right now. I'm really trying to like channel the feeling that I get when I'm working with cannabis on my own. So I hope that it's really coming through just how impactful this has been to me. My relationship with cannabis has not always been so great. It wasn't until I discovered the Pax herb vaporizer that I actually started enjoying cannabis with joints.
I found the effect. too powerful and difficult to control. Plus joints always damage my throat. I have had my first Pax Plus vaporizer for about five years and it is still kicking. I love that it's [00:13:00] gentle on my sensitive throat that I can control the intensity of the high and the gorgeous and intuitive design.
It's truly the apple of vapes. But the thing I appreciate the most about my PAX plus is that it's the one tool that's granted me a relationship with cannabis and I love my relationship with it. It's an herb that's supportive for me during psychedelic integration, but it's also my preferred recreational or relaxation substance.
Since I don't drink alcohol, I cherish my nights at home with my PAX and my playlists and music and dancing so much because these are the nights that have helped me to get to know myself. I love myself on a much deeper level. Visit Pax. com to browse their selection of herb and oil vaporizers, cannabis pods, and accessories.
Whether you want the Pax Plus like I have, or any of their other products, you can use Lana at checkout to save 15 percent off your order. That's Lana, L A N A at Pax. com. PAX. com to save 15 percent [00:14:00] or you can simply click the link in the show notes. The third way that smoking cannabis has really healed me and helped me is that it allows me to really tap into my creativity and get just like, yeah, this creative juice, this creative flow going again, I think it's because the judgments are removed.
I kind of get out of my own way. And you guys, it has been a key player in my podcast. A lot of the solo episodes that I produce have been under the influence of cannabis. I find that it encourages me to get really. To the root of what I'm trying to say and the message that I'm trying to deliver, which is kind of funny.
Cause you think of cannabis and it's kind of like spacey, but yeah, I find like, it just helps me to focus in on what I'm trying to say. And the flow that I want to say it in [00:15:00] and like, really build a cohesive story and structure to what I want to convey to you guys, because it's so mind expansive, and it allows me to think differently.
But I don't get so high that I can't function, right? I'm in this really beautiful space where I kind of. Get lost in thought and I follow a thread and I make connections. And then as I'm doing that, I'll like pull out my notebook or my laptop and I'll literally just have the stream of consciousness just coming through me, coming through me.
And I'll just write it all out, write it all out. And I may revisit it. Later at another time when I'm not high anymore and sometimes often I'll just be really happy with the way that it is But yeah The stream of consciousness just flows through me and it becomes so effortless and easy to follow concrete and creative flow of thought And the result of that is often, not always, but often enough, the heart and bones of solo podcast episodes that [00:16:00] I create.
Like I get a lot of inspiration and ideas for things that I want to share with you guys from smoking cannabis. So the last point I will touch on here, um, is the way that I. I consume cannabis socially, so this is completely new territory for me because I got so comfortable with consuming cannabis on my own that it, like, I almost, like, ritualized it and it became something that, like, I only exclusively do when I'm alone and I was afraid of doing it socially because I didn't want to have those feelings of paranoia.
I wasn't sure that I fully trusted myself to consume it socially and Yeah, recently in the past four, five months or so, I've been much more open to, um, consuming it socially when I'm out. And what I really love about that is that I go out to dance a lot. I have a lot of friends who like a lot of music and we.
I like to dance, like dance is therapy in my friend [00:17:00] group and you know, I live in a city where I'm fortunate enough to have access to a lot of events. And you know, I don't necessarily always want to like consume psychedelics or MDMA when I'm going out. And I do love that cannabis is an option for me for a night out that is gentle.
But it'll put me in that space where the music is elevated just enough. And, oh my gosh, I mean, if anyone listening has ever danced, well, hi. I mean, it's the best, it's the best. And it's nice that there's like this option there for me that isn't such a full commitment, isn't such a full energetic commitment.
It's much more gentle. And of course I love to, I love to use my packs as you guys know, because I find that even more gentle. And when I will smoke a joint, it'll like just Knock me out, because I'm not used to it. So, yeah, I really just appreciate the gentle nature of cannabis. And I think, of course, a lot of it has to do with, like, [00:18:00] my intention to not get really consumed and wrapped up in cannabis.
Because I know that that would be probably dangerous territory for me. Um, I do really appreciate that it can be something that gives me the benefit of other substances. And allows me to connect with music, but I don't have to be up and wired and stay up late and you know, Feel not my best the next day.
So yeah, so that's my little episode on cannabis I know this is a really short one and we're just kind of experimenting with different formats here Please let me know how you like this episode And if there's anything that you would like me to talk about in the future, I would love to hear from you and other than that, I hope you have a beautiful day and Stay groovy Baby.
Bye. Thank you so much for listening to and supporting the show. To stay in touch, sign up for my mailing list, which can be found in the show notes or on modernpsychedelics. net. [00:19:00] If this episode sparked something within, please let me know by leaving a review of the Modern Psychedelics podcast on Apple and Spotify.
This really helps to share these messages with those who need them, which is the whole reason why I do what I do. And if you haven't already, come join the ongoing conversation over on Instagram with other beautiful souls. We have an incredible and conscious community over at the handle modern psychedelics and don't forget that the work begins After you come back down to earth and I'm standing shoulder to shoulder Doing it with you.
This episode is produced in collaboration with film with integrity. They are a values forward production studio providing end to end production from concept to content. They do event video, documentary series, commercial and marketing videos, and of course podcast production. If you are working on a project that deserves quality of production and content without sacrificing heart and soul, visit film with integrity.
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