CBD for Anxiety: Dimity Gives it a Go

Whistling. Oh, the whistling. From the 14-year-old. His repertoire is mostly Christmas carols, which do not land softly in my ears in late January.  

And then there’s the daily morning use of the bathroom by the kitchen. Despite my continual prompting to my family members to please, please use one of our house’s three other bathrooms, the one closest to the center of communal activity always seems to get the stinkiest loads.

Need more? A fridge that, despite my best weekly grocery planning attempts, is bare 48 hours after it was stocked; breakfast bowls with emptied-out grapefruit halves still on the counter at 2 pm; Zooming for work, school, sports, band: meetings that connect us with eye contact and information, but often leave a hangover of loneliness.

Small pet peeves that, depending on my mood, either amuse or anger me. For the past few months, it’s been the latter.

To be fair, the pandemic hasn’t suddenly set me on edge. I am antsy and restless by nature. Most days, I feel like a racehorse does before her gate is opened: pawing at the ground, ready to uncork all her energy.

A solid morning sweat session reliably brings my body back into a more relaxed state, but sometimes (often?) my mind doesn’t get the memo. It spends the whole day in the holding pen, anticipating that sweet relief of a job done. As I get ready for bed, it’s still whirring and wondering when it will finally get a break. The relief comes when sleep kicks in, but as soon as I wake, whether it’s at 2 am or 6 am, she’s off to the races again.

I met Lisa Baskfield at our Hilton Head retreat last February. Suffering from Fibromyalgia and unsatisfied with the traditional medical options available to ease her symptoms, she investigated hemp. Soon thereafter, she started Nature’s Gem CBD, and found in runners a community who could benefit from the inflammation- and anxiety-reducing properties.

She sent me home from South Carolina with a bag full of goods: gummies, creams, and oil. I dipped into them sparingly and sporadically, chewing a gummy right before bed if I felt amped up or slapping a little cream on my achy right foot.

My lack of consistency wasn’t an indication of my lack of interest; CBD had been recommended to me by a medical professional a few years ago after my cortisol levels tested high. I filed that suggestion away in some small pocket of my brain, but didn’t act on it. At the time, CBD, in my uneducated, risk-averse brain, translated to marijuana. Not my thing.

On a phone call recently, Lisa set me straight. CBD doesn’t include THC, the mood-altering ingredient in marijuana. Instead, CBD offers a soft, gradual step down to a calmer state, lessening anxiety in your head, or inflammation in your knee. It’s non-addictive (phew) and won’t knock you out. In fact, you can still drive, work out, create a spreadsheet, or interact on Zoom like a regular human while it floats through your system.

My 2021 word of the year is ease, and I’m adding a couple tools to my toolbox to help me integrate more calm into my life. I am hoping CBD is one of them. To that end, I am going to purposefully use CBD over the next four weeks to see if and how it softens my edges.

When I mentioned this idea to Lisa—despite Another Mother Runner being partners with Nature’s Gem, this little experiment of one is my idea—she was game.

Here’s how she recommended I do it: Take inventory in the morning of how I’m feeling and what’s going on in my head. Write it down. If my anxiety feels a little overwhelming, I’ll take a half dose (about 35 mg of CBD) of the Max Relief Hemp CBD Oil or one gummy (about 25 mg). Then I’ll do another check in about 20-30 minutes later. I may need another dose; I may not. It’s my call. Some days I may need to hit it again; other days, I may skip it totally.

That’s my plan for the next four weeks; I’ll be back with a report in early March

I can be midwestern naïve, but I realize a dose or two won’t make me ready to harmonize on a whistling duet or be really excited for a two-hour Zoom meeting.

Instead, I picture CBD as the automated gate that, over the course of multiple weeks, lets my mind get out on that track as well. My mind will still run too fast, of course, but hopefully it’ll find a more manageable pace and fewer frustrations along the way.

Thoughts or questions for me—or Lisa?