I could hardly believe it when Zip jumped up into the air this morning and landed on my shoulder. He is a spirit cat, for sure; he knows something is wrong.

A couple of months ago, I decided to try some Cannabis edibles to help with a lifelong trouble getting to sleep. As I’ve mentioned before, I was diagnosed with severe anxiety some years ago and have been working with therapists for much of my life. I was delighted with the results of the cannabis. The issue is serious; I’ve gotten much healthier, but I still suffer at times.

I got to sleep and stayed asleep longer than ever before. Finally, sleep and rest after over seven decades of sleeplessness and fatigue.

The sleep problems were exacerbated by my anxiety, which was often about money – a painful issue in my household –  and, more recently, money and aging and health.

I often worry about leaving Maria behind on this complex and costly farm – I do know she can take care of herself, but anxiety is rarely logical or even accurate. I gave up making a lot of money when I gave up writing books.  I knew that would happen, and I have no regrets. I exchanged my blog, photography, wonderful life, and creative freedom.

At first, I took several gummy cannabis drops to help me sleep, and then I took a different cannabis edible for anxiety. That worked well also, at least at first. I was delighted. Cannabis had addressed one of the most urgent sources of my anxiety; it was a new chapter, a turning point.

By Saturday, I was taking four cannabis gummies a day. For many people, that’s a Godsend. For me, it turned into a nightmare.

It was a new chapter, but not in the way I thought.

Over the past few weeks, I noticed that I was tired and irritable throughout the day. Maria noticed that I needed to work hard to remember things, struggling for words and making far more typos than usual.

My memory and cognitive responses were failing; it felt as if I was plunging towards Dementia.

I found myself struggling to remember names and places and was even struggling to finish sentences or choose words. I confess I did something I know better than to do. I attributed some of this to the fact that I am 76 years old; I even began to worry if I was heading for Dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.

I was trying to remember the names of close friends or events that occurred minutes early. At times, I lost control of my bodily functions.

This weekend, all of this came to a head. Because of my anxiety, I usually check my bank account two or three times a day. On Saturday, I learned that my bank had redesigned its online banking (without warning anyone, which is the kind I do, and I needed help accessing my account.

Unfortunately, I can only resolve this on Tuesday (tomorrow); the bank is closed for the holiday weekend. I’ve always been anxious about money, but it was well under control, just another of the things I got nervous about (especially when I couldn’t see how much money I had in the bank. For me, that was a trigger.

This time, the response to the bank’s change was explosive and severe. I was terrified; I felt anger, irritability, and panic. I also felt nausea and exhaustion; I felt confused and paranoid, emotions far beyond the usual anxiety that I bring to life.  And at one point, I struggled for the names of almost everyone I knew.

This weekend, I got very sick and finally realized something was wrong. I couldn’t eat,  I could barely stand up, I got angry at the most minor things, and my paranoia and fear just kept growing. I felt ill and was within hours of going to Emergency Care and probably the hospital after that.

I was frightened and confused; I had never felt this way before. My normal anxiety was a walk in the park next to the terror and confusion I was feeling. I had trouble finishing sentences. I got delusional; my mind was a blur.

I had a series of toxic reactions that were frightening. Maria sat with me for hours, trying to calm, reassure, and help me. She told me my anxiety about money did not come from reality but from anxiety. We are not rich, but we are not poor either. We’ve had thousands of dollars in unexpected costs and bills relating to our health, the farm, the septic, the stove, and so on. Welcome to life.

Nothing she said or I thought could ease the terror and paranoia.

Money is a difficulty for almost everyone I know, but not a cause for terror or a rise in mental illness. There were good reasons to worry about money this year, but there is no reason to panic. I can handle it, and so can Maria.

I’ve never felt worse or more disoriented in my life. All day, I sat in a chair, falling in and out of sleep, fighting off nausea and other intestinal issues.

A friend sent me a New York Times piece on the new research showing that cannabis edibles sometimes cause toxic reactions among a growing number of people who find themselves heading to emergency rooms and hospitals for taking too many edibles or for taking them at the wrong time. Every symptom that I was having over this hellish weekend was listed in the newspaper’s story.

Suddenly, the bells went off.

A light went off in my fuzzy head, and I stopped taking the cannabis on Sunday. The symptoms they described were precisely the ones I was experiencing- every single one. Today, I woke up and felt normal. My mind was clear (or as straightforward as it gets), My appetite has returned, and so has my memory and clarity. Maria says the change back is fantastic. It was the cannabis that was making me terrified, sick, and unhinged.

I feel as if I got my life back.

I have enough problems being crazy, and I don’t need more from a gummy bear.

Every once in a while, I am reminded just how severe and debilitating extreme anxiety can be—the weekend changed my life in several ways. I do have a mental illness; I need to take it seriously. I am determined to deal with this anxiety in a different and better way. I am determined to life in peace.

And I have some profoundly essential issues to work out.

One of them is that I am finally realizing that money issues are life, not trauma; fear is most often an illness. The weekend has opened me up to many things, some of which may change my life. That is the good news: after darkness, light, after sickness, health. The good thing about mental illness is that I get to recover every day.

Maria gave me a powerful talking to about my strength, my clarity, and my openness. It got through to me.  I trust her more than I have ever trusted anyone. It’s time for me to shed this pain and baggage and live my life in peace, clarity, and calm.

As to cannabis, I want to say that while alarms and bad advice are the hallmarks of social media, I’m not warning people against cannabis. It is doing a great deal of good for a lot of people. I don’t warn people about things; we are all responsible for ourselves.

I’m not sharing this story to warn people or to whine or moan; we are all different, with different emotions and bodies. I’m glad I tried it.  I’m happier that I stopped. There is no magic for health or money; everything has a price and a cost.

I’m grateful I realized in time that it is not for me. There are worse things in life than sleeping erratically; I lose perspective when I forget that there are no magic wands for physical or mental health. I’ll take it slowly for a day or two. I will be back to normal soon if that is ever the right word for me.

And I’m very grateful to be healing. I called my doctor and was told that this was an increasingly common reaction to cannabis, and it would take me a few days to work the effects of this cannabis out of my system. I am fine writing again, and I went out after dawn to take some photos. Zip jumped up into the ear and onto my shoulder. I swear he knew something was wrong. I held him for the longest time.

I have a lot of thinking, too; today, the fog has lifted from my mind, but I am still feeling the toxic effect of the cannabis I was taking. I felt it was important to share this, not to warm people off, but to alert people who follow my life to the possible dangers of this new miracle medicine.

In my life, things only happen once I share them on my blog. Thanks for listening.