FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Sweet Home Cannabama 9-9-24 guest Bronwyn Scarberry: addiction recovery
It's time for a Sweet Home Canabema, a show that'll answer all your questions, provide accurate information, and dispel the myths of cannabis, and have your specific questions answered by emailing jennifer@canabema.com. Or text our call 3430106. And now, for all things cannabis in Alabama, here's your host, Jennifer Booser. Welcome to the show, everybody. I'm your host, Jennifer Booser, owner and founder of Canabema in downtown Mobile. We're located at 558 St. Francis Street, our phone number is 251-255-5155, you can find us at canabema.com. And on social media, on all the social pages under Sweet Home Canabema, we hope that you follow the page. And we're here every Monday night at 7 p.m. Central on FM Talk 106-5 locally on the Gulf Coast, and streaming right here on the Sweet Home Canabema pages every week, as well as a lot of our organization pages that we're involved with that want to help make sure that this education and information gets out. So we appreciate the National Industrial Hump Coalition, the Georgia Hump Coalition, the Alabama Hump Coalition. And everybody else that's watching, the Alabama Cannabis Coalition has been such a great help to us with getting some really poignant new guests and getting us some great information. So I want to give a shout out especially to Marty this week to say thank you to the Alabama Cannabis Coalition for your contribution to making sure that Sweet Home Canabema is a bigger and better show at teaching and making awareness for the patients and the citizens in Alabama who are waiting for our medical program to open up as well as represent the hemp industry nationwide. And that's what we came here to do tonight. I had a whole show planned and we are not going to do it, but we've got some breaking news and it hit like an avalanche. I'm still getting the details. Thank you to my friend John Grady from Missouri who sent me a message to Ed about, oh I don't know, 25, 30 minutes ago. But apparently the governor of California and the governor of Tennessee are now coming out with their own executive orders banning the so-called intoxicating hemp products. These are THC products made from hemp that are federally legal. The same thing that has been happening in Missouri. Now Missouri, well we thought we had won that first battle because the secretary of state in Missouri basically twice said this is not going to happen, this isn't okay. And now there is a big press conference scheduled tomorrow, I believe it's at 1130. The governor of Missouri has called a press conference and invited some of his friends apparently to explain how he will enforce his executive order that the secretary of state again has said is not constitutional. These are breaking situations. I don't have any more details than that. If you are listening and you do have those articles and that information and you want to throw it in the comments on the live stream and tag, sweet home cannabis so there are radio listeners can go to the pages and see these pieces of information. This seems like that domino effect, I've continuously keep talking about just like with Borohimp here in Alabama, if we allow the state to bully her into bankruptcy and she can no longer fight a battle, she's already won, then we've got to do something. We can't keep sitting on our hands. I talked to these guys in other states. They have these great groups of people, especially Missouri. I've been a privilege to be a part of their group since this happened and they have taught me so much about what Alabama is lacking and what a lot of people in other states in hemp are lacking is the cohesiveness of coming together and saying what's good for me is good for you. We cannot sit on our hands, we cannot ignore this anymore. Get off your tail, put your money or your radio show or your influence or whatever you got out there, whatever you have to give. This show isn't free for me. When I offer up this service to other people to get messages out there, it's not free for me. It costs me several hundred dollars a week but it's important enough to Alabama, to me personally, to the people that I work with in the hemp industry who have very little to get the word out and this is the only FM talk show about cannabis that we've been able to find in the country and we're five years old. If that doesn't say what my commitment is to this industry, you can tabulate $350 a month times five years. Whatever you have, I don't have any money to give but I have that and that's what I'm willing to give and hopefully that will be enough and it will be enough to inspire other people but you've got to get up, you've got to do something and if you're a consumer, you can no longer sit on the sideline. I'm sorry for being so passionate and harsh about this but I'm sick and tired of coming here every week and begging for scraps while I go spend the rest of my time fighting for you. We need you to fight for us. We brought this medicine, this new information, this new way of life to this country and we're suffering and people with financial interests and power, interests are trying to stamp that out and I don't care who you are, I don't care if your store makes $2,000 a month or $200,000 a month, you ought to at least be sending in letters and emails and rallying and showing up if you don't have the money. Like I said, I don't have any money to throw in, I've got my own problems but I have to throw in something to this fight and that's what I'm doing with the show and whatever you have to give, you have to give it and if we lose, at least we tried, how can that be satisfactory if we lose because nobody would work together, it's ridiculous. So anyway, yeah, so if you've got that information, I'd appreciate it if you drop it in here for us because some of us are going to still be here, we're going to still fight and we need to know how to do that. I don't even have any information for you, that's how fresh this is. I know you can go to the Missouri Himp Trade Association website, I'm not sure who to contact in California specifically but I know the National Industrial Himp Coalition page is streaming this right now so if you are in California, let us know how can we help you and hey, we could sure use your help here with Boro Himp as well, we're still in need as well, same situation, different member of the government doing it but it's the same situation and it's time we got some help here in Alabama too. Tonight our show, we want to start September is National Addiction Recovery Month and this is a very important topic to me, most of you know, I am, I'm staring down the barrel of 10 years clean, next month I will be 10 years clean which is as long as I used and I'm very, very proud of that and nobody's going to take that for me, it's on Halloween which really stinks, it's just the day I happen to run out of pills and never pick them back up. So I didn't plan that really well as far as celebrating but I'm going to do something to celebrate, I don't care if anybody else cares because I'm proud of myself and the reason that National Addiction Recovery Month is so important to me is because now I can use my story and others around me to show people that cannabis isn't what you think it is. It's not a gateway drug, it is not something that's going to lead you down a dark path and it is something that can be used to help in spite of that reputation as a gateway drug. So my own story started 20 years ago when I fell into addiction while I was grieving the death of my son and I spent 10 years down that dark deep hole and I wanted to die and then I got clean and God delivered me from that and then I found CBD and it changed my life, my quality of life and then it saved my life and gave me something, a career. I started at 40 and so I want to make sure that we honor this every week, this month because we do recover and tonight my guest is a friend and a colleague, her name is Bronwyn Scarberry from Ohio, she's one of my co-authors on Courage and Cannabis Volume 2 and welcome to the show Bronwyn. Well thank you for being kind enough to let me cram that breaking news and I know we had a whole plan and we're going to get it done but thank you for allowing me to get that out. I didn't plan on getting that spicy with it but I just went with what the Holy Spirit was telling me to say. There you go, so tell us, you know, we know that you're one of the authors from Courage and Cannabis Volume 2 which by the way is available on Amazon and at Canabama but tell us a little recap of who you are. Okay so my name is Bronwyn, I live in Ohio, I'm a medical patient here in the state of Ohio, I got my license in 2020 and I'm a distant franchise educator and an author in the Courage and Cannabis series. Alright. I'm a wife, dog mom. Yes, a dog mom, I know you're very particular about that dog mom stuff too. I love the pictures that you posted with your ruined sunflowers. Well it's the deer, the deer himself. That's funny, well then your dog isn't doing his job, is it? Right, no, well he's 13. Right. Well I want to recap just before we go to commercial, you actually lost your teaching license because it was discovered that you were a medical patient and they actually, you actually lost your job as an educator and your teaching certificate, is that correct? Correct. I had my license suspended for four years, I accidentally took cannabis into the school which I know is bad, there should have been some kind of punishment, but so yeah I lost my license and I could get it back but it's going to be darn near impossible. Alright, well when we come back from the break we're going to pick up right there with Bronwyn and talk about some addiction recovery with cannabis, stay with us. Welcome back to Sweet Home, Canabema. Now with all the information you want about cannabis, here's your host, Jennifer Buser. Welcome back everybody, tonight we are honoring National Recovery Month where we talk about addiction recovery, I am almost ten years clean from an opiate addiction and the subject of addiction recovery is very, very close to my heart, especially because we can now use cannabis as a tool to help people to detox and also help them stay clean by helping balance their mental health and reducing withdrawal symptoms, there's lots of ways that the plant can be used to get people away from the true drugs, you know heroin, meth, we see even antipsychotics sometimes, alcohol is the worst thing you can put in your body and we can use the plant to help people beat these strongholds and these chains of addiction and I know them all too well. My friend Bronwyn who I'm talking to tonight, she knows those bonds very well too. Bronwyn, let's start with, let's go back and talk about your addiction, what was your drug of choice? My drug of choice was alcohol specifically vodka and clonic acid. Oh wow. The death cocktail. Yeah. Yeah, that's quite a cocktail. Both of those things are very highly addictive, both of those things on their own would make you a crippled addict and require intervention. Right. How did you start? I mean like, take us back. Okay, so I always knew the alcohols and ran out of my family, I was never going to be a drinker, I stayed away from alcohol, I didn't like the taste of it, I hands free. I always consumed cannabis, it was always part of my life and then the man I was with had a son, didn't want cannabis around him and he was like, why don't you just have a few drinks? And I'm not blaming my alcoholism on him. Of course not. Of course not. Everybody has an origin story, somebody offered you something at some point. Yeah, so then I go to a friend's house, I had cotton mouth, she was like, do you want a drink? I said, yes, she hands me the elixir of vodka and diet coke that just hit the spot. Yeah. It was kind of game on. Yeah. I know it sounds. It sounds horrible. Yeah. It was carry vodka. Mmm. Even worse. Yummy. Right? I mean. Yeah. Well, I mean, we've all had, we've all had Boone's Hill Strawberry Farm in high school, okay? Let's be honest here, we got to be honest. We've all had really bad alcohol. The plot of him came before the alcohol. Oh, wow. I was in college. I was still, I was trying to cope without the cannabis. Right. So, I'm in college, I was 25 when I went to school because of circumstances, I come from a very high trauma background. Yes. I've been on my own since I was 16, stuff like that. So I couldn't go to college until I was 25. I go to school, I start having panic attacks. Yeah. I had no idea what they were, I'd go to the doctor. Sounds like probably adjusting to somewhat of a normal kind of everyday lifestyle outside of, you know, a lot of trauma. Yeah. You know, like we don't always know what, yeah, no, but we don't always know what to do when things get a little better. And sometimes that pressure can be crippling. And it's, it always eventually goes back to a psychological aspect that we can't cope with and we've something, something that's destructive is just waiting for us to pick it up in order to cope instead of actually being taught to cope. Right. So I go to the lady doctor with this, because that's the doctor appointment I had. And so I was like, hey, this is happening, like I'm like feeling like I'm having a heart attack, leaving classrooms, what's going on. And he was like, here's some chronic pain. Wow. That's straight to the really hard stuff. I've experienced that before though. They went straight for the strongest thing they could give you and didn't even try anything less. You know, I mean, give me a break. Right. So this was like in 2000, right. So the quantum things came first, then the drinking came. I had no idea. I was on such a deadly and addictive combination. Right. my old fast and quick. As it does. And I was a blackout drinker. That's so dangerous. Oof. Yeah, I mostly drink at home. That was how I did most of my drinking. My husband never knew who he was coming home to. Right. Version of me, you know, happy drunk, stripped or drunk. Right. You know, crying drunk, angry drunk. He never knew. So it was an adventure. I got to the point where I just hated myself. Yep. I hated everything about me. I had access to guns. I had them in my mouth more than one. Wow. And I apologize if that took her somewhere. No, I actually that I never did anything like that. But I I was right up to that limit. I was getting close to that point. Yeah. So I was calling like I was staying up late drinking, calling the like addiction hotline centers. Yeah. Just to have somebody to talk to about it. Right. To talk you out of it. Yeah. No, I I remember asking my ex husband. Do you want me to kill myself? Because I needed him to say no, we need you. Or give me permission. Right. He he chose not to answer me, which is his own answer. But anyway, that was one of those things you're crying out for help. Please tell me I'm worth saving. And oh, yeah. Yeah, and I was terrified to tell him because he kept trying to get me sober, but he knew the decision had to come from me. Right. Of course. He knew it was an inside job. Right. Tried to force it down. My career once. It didn't work. Right. But to see who's planted. Yeah. I think for me, when I was given an ultimatum, I think for me, I know you don't have children. And I did. And they are literally the only reason that I didn't die. Either by accident or my own choice. They were the only thing that I could think of that. That was worth being alive for. And I can't imagine being in a obviously your relationship was toxic, whether it was because of you or because of him. It wasn't good. And I can imagine that that extra level of of loneliness, you know, and that's it's so understandable why you said you would call suicide hotlines and and overdose hotlines because that's just, you know, I had no one left. I felt but I knew that my kids were too little to make the choice and I wasn't going to make it for them. Yeah. And I mean, I have friends who recently lost that battle. So if you're listening and you're fighting, nine, eight, eight is a great number. Sorry to plug them. No, no, why please. That's why we're doing this line. Yeah, it's a crisis line. It's available. They can talk you through it. Nine, eight, eight. Okay. Thank you for that. Yeah. Absolutely. Because I think anybody who's even flirted with a with an addiction. Understands that the depth of that darkness that you come to, but it's almost like you have to come to it. Because I know for me, I couldn't imagine a future. So I didn't want one. And until I could see a future again, I had no hope. You know, throughout my day, throughout my drinking, one of the things that really spiraled my drinking even further was finding out that my husband and I would never have children together. Right. And I always wanted to be a mom. Right. You know, what is my purpose? Women are supposed to be mothers. That's what they do. Yes. You know, it's what you do. Right. And I didn't. Right. And for my trigger was that I had us on and then he died. And so it's it's a very similar because at that point, we didn't know if we would ever have any other children. And we did. We had one more child, but, but that was, you know, I was 25 years old. What am I supposed to do? Everybody around me is having babies. You know, I it's it's being a woman. It's there's some things that come with being a woman. They don't tell you about whether you become a mother or not. There's a, I don't know. There's a heartbreak in both scenarios, I think that we don't expect. And so when you add a hard life experience or something traumatic on top of that, or you weren't taught how to cope, you know, I wasn't taught very well how to cope. And this this was a thing that was going to break me. And it sounds like you were at that point. Can you describe? What was your rock bottom? What was your rock bottom when he gave you an ultimatum? It didn't work. So you had to come to it to yourself. Maybe we should wait till the next segment to do that. Yeah. I mean, the ultimatum was like six years before I got. Oh, wow. Did you did you go to rehab and at any point in there? At the end. Okay. Yeah. When you were finally ready or? We can tell that's kind of goes along with my rock bottom. My rock bottom happened after I lost my dad. The cirrhosis and my mom. Oh, wow. Other complications both in 2017. Wow. You know, what's funny about that is my, I lost my dad in opioid addiction, accident overdose. How crazy is that? And I used for five more years, which is really sad. And my mom was a. When we come back from the break, we're going to talk about rock bottom with Bronwyn Scarberry. Stay with us. We'll be back in just a moment after the break. And hopefully you'll listen to the people that are supporting us on the radio break. And that is freedom of CBD and wellness in Tuscaloosa, the Mullins lobby firm and native black cultivation. And as I mentioned in the beginning, even though we haven't gotten their clip yet, the Alabama Cannabis Coalition as well and the National Industrial Lamp Coalition. And every other coalition friend I got out there. Thank you very much. And we'll be back in just a few minutes. And we're going to talk about obviously I started talking about the break too soon. So I'm just panicking now. So stay with me. It's real. If it's nothing else, it's real. And I am a human being. And if you knew the kind of week I had just had, you wouldn't blame me. Stay with us. We'll be back in just a few moments with Bronwyn Scarberry. Welcome back to Sweet Home, Canada. Now with all the information you want about cannabis. Here's your host, Jennifer Buser. Welcome back at the show. I'm your host, Jennifer Buser right here at Sweet Home, Canada, every Monday night at 7 p.m. here on FM Talk 1065 and live streaming from the Sweet Home, Canada, social media pages. We're talking tonight about National Recovery Month. Specifically, we're speaking to Bronwyn Scarberry about addiction recovery in cannabis. Bronwyn, let's talk about rock bottom. Let's start with you. You said you went to rehab at the end of the six years, ultimatum period. You were given an ultimatum six years passes and you finally go to rehab. I wasn't. He didn't really give me an ultimatum. He just wanted me to get sober and eventually you're eventually going to lose me if you don't get sober. You know, that's kind of an ultimatum. I mean, it's so kind of in my best friend took me to a couple A meetings. Well, go on. I went drunk and I was like, I don't belong here. I'm not like these people. Of course. Yes, I'm not an addict. I can control it. Oh, all that stuff. Yeah. I'm good. Right. Right. So, and I mean, it was just, he had my best interest that he was also an enabler. Yes, I was married to one as well. That's okay. It wasn't his fault. He didn't ask to marry somebody who would morph into what I'm morphed into after our son died. He didn't ask for that. And I don't blame him for getting tired of me. Anyway, we survived the addiction, just not the rest. So, yeah, tell us about me. 2017 was a rough year. I touched on the fact that my mom passed away in January. I got my hysterectomy in January. My dad passed away in March. Wow. I almost lost my, I almost lost my job in May as a direct result of my alcoholism. Yeah. In my behavior. Right. So, I knew who I had to kind of write it out to the end of the school year. I knew I needed to, I knew I needed to do something. I didn't know what that something was. Right. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I, you know, I understand every, every cell in your body is ready to just lay down and never get back up. And then probably my rock, rock, rock bottom was my husband and I are still together. I mean, well, I'm very happily married and celebrate 19 years. That's amazing. Congratulations. And I think the statistics are very bad on that. So, yeah, they're very, they're like 85, 90%. I know for couples that lose a child, they're like 85% divorce rate. So add addiction on top of that. It wasn't good. It wasn't. We heard each other. Yeah. So we survived that. I mean, bad things happened. I made amends. I did the thing. Right. But so, yeah, the worst part is my husband and I are first date was in 1997. Our first date, his son going to see it was five at the time. He has been my buddy since he will be 33 this year. Wow. And my rock bottom is when he stops wanting to be around me. There you go. The reason he stops coming over with me. And it took me a lot of time to realize that really. Yeah. And I'm sure if it was mentioned at all, you probably thought could not possibly be true. These are the things we tell ourselves. Right. I am perfectly pleasant. Who would not want to party with me? Right? Yeah. Everyone. No one likes you. No, you are not, you're not pulling it off. You're not cute. It's not fun. No one. You suck the life out of everything. Yeah. And you're broken and you're, you're just so desperately lonely. And it's like, well, nobody, and I did this to myself. You know, I did this to myself. And there's a whole lot of honesty that comes with being able to say, no one made me do this. I can't even blame the fact that my husband wasn't an enabler. I did it. I chose it. And it got a hold of me. I led it into my life. And it took hold and it was only on me. And that's why people can't be forced or, or, or coax into it. They have to decide enough is enough. So on June 15, 2017, I had had yet another day of utter failure in my eyes and others. And I saw my husband coming down the driveway and I grabbed my insurance card out of my purse. And I went out on our deck and I got on my knees and I handed in my insurance card and I said, baby, I need help. Thank God. Thank God. And the next morning, he drove me to rehab. That's amazing. He was on the phone all night finding a rehab that was far enough away that he couldn't come get me quick, but close enough that he could drive to me and didn't have to fly. Honey, if you don't know your man loves you, there's all the proof you could ever, ever need. That's a man that loves his wife. That's a, that's a beautiful thing. Did you have something that I envy you that? You are. You are. You are. I can't wait to talk to him. We'll have to have a show with him. I would. I would love to do a show one day with spouses and family members and it would probably be one of the hardest shows I ever did. Having to listen to it because I would want to invite my own family members to feel like they could be a part of it. But yeah, I mean, we do. We do damage, but we are also damaged. And so then it's hard because nobody around us wants to help us. You know, they don't, they're tired of us. They want us to stop being a problem in their life. And to have someone who would stay up all night and find you a rehab instead of saying to you like mine did, you can need to find a rehab by X date or you got to get out. That's the different thing. That's a different approach. Yeah. Anyway, anyway, it is still all my fault, not blaming him. It's still my fault, but that's, there's a very different outcome there. So let's talk about how cannabis has been a part of your sobriety because while we honor the fact that we're, we've got to be honest with ourselves and these things happen and we're human and we do recover. We want to talk about, let's talk about how to help people get out of where we were, the ones that are still stuck there. So I want to talk about that. How has cannabis helped you to get or stay sober? So I got sober, the traditional route in treatment, 100% abstinence from all things, they detoxed me the way I should be detoxed, especially off the death cocktail I was on. Right, because that could have killed you. Right. Yes, they tried to preach total abstinence for me, but I knew better. Right. Remember, I had used cannabis in the past. Right. I knew what it did and did not do. I knew it did not lead to addiction in other ways. It did not lead me to harder drugs. Right. It did not lead me to opioids. It did not lead me to... And it likely, I mean... Yeah, based on what you're telling me about how traumatic your earlier life was, it probably kept you from those things. I mean, don't you think kids that are in, kids that are at risk, kids that are hurting, kids that have run away, they're being abused? I mean, I would hope that they would turn to cannabis first instead of those things because they can get drugs, trust me honey. They can get drugs as easy as anybody else can, and it's very scary. Well, part of my growing up as well, there was a lot of physical abuse towards my mom, and alcohol was always involved. Yeah. But if I could smell that sweet smell in the air, abuse was not happening. Wow. I picked up on that early. Wow, that's profound, Bronwyn. That's insane. So... That just, whew, blew my mind. But you're right. I knew it was good medicine. Oh, I can tell. If you rubbed a crushed up percocet under my nose right now or Oxycontin, I bet you I would still recognize the smell. And that's a powder, but I would recognize that pharmaceutical because I ate them like scales. And by the end of my addiction, I could probably take out a block of grown men per serving because it just gets to that toxic level where you're taking enough that it would never normally allow an adult human being to breathe. And that's the scary part and why it's so dangerous to detox on your own. Which is why I did. So after getting sober, getting my system cleaned out, getting to like a homeostasis, I still have PTSD. I got diagnosed with fibromyalgia. I got diagnosed with Hashimoto's. I got diagnosed with polyureticular arthritis. I got diagnosed with chronic pain. And they were like, "Here's a referral to pain management." And I said, "No, thank you." Wow. And you see the result of that kind of trauma and that much alcohol on your body. Like it literally was trying to shut you down. And you came out of it clean, but you still had the aftermath. That's what, like me, I've been, even 10 years later, I just got off coffee and soda and sugar. And I don't even have a makeup on right now. And I don't even care if y'all think I'm ugly because it's kicking my tail. But I know it's good for me because it's funny that we're doing it during recovery month. Because in a way, it has felt at times similar to that. That my brain was like, "Hey, I need this." And we're talking about caffeine and sugar that we all use every day. And I feel like I'm going through the crack head stage again, and I feel awful. And I can't eat, and I'm sweating at random, and I'm like, "Okay." But it's because I continued, after I got rid of the narcotics, and narcotics continued to treat my body like a garbage can and got to the point, I guess, where the cannabis wasn't enough to sweep it out anymore. And so I'm doing a reset. And you have to, and you're left with the aftermath of what you've done to your body, and then you have to figure out how to cope with it, and the conventional medicine will tell you, "Oh, you need an antidepressant and anxiety. You need blood pressure medicine. You need sleep pills. You need pain meds." And that's not freedom to me. I said, "No, thank you to all of those, and had my medical marijuana card and so what it's called in the field of Ohio, my cannabis card, was in the week." Oh, wow. Was that a very difficult process for you? I knew. Before we go to the break, was that a very difficult process for you? Because we're still waiting for the privilege to apply for cards here. We're in year three on that. It's so easy. I know I had my diagnosis. I scheduled an appointment online. Those people were online to make money. They took my money. They gave me a card. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. Nice. Well, hopefully that infrastructure will be that simple here. I know I follow some groups in Mississippi. And shout out to the We Are The 74 group and Hardy case. You guys out there kick and sail. But I see them. There's constantly questions about how do I do this? How do I renew this? This law has changed. What are the new rules? Like I said, we don't have anything but lawsuits in Alabama. But I followed that group so closely and see what they experience and the things that they have, they're growing pains. And so I always like to hope that once it comes here, I'll have learned from everyone else's mistakes and make it simple. I was hoping it would be that way for our medical bill. But apparently not. But yeah, just the simple process because people don't, you know, especially for people, you knew cannabis. But a lot of people are going into this thinking, okay, I don't know anything about cannabis. I've never used cannabis. I don't know where to go, what to do. And there's still no infrastructure in place here. So when we come back from the break, we're going to talk more with Bronwyn about cannabis and recovery. Stay with us. Welcome back to Sweet Home, Alabama. Now with all the information you want about cannabis, here's your host, Jennifer Buser. Welcome back to the show everybody. We're talking tonight about addiction and recovery with Bronwyn Scarberry Bronwyn. Let's pick back up in this last segment. And let's talk about how cannabis helped you and in your recovery. You know, you told us how you got out of rehab. They offered you narcotics with pain management. You said no, you got your medical card. Tell us what happened from there and how it helped you. So from there I got my medical card. I knew that, you know, that route, the pain management route was not my route. So I went back to what I knew, which was cannabis. I had a friend who had her medical card. She kind of told me experiment before I got mine. She gave me the ins and outs real quick. So then I start going to the dispensary, you know, which your first experience going to one is like, I don't know. It is, it's surreal. I went in Vegas in 2018 and it was completely surreal. Yeah, so I started, I'm a book person. I was a teacher for many years. I like to investigate and research and figure out what I need. I plugged in kind of what my conditions were, pain was my main thing. And the two things that kind of popped up that would be beneficial to me were concentrates, specifically Rawzen as my concentrated choice. And RSO. Yes, very potent. So RSO is only used for fibro players, maybe once or twice a year. It has to be bad for me. Wow. Yeah, it is, it is very strong. I know I have a friend who is, has a genetic disorder and she says a grain of rice will put her down for two days. Yeah, I very, very, very carefully. Like once or twice a year, I keep a dart here for those purposes. But sometimes if all of my conditions decide to just have a party and go all at once. Oh, yeah. You have that in the freezer or the refrigerator somewhere available. But what do you use Rawzen on a daily basis? Explain that for the listeners and the watchers who don't know what Rawzen means. Okay. So if you take the whole plant and you freeze it and you extract all the little crystals and that kind of makes it in the old school like cash. And then you press it with heat. So you've got heat extracting the lem, yummy deliciousness. Right. And it decarboxylates the THCA into Delta nine THC and all the other acids like CBD A and CBGA. We know that heat makes them all convert. So it's, it's raw until they heat press it and then it, and then it becomes a decarboxylated Rawzen. Correct. Correct. So at that point, it's a whole plant medicine. Right. I have found whole plant medicine works for that tree. I believe that that is probably true for everyone and that's the way it's meant to be used. And because of arbitrary percentages and laws, you know. Yeah. But anyway, so tell us what have you gotten a lot of kickback from people in modern addiction recovery community? Do you know very many people that have criticized you for you? Are you going to criticize you for using cannabis in your recovery? Yes. I, when it came out when I lost my teaching job, I was very, very, very active in the recovery community. Like went to Founders Day, helped direct the play, sponsored, I mean, they took Sumper and got fired by my sponsor when she found out that I used, had my medical cannabis card. No. Prescribed by a doctor. Wow. Well, I'm sure I'm honestly, most of the time, scared to have that conversation because I think in the recovery community, behavior modification is not very successful at all. It's, I mean, it's, it's dismal. And most of those people are hanging on for dear life, white knuckling it by a set of rules and, and meetings. There are people that have been sober for 20 years and still have to go to meetings. That to me, isn't freedom, you know, and behavior modification. That's why people fall off the wagon and re relapse so much because white knuckling it alone. It's just too much. It's too hard for the average person. You've still got to cope with the thing that drove you to the drugs. And then you got to get off the drugs and repair all the damage you did. It's 10 times worse. Right. So, I mean, is there a place for pieces parts of that program? Absolutely. Was it put in place by two men who together didn't even have a six month sobriety? Ah. And now it is the end all and be all right. And it's the only, it's the only real thing out there. But again, the success rate is so bad. You know, it is so bad. I think, but that's because, well, that's because of the withdrawal symptoms and detox period is so physically intense. And there's nothing legally non narcotic available to ease any of that suffering. And you take away the fear of that suffering and people will get clean left and right day and night all the time. That fear of suffering is what keeps people in this misery. We don't want to be there. No one woke up and went, "Hey, I want to be a drug addict or an alcoholic and ruin everything." No one does that. Right. But we get to that point and we have to be shaken out of it, but cannabis is a tool that takes away for, in my experience, it takes away a lot of the withdrawal and the detox symptoms and gives your body actual nutrition it needs and lights up that system in your body that's meant to be there to clean your body out because you've got to get the garbage out and that's what detox is. It just hurts going, coming out because it shouldn't have gone in. Yeah. So, by the community, I'm not part of that community anymore. I have a desire for alcohol or benzos, zero. I know cannabis is to thank for that. I know cannabis keeps me stable. I'm not on, the only medication I take from a pharmacy is my thyroid medication because I can't do that naturally, but cannabis is the medicine for depression, anxiety, blood pressure, sleeping, pain, yes, the whole gamut. Me too. I don't take any prescriptions at all. No. Thank God. And I was on a handful when I started CBD. I was clean, but I was absolutely miserable and on a handful of drugs. Yeah. So, I think the recovery community really needs to rethink. Yes. What sobriety is and maybe perhaps consider a home reduction as part of recovery. Yes. Absolutely. And I think the success rate with skyrocket, I've seen it with people that come through my store, you know, we donated oil to a sober living house for women for three years and it was miraculous. Ivy, heroin, meth, alcohol, all that stuff. We're getting to the end and I want to say, find both of our stories in the courage and cannabis volume two available on Amazon and at Canabama. Thank you, Bronwyn, for sharing your story in such a public way. Congratulations on your sobriety and we look forward to sharing this in hopes it will change hearts and minds. What would you like to say to say good night? Well, thank you, everyone, for being here. I hope I gave you something that you can take away. The sobriety is possible if you're out there struggling. I mean, it sucks at first, but God's life is so much better. And if you are struggling thinking that you're not worth being on this planet today, I'm here to tell you, I love you when you are. Amen. 990 is a good number to call and you can find me on the socials. My name is Bronwyn Turberry. I'm the token teacher on Instagram and, you know, if I can help you out, I'll help you out. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for being here. Yes, we do recover. Well, if you want to join us next week, we're going to have another show about National Recovery Month, and I'm still showing up that guest, but I'm hoping we're going to get an addiction specialist who uses cannabis in his practice. I'm having to confirm that so I can't make any promises yet, but that's what we're shooting for. Join us every Monday night here on FM Talk 106-5 and on the social media pages for Sweet Home, Canada, and call your senator. Whether you live in Alabama or Missouri or Tennessee or California or any other state, if you use cannabis, if you use hemp products, if you grow it, if you make it, if you sell it, please call somebody, get involved. We can't let this all fall apart. There are people who are dying from addiction every day and they need our help. Stay with us every week. Monday night, 7 o'clock, be here, we're going to talk about this in ways that no one's talking about it because it matters and at Sweet Home, Alabama, we're always going to say what needs to be said. Thank you. God bless you and good night. [Music]