The first puff doesn't always work

When Emily Earlenbaugh was diagnosed with anxiety and chronic pain from fibromyalgia, her doctors put her on prescription medications — and they worked. A few years later, however, those same medications were causing severe side effects. So she tried cannabis.

“I would try some type of cannabis that wouldn’t work for me. I would try it out and I get much more anxious or I would feel sicker,” Earlenbaugh recalled on The Cannabis Enigma Podcast. “But then other types of cannabis were life changing. I would just take a little puff and instantly my anxiety would melt away. My pain would be gone.” 

It took her over a year before she found the regimen — of strains, timing, dosing, and delivery methods — that has effectively managed her anxiety and pain for the past decade.

Today, she puts that experience to work in order to help patients who are new to cannabis find their own personalized regimen and navigate their way through the rapidly expanding world of medical cannabis.

“There’s a lot of information out there but there’s also a lot of incorrect information out there,” said Earlenbaugh, who is also a writer in the field of medical cannabis.

Earlenbaugh also talked about how her meditation and mindfulness practice became intertwined with cannabis, and an integral part of her treatment. [Read her recent article about meditation and cannabis.]

“I was able to pay more attention to my emotions and with cannabis it wasn’t so scary,” she explained. “It was something that I was then actually able to dive into.”

You can learn more about Emily Earlenbaugh’s cannabis consulting at her website, mindfulcannabis.com, and her meditation program at karunatraining.com. Follow her on Instagram — @emilyearlenbaugh.

Produced, edited, and mixed by Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man. Music by Desca.