How does cannabis fit with neurodiversity, in your opinion, if at all?
Cannabis is the least harmful way for we humans to cope with the burdens of sentience, senescence, and mortality. Cannabis is popular in STEAM cultures, at least the ones I’ve inhabited. It is part of the process of living, creating, and coping. I think the neurodivergent have long used it to regulate and cope in a world that does not accommodate. If your neurodivergence is accompanied by tics, seizures, paresthesia, fasciculations, panic, anxiety, or self-harming stimming, as but a few examples, then cannabis is a tool and ally. There are as many human operating systems as there are humans. The endocannabinoid system is a useful interface to our operating systems for which we have a natural, easy-to-grow key. All humans and their mammalian kin share this interface and this plant. We plucky prometheans figured out how to decarboxylate with fire.
Because, the drug war. The drug war preys on and abuses the different and the powerless. It puts neurodivergent kids in pipelines to prisons and foster systems where the incentives are to drug minds into compliance so that bodies can be more conveniently warehoused and souls more conveniently iced. The great many of us using cannabis to medicate and regulate are under constant threat of violence, humiliation, and confinement in inhumane jails and prisons. The drug war’s perverse notions of addiction, addicts, and coping limit our vocabulary, stifle our empathy, and harm us all. The drug war, zero tolerance, and compliance culture are enemies of neurodiversity. Cannabis is a friend and a lever for change.
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