Cannabis & Identity: Rewiring the Self

I guess it's because, you know, I guess, um, those dark periods in my life were times where I felt fragmented in identity, and I guess maybe that's why I'm so fascinated with identity now as a research focus, but yeah, I've, ever since I was like a little kid, I was always, like, confused about myself. Like, I didn't really understand who I was. I didn't really understand what I wanted to do. I didn't understand, like, what it meant to be me, if that makes sense. And I guess the reason why is, to be honest, it's a collection of complex emotional trauma in the sense that I never necessarily received the, I guess, the care or the love you should give to a child, and um my, my thinking, my thoughts were also neglected too. So even now, I guess, it's hard to get my own point across when it comes to conversation, and I know that pattern's habitual, but it's, it's unfortunate, I guess. And so, yeah, I guess ever since then until, I wanna say sophomore year, I, I always felt conflicted with identity, right? And so digital identity definitely added a lot, right, because In the digital space, you don't need to be yourself, you can be other versions. You can be people you could think about, you can be people you idolize, you can be just imagining a potential alternative version of you, right? And I think over time, the more we familiarize ourselves with these identities, the more normalized they feel, the more integrated they become to our actual identities, right? And so, that comes to, I guess, honestly a terrifying point in my life where I applied that very same logic to myself in the sense that I wanted to force myself to think more with purpose, I guess. And as a result, I spent a real long time, I wanna say a month and a half, not sober and to a point where I eventually integrated, I guess, non-sober me with the moments that I was sober me in the way that the way I think is now almost identical. The way I can articulate feelings is almost identical. The way I think about relationships and concepts and people and myself is the same, right? I, without sounding too like scary, I wanna say that I killed the old me. I killed the person that I was in sophomore year and I guess I am now forever non-sober cognitively. Even when I'm sober, my brain is always going to be fundamentally rewired now to think as if I'm not sober. And yeah, I guess I sort of realized that just now in the sense that I practically brainwashed myself through drugs, which is kind of insane. And of course, I'm probably not going to tell this to admissions. Like, I think that's probably a big red flag for them. But yeah, yeah, it's definitely an interesting origin story, I would say, for how I got into research. But I would say now I have a lot, I have a lot more healthier relationship with weed. And actually, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to launch um an edibles brand in the first place, is because one of my main missions, another goal in my life that I want is freedom, right? I want the freedom to articulate, I guess. Um, no, but one of the missions of the brand I'm launching is cannabis literacy, right? Not necessarily advocating, not necessarily saying terrible, right? But we're providing all the history about it, the context, the way we framed it, right, more specifically, um to, you know, really teach people about in a broader lens, how we just frame different things and how those framings can shift the way we feel about them, right? And I wanna say that we should be entering a time where cannabis should be normalized, right? People should be able to use it and tell people openly without feeling, you know, shame or stigmatized or judged, right? It doesn't mean that it is a good or bad option, right? Of course, there's going to be trade-offs. There's going to be decisions that people just end up making, right? But... we have to consider it to the level of something that will just happen. We can't, we can't apply morality to it. We need to apply objectivity to it. We need to say that it exists, it is normal, it is something that people use, rather than vilifying it or heroizing it, or applying some lens to it, I guess. I think that's ultimately another goal.

The user details a fragmented sense of self stemming from childhood emotional neglect and intellectual underdevelopment, which led to fascination with identity research. They describe how digital identities and prolonged cannabis use, particularly from sophomore year onwards, led to a cognitive rewiring where their 'non-sober' self's thinking and articulation became indistinguishable from their 'sober' self, effectively 'killing' their old identity. This profound cognitive shift, realized through self-brainwashing, now informs their research and their mission to launch a cannabis literacy brand focused on normalization, objectivity, and destigmatization.