From Plastic Bongs To Harm Reduction

Although I may be all about harm reduction nowadays, that definitely wasn't always the case; I can think back to a time when my friends and I were smoking makeshift plastic Gatorade Billie’s using pipe hose for stems and tin foil for cone pieces.

This is the story of how I went from using cannabis in ways that harmed me, to finding strategies that helped me form a healthier relationship with it and eventually leading me on the path to becoming an advocate for harm reduction.

Looking back, some of the choices I had made were fairly stupid, but as an uneducated teenager I simply didn’t know any better. Truth is, how was I meant to know any better without access to proper education on what I was doing?

Yes the internet was a thing but at that time the only information on consuming cannabis safely that I could find was from healthy Harold and anti drug propaganda websites telling me that I’ll die from smoking dope and other ridiculous stuff like that.

For all I knew this is what everyone else was doing. I also felt the need to hide my consumption due to the illegal nature and stigmas of smoking cannabis, it’s not like I felt as if I could just start asking questions to my parents or teachers about it.

After dropping out of school in year 12 I spent most of my days smoking cones mixed with tobacco laying in bed binging episodes of whatever seemed vaguely interesting to pass the time and help ease the side effects of my mental health struggles. All of my friends at the time were also smoking cones so if one person couldn't afford weed, another would pitch in. Luckily for us we'd rarely ever run out, but when I did run out it was not a pretty sight and all of the negative effects of my mental health would come flooding back hard.

After a few years of doing the same thing day in and day out eventually building an extremely high tolerance that I could not financially sustain, I started questioning my consumption and reached out for support.

That's when I got in touch with a youth drug and alcohol service, started seeing a case worker and ended up having a stay in a residential detox.

Prior to starting the sessions I thought I'd be walking into a service that was going to be anti drugs and force me to join a 12 step program but that wasn't the case at all. I still clearly remember my first session with my case worker and how instead of preaching abstinence based information, she was asking me what I wanted from the sessions and what my personal goals were.

Despite my unhealthy and out of control use of cannabis, it genuinely helped to ease my mental health symptoms, so from then on my care was structured around finding ways to gain control over my cannabis consumption rather than cannabis having control over me (habitual bong smoking was not going to be sustainable in the long run). During my stay in the detox I learnt a lot about harm reduction strategies for cannabis consumption. After leaving the detox once I started consuming again I put the strategies that I learnt into place and saw a major improvement in my overall mood and relationship with cannabis.

I then realised my passion for advocacy and social work so I began studying mental health whilst volunteering with a youth AOD (Alcohol and Other Drug) service. After a couple years of volunteering I successfully got a role as an advocate and started using my lived and living experiences to help shape AOD services in Victoria.

In Victoria most of the youth accessing AOD services, are accessing them for their cannabis consumption. This means there are still so many young people that do not have access to quality education that can majorly help them with their cannabis consumption.

This is one of the main reasons that I started creating the Let's Budvocate harm reduction resources (Buducation). I know for sure that if I had access to these valuable insights at an early age, I wouldn't have gone through half the troubles I went through as a teenage cannabis consumer.

If yourself or someone you know is curious about learning more about cannabis harm reduction or wanting to build a healthier relationship with cannabis, check out the Buducation resources on our website.