Dr. Dani Gordon - The CBD Bible: Cannabis and the Wellness Revolution That Will Change Your Life

Bex came to see me for anxiety, feeling overwhelmed by the demands of her job as an advertising executive. She was having trouble sleeping, had lost her appetite and felt a constant fluttering in her chest, day and night. When we talked a little more about her symptoms, it became clear that alongside anxiety, she was also suffering from chronic stress. She used to practise yoga, but lately her anxiety had become so bad that even sitting for the 5-minute meditation at the start of the class had become intolerable, and she had given up. Her doctor had prescribed tablets, but Bex was concerned about getting hooked on them and had come to see me in search of a more natural approach. She had heard of medical cannabis, although she had never smoked a joint in her life, so she was also nervous about trying it.

I see a lot of patients like Bex in my practice, aware that something is not right but confused about where to go for help. Their doctors are often rushed and under time pressure, which makes them likely to write a prescription for antidepressants or sleeping pills. And yet when these patients look into the options for managing their symptoms naturally, there is a baffling world of pseudoscience and misinformation out there. Bex had heard anecdotally that CBD might help her, but she had no idea how to approach it, and she was worried about getting high or being on drugs.

I was able to reassure her that the type of medical cannabis I would be recommending for her anxiety contained very low levels of THC, which is the compound that gets you high. She wasnt going to be taking anything that would compromise her abilities at work, change her socially or make her feel intoxicated. I put her on a very high-CBD and low-THC oil for the daytime, and at night a very tiny dose of a slightly different oil with THC that would be more calming, to help her sleep.

After three months, Bex was sleeping better and had agreed with her doctor that she would come off her anxiety tablets. She told me she felt calmer, even on a stressful day at the office. We built on this success and got her back to her yoga class and working on her sleep patterns. After six months, she declared she hadnt felt this good in ten years. She claimed it was like someone had dialled back time and returned her to her old self.

Bex is just one of thousands of patients I have been able to help by using the cannabis plant as medicine to treat everything from anxiety to epilepsy. Cannabis has been used for healing over thousands of years by most of the major old-world cultures, so its nothing new; it has just been rediscovered by modern medicine after decades of being demonised in the War on Drugs.

As a doctor, I went from being what I call a canna-sceptic to being canna-convinced after witnessing life-transforming results by treating my patients with medical cannabis and CBD. I have seen success after success with patients who were often at the end of their tether, having tried and been failed by countless other drugs and complementary therapies.

I consistently hear feedback such as: This has changed my life, This has saved my marriage, I have my life back, Our entire family is transformed and I have rediscovered my joy for life. These reactions have made me almost evangelical about sharing what this amazing plant has to offer us, and in The CBD Bible I have used my years of clinical practice, as well as my own personal experience, to share my knowledge of how medical cannabis and CBD can help give you a route to your best possible self.

The cannabis plant has so much to offer the ongoing wellness revolution, but there is still a great deal of confusion, conflicting information and myth surrounding it, making it hard to know what to believe. People are searching for a guide on how to safely and confidently incorporate this plant into their lives for a variety of wellness and health purposes. This book is that guide.

This is also a story about how the cannabis plant helped me, members of my family and thousands of my patients to find balance in an unbalanced modern world. It is about how this humble plant can help reclaim your inner balance, what scientists call homeostasis.

Cannabis, despite being a perfectly respectable botanical medicine, has fallen into disrepute in the last century. I am glad to see it happily regaining its rightful place as an effective and, when used properly, safe herbal medicine that has superpowers in helping with chronic symptoms and diseases, where our best modern drugs still fall short. Its not a cure for everything, but as far as tools go, its one of the most powerful that Ive ever used, in either Eastern or Western medicine.

There is no right or wrong way to use this book. If you are curious and want to know every nitty-gritty nerdy scientific detail about the cannabis plant and its compounds, then by all means read it from start to finish, including the more technical chapters in on dosing and how to take cannabis. In all cases, taking CBD or medical cannabis should only be considered after consulting your doctor first. No book is a substitute for individual medical advice.