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Sarah Stenuf, of Auburn, a retired combat veteran, runs Happy Healing 420 to reduce the stigma of marijuana use.
Kevin Rivoli, The Citizen
cannot refill the receptor sites or create those chemicals to bring the body back to homeostasis or balance, after the trauma. However, cannabis, if utilized with these other treatments and therapies, can. A trauma patient who utilizes cannabis is giving his/her body a dose of the plant’s phytocannabinoids, which the patient’s own endocannabinoid system can use to replenish its empty receptor sites.
As Stenuf states, “That sounds to me like a therapeutic reaction. And if you integrate cannabis with other holistic treatments like art and music and [talk] therapy, to open up the non-verbal pathways in the mind, you can truly obtain an individualized form of therapy and treatment for that patient, to help that person rehabilitate and have tools to use throughout their aftercare. ”
“The communities I’m in, from local to the veteran and cannabis communities, have been so supportive and welcoming,” she adds.
[As a patient with PTSD and epilepsy], everything from talking to sex to going out in crowds has been different for me, which was scary because I needed to learn a lot of it all over again. And for a long time I feared the unknown and the change that came along with it. But in the community, I have people I can call 24 hours a day, and they aren’t necessarily veterans, but we support one another. It has been one therapeutic journey using peer to peer support, social media, exposure therapy at these events. Learning to talk and connect with others by help one another. It goes back to our social responsibility to help one another in the community. To education on a local level, create grassroots movements, and always making those necessary change. If it’s broken, then fix it and make it better then before…and I am. Once I started to become aware of my personal changes and growth and realized how beautiful life truly can be, I knew I needed to give-back and share this knowledge with people.
Today Stenuf is the founder of HappyHealing420 LLC, a community-based business entity which will also be a collective in New York. She also recently created Veteran’s Ananda Inc, a soon-to-be 501(c)(3) nonprofit veterans’ homestead based in upstate New York that will provide traditional and nontraditional treatments and therapies for veterans, first responders, their caregivers and family members.