Opinion: Recovery, If You Can Afford It

Anonymous

Note: Medicinal cannabis, like any medication, may not be right for you. It is not right for everyone. Contact a medical professional to determine if medicinal cannabis may be right for you.

If you have a Community Services Card, you may be eligible for subsidised medicinal cannabis. Talk to a healthcare professional for more information. 

I pay $402 a month to function.

That’s what I pay now for medicinal cannabis. That number doesn’t include the initial appointments, or the $600 vaporiser I had to buy just to take it properly.

For the past few months, I’ve been using medicinal cannabis to manage anxiety and PTSD. It is the only treatment that has worked.

Before this, I did everything right. I went to therapy—multiple kinds, for years. I took all sorts of medications. I tried life coaching and lifestyle changes. None of them worked. 

Eventually, my PTSD was labelled “stable” and “treatment-resistant.” Stable, in this case, didn’t mean better. It meant stuck in this state.

I was prescribed Lorazepam, a sedative. It worked, in the sense that it flattened everything. I was calm because I was barely conscious. I slept through the day. I fell behind at uni. I stopped keeping up with life.

That’s when I started looking into medicinal cannabis. I figured that maybe if I were stoned instead of sedated, I could get shit done.

Now, I take CBD oil every morning, and use THC flower through a vaporiser when I need it (so, every day, throughout the day).

The CBD oil lowers the baseline. I can sit still. I can think through things without spiraling. When something stressful happens, I can respond to it, instead of immediately shutting down. For the first time in my life, I’m not living in a state of constant anticipation.

The THC works differently. It gives me focus. Usually, my mind jumps constantly—anxiety, intrusive thoughts, PTSD memories. It’s loud, and it’s relentless. After using the vaporiser, that noise quiets. Not gone, but contained enough that I can actually do what’s in front of me. Study. Write. Show up.

For the first time in a long time, I feel like I can participate in my own life.

But that participation comes at a cost.

I’m a student. Four hundred dollars a month is not a small expense—it’s rent, groceries, power. It’s the difference between saving and falling behind. But it’s also the difference between functioning and not.

So I pay the cost. Because the alternative is worse.

What makes this harder to accept is that I am already within a system that is supposed to support recovery.

I’m covered under ACC’s Sensitive Claims scheme. That scheme exists for people who have experienced sexual harm. It funds therapy, treatment, rehabilitation—the things you need to rebuild your life after something you never chose.

ACC does not subsidise medicinal cannabis. The justification is familiar: it is not an “approved” medicine in the same way as others. The clinical evidence base is still developing. It is not funded by PHARMAC.

I can understand that, in theory. But living inside that reasoning feels very different. Because in practice, what it means is this: treatments that did not work for me were funded without question. The one that does work is not.

And I can’t understand the distinction: the system will pay for me to be sedated all day, but not a little bit high? Aren’t benzodiazepines more chemically addictive and harmful than cannabis? How is this distinction acceptable, let alone logical?

Without funding, recovery begins to look less like a right, and more like a privilege. It is available—but only to those who can afford to privately access it.

I am aware that I am in a privileged position where I can make the trade-offs required to pay $402 a month. Many people cannot. And for them, the choice is between functioning and going without basic necessities.

There is something deeply unsettling about that.

About having to pay, month after month, to manage the consequences of something that was never your fault.

Just to be able to function.