I want to share an experience about treating Multiple Personality Disorder, or MPD, with marijuana. I hope that this narrative will contribute to the cause of legalization.
Over a decade ago I was a county therapist in Klamath Falls, Oregon, and had a number of intakes and clients who had dissociative disorders.
I quit that job but maintained contact with one of my old clients, a woman in her forties, who I'll call Susan.
Susan was extremely bright and competent in her work in editorial positions and computers, having returned to get a degree in computer science when her children were grown. How she got stuck in K Falls was a misfortune, but she was making her way through life despite being in a classic state of MPD.
She had been sexually traumatized at age two. Coming out of this experience she sought safety in a persona that wasn't scared of anything, and definitely wasn't going to allow "it" to happen again. In textbook studies, this personality is known as the Protector. The Protector wields a double-edged sword however, and he or she often will become a resentful, vengeful Persecutor toward the original abuse sufferer. There are sometimes other personas who deal with developmental challenges such as dating, helping with housework, and even repairing cars, but the Protector can be both the cop and the wild child of the MPD system.
I'll call Susan's Persecutor Dixie.
I should mention that dissociation doesn't obey a cookie cutter pattern. I met a woman who had two distinct identities who were awake to each other. But this system fit a known model, and Susan was articulate about her experience.
In Susan's case, she couldn't see or hear Dixie. When Dixie or the other "alters" were 'out', or in the body, Susan was unconscious. I had the pleasure of attending a happy hour at a faculty function and meeting up with her there. I didn't ask who was out and just talked as I would to any friend. We spoke for a few minutes, then whoever it was shut her eyes and suddenly there's a shocked face looking at me, saying, "Please tell me it's the cocktail party Friday." It was Susan. It took her a minute to compose herself. She asked me who we'd talked to, so she'd know where to start with people. I add this anecdote to point out some of the serious mental adjustment required to cope with such a life. I've met people who suddenly came back after being "asleep" for several months.
In Susan's system the alters all had a body image that was unique, and often distinctive. Dixie told me she was seven feet tall, naked, hairless, and had no features. Obviously she was sexually shut down, despite the body she occupied having had two children.
Dixie's dirty tricks were imaginative: Go to the county fair, meet up with a carny, begin having sex with him, and wake up poor Susan). Then there was physical abuse, where Dixie beat up the body and withdraw, leaving any member including Susan who came out, to feel pain.
I think Dixie's cruelty was a misguided attempt to make Susan stronger, and a cry for help.
I lived near these interesting folks and made myself available to them. One night Dixie came over to my house and we sat in the back yard and talked. And she asked me if I smoked pot, and wanted to know what it was like, and if I had any.
During my employment with Klamath County I got high after hours, sometimes with fellow therapists and the clinic psychiatrist, and especially in the SE Oregon wilderness on the weekends, but never during work, and I never had any dealings with my clients involving it. I'm not messianic about weed.
I'd known her awhile, and knew it would be okay. We got high. She was amazed. We looked up at the stars. She told me that she could feel herself in her body for the first time. This seven foot shmoo (the shapeless L'il Abner critter, is what I imagined) accepted a new body image, and felt alive like never before.
This episode came in the middle of several important developments and was in a way the frosting on the cake, the cake of a year of intense therapy. Marijuana helped her solve an important issue concerning her body image, and helped her to feel grounded. This breakthrough helped lead to more constructive attitudes toward the other members of this fragmented, but functional, MPD family.