Real Women's Stories.

After spending the first twenty-five years of her life battling chronic illness and addiction, Elle reached a breaking point and chose sobriety. Exploring holistic treatments led her to medical cannabis, and becoming a patient in 2019 changed everything: her agoraphobia eased, her pain became manageable, and she found the strength to leave an abusive relationship and access support as a survivor of domestic violence. She now creates free, accessible content to help educate others about cannabis-based medicine.

“My agoraphobia faded, my pain became manageable.”

Leanne's relationship with this plant started at sixteen, years before she had a name for the mental health struggles she was living with, or the suicide attempts already behind her. Cannabis was the first thing that ever quietened her mind, though it would take until her thirties, a Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis in 2020 and a BPD diagnosis in 2021, before she found it as structured medical treatment. Since starting on medical cannabis, her mobility, sleep, pain and mental health have all stabilised, and she's come off eleven daily pharmaceutical medications.

“For the first time in years, things started to improve.”

Meg has lived with type 1 diabetes since she was five. Diagnoses of fibromyalgia and gastroparesis followed in 2018, then endometriosis in 2020 after six years of being dismissed. Nerve damage means most pain medication isn't an option for her, so oils and flower have become what helps her eat, sleep and manage pain mainstream treatment hasn't reached. With little support from the system for a more recent osteopenia diagnosis, she's chosen to keep going down the holistic route, on her own terms.

“I can't thank it enough for helping me eat.”

After antidepressants left Donya feeling worse, not better, and at one point suicidal, she discovered that medical cannabis was legal in the UK and decided to try it. She came off her medication, her physical symptoms eased, and for the first time in years she felt able to sit down for dinner with her kids without her anxiety taking over. In the two years since, she says she's achieved more than in the ten years before it, and the only thing she'd change now is how hard it still is for other people to get access.

“I feel stable. Clear. Like myself again.”

Cori lives with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder that cost her her job, her social life and much of her sense of self by the age of twenty-six. A community of others living with the same condition introduced her to cannabis, and within a year she was off every prescription medication she'd been on. She's still in pain every day, but says she finally feels like herself again, with a life full of freedom, friendship, adventure, creativity and peace that once felt completely out of reach.

“I found myself again. I had a life again.”