Margaret Trudeau, former wife of late Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau and author of the 2010 biography Changing My Mind, which chronicles her life dominated by bipolar disorder, has been making the lecture rounds recently, talking about a topic near and dear to her: mental health (or what she likes to refer to as “brain health).
Here is an excerpt of an interview with her, regarding her past use of marijuana:
MBF [Marian Botsford Fraser]: You talk about how marijuana started out as ballast, when you were traveling in Morocco, and later, you thought it was good for you, but it became something else.
MT: It gave me focus, brought me out of my depression [and] gave me energy to get through the day. When people try to self-heal, the first thing you want to do is escape – [use] alcohol, street drugs, gambling, anything to comfort yourself, [to] get away.
To tell you the truth I’d still choose being a pothead any day over being an alcoholic. It’s natural…it seemed to be the thing. I needed it and it was part of the culture. But the truth is studies have shown recently that the PHC in marijuana can trigger you into mania, or has a propensity to do so. The jury is still out on it, and of course bipolar condition is one of the conditions that medical marijuana is prescribed for. But the marijuana that’s being smoked today is not our father’s Oldsmobile!
It’s very, very different now, and it can greatly affect your health if abused. There were times when I abused marijuana and I regret it. But it also may have saved my life.
MBF: Do you still smoke marijuana?
MT: I don’t want to now. Don’t get me wrong, I love marijuana: I’d rather have a toke than a martini any day. But why do I have to have either? It’s not part of my day-to-day life, as it was before when I was really ill and trying to escape all my pain, especially the death of my son.
I finally realized that the amount of marijuana I started using after the death of Michel [in 1998], trying to get away from my grief, in fact delayed my mourning. It kept me from facing it, dealing with it, allowing myself to be a wholly grieving person instead of desperately sad, wallowing in self-pity, with no hope left, and feeling such disappointment that life could throw such a mean, cruel blow to our family. It just rocked me, losing my little Michel.