This Thanksgiving, it's www.SwamiSelect.com 's honor to bring you the moving story of Desiree and Brent, high school sweethearts who married, became parents and supported one another through life events so challenging that they nearly lost everything. This is a story of love, perseverance, hope and health, states of being reawakened thanks to cannabis medicine.

Desiree suffered deeply from PTSD due to abuse she experienced as a child. In an attempt to ease her internal suffering, she turned to food and alcohol and gained an unhealthy amount of weight. That weight eventually caused a serious back injury. To treat her anxiety and physical pain, her psychiatrist and physician - a supposed “addiction specialist” - prescribed nine drugs, including opioids and benzodiazepines. While “sober” from alcohol, Desiree was numbed by her doctors with a pharmaceutical cocktail.

Then, as if things couldn’t get worse, one of Desiree and Brent's four children was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer at the age of 11. After a year’s battle, they lost him to the disease. Almost at the end of her rope, numbed to near lifelessness by drugs, Desiree’s anxiety became so bad that she couldn’t get out of bed.

Feeling they’d tried everything to free Desiree from her deep sadness but finding doctors’ who’s only "cure" was a “pharmaceutical lobotomy,” Brent suggested medical cannabis. Noting it was a natural alternative, Brent, who was not a cannabis user at the time, convinced Desiree to try it. Upon first use, she immediately felt its positive affects and was able to get out of bed for the first time in months.

Though it took one year to taper off the cocktail of prescribed meds, Desiree started regular exercise and healthy eating while also medicating with marijuana. She lost over 50 pounds. Now, Desiree's studying to be a physical trainer so that she, too, can help others heal their bodies and minds the natural, healthy way, with diet and exercise.

Desiree and Brent credit cannabis for saving her life and their family. Even better Desiree says that, for the first time in her 42 years of life, she can finally say, “I love myself.”

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