No, using cannabis won’t rot your teeth. It won’t help your teeth specifically either.

But some of us have developed poor dental hygiene practices. In my case it was due mainly to being unable to floss my teeth (NSFL alert) because of blood dripping down and causing the floss to slip out of my hands. What can I say, I’m on blood thinners. It doesn’t help that the sight of blood generally makes me a bit queasy too.

Unfortunately, going too long like that causes worse problems than mere gingivitis. I won’t go into too many details, but I wanted to clean things up. This was far easier now than it would have been a few years ago, thanks to medical marijuana. Now that I’m no longer suffering from depression, deciding to just brush my teeth religiously was enough to get my gums healthy enough so that they didn’t bleed all the time either.

A few years back, I had tried the same kind of thing but it didn’t work…my gums would bleed no matter what. What’s the difference between then and now? I’m in a much better state of health generally, and I attribute that to my regular cannabis intake as well.

But wait, there’s more.

I finally got the nerve to visit my local dental hygienist. She’s pretty competent but I still have a high level of anxiety being in that chair, because my mother sent me to a series of totally incompetent dentists when I was a kid. One in particular was a real sadist and used 4″ long needles and even pulled a .45 on me once (no shit).

You would have dental issues too, I bet, after that.

Anyway, my biggest concern was dialing in the proper strain and dosage for these visits. I didn’t want to be overmedicated (a.k.a. “high”), because that generally leads to at least some paranoia, which is nothing you want in such cases. Being high also generally means you’re feeling everything more distinctly; again, something that’s negative under these circumstances. Undermedicating would leave me anxious as hell. Finally, I didn’t want to make a mistake because I’d be driving myself both ways.

The first time I went, I had a serious level of anxiety, and took two of my Purple Kush Canna Caps. This dosage, on a normal day, would have me flying at around [6], but as I suspected, most of the THC was used up fighting the anxiety itself and I was quite comfortable at a [3] or so. Not very high, just calm.

This week, I had another appointment. I was far less worried because I had been through the procedure already, so I compromised with just one of the PK Canna Caps and two of my experimental Catnip Caps.

I had made these from catnip awhile ago, using the same procedure as making Canna Caps, to see if catnip could be useful on its own or in conjunction with cannabis. Why catnip? Well, it definitely has a calming effect when you make it into tea (the active ingredient is water-soluble, unlike cannabinoids), and it can also work against swelling.

Unfortunately, because of logistics, I took the capsules a bit too late and they didn’t kick in until after the pain injections (the worst part for me, thanks to that late but unlamented butcher dentist from my youth). As it turned out, I apparently was much calmer on my own, because this time I was floating at around [4.8] by the time I left the dentist’s office, even on half the cannabis dose as last time (I suspect I also overdosed a bit with the catnip). So I stayed giggling in my truck playing games on my phone for about an hour until I came down enough to drive and had a lovely afternoon.

Next time I will take just one Canna Cap and one Catnip Cap and I bet all will be perfect!