I was feeling anxious... Nature and smoking help me relax.

When I'm writing an assignment, if I don't do something to stop my brain, I can't stop thinking about it. I close everything and use cannabis.

I use cannabis to help relieve my anxiety and the physical symptoms that come with it.

Cannabis really reduces my anxiety before I go to bed.

I feel like cannabis use helps slowing down, being more present, noticing things, being part of the world and being less in your head.

Using cannabis before sex allows me to be more in the moment, to let go a little more. It gives me the right to not obsess about what I look like in those moments.

I rely on cannabis to give me a certain effect, a consistency and predictability. I like to predict my mental state, and as a person with anxiety, it's very difficult for me to do that.

Cannabis completely alleviates the paranoia and anxiety I feel, it allows me to focus on the little things.

This photo of my window frame seems very sober, it represents my current use of weed, just CBD. It gives me a lot more structure than when I take THC.

I realized that when I smoked, all my anxiety wasn't there. With cannabis, it was either alleviated or it wasn't there, or I wasn't thinking about it.

Art and weed. It is a way to process my trauma.

CBD is the only thing that works for me until I get an evaluation or the care I need. Why shame people who use cannabis to help themselves if they are no other resources?

For me, cannabis is a medicine like any other, in the sense that I use it for anxiety or for headaches.

When I feel completely suffocated and overwhelmed, I find that smoking CBD allows me to take a step back and see things from another perspective. CBD allows me to de-escalate moments of anxiety where I feel like I'm never going to get out of it.

We created a non-cis group, a safe space to talk about issues that come with being queer. My first time going to one of these, it was a little confronting for me because I'm a person who has a hard time meeting new people. So, I smoked a little bit, nothing to get high, just to be chill.

I have an inner debate between self-medicating with cannabis and using my prescribed medication.

I am more creative, and I like to get moving when I smoke cannabis.

When I’m high, I’m in the present and I’m not constantly thinking about what is going to happen, I don’t have negative thoughts.

Medication helps me during the day, and smoking helps me with the anxiety before I go to sleep.

I was consulting for assaults. I started having intense flashbacks and started using a lot more.

Every time I used cannabis, it was a little different. It was kind of like a surprise, what it was going to be like.

I always knew I was bi, but it’s when I started to smoke that I let go of shit and I didn’t want to come out anymore, to tell anyone... It’s no one’s business but my own.

Smoking has allowed me to take a step back, to talk about certain things, for example I was able to have top surgery.

Being alone, it forced me to do a lot of introspection and to be alone with my thoughts. Cannabis allows me to move forward in my personal growth.

Since I started smoking, I started to distance myself from the person I was before I came to Canada and from social standards I was trying to fit into. I started to feel like that this dress wasn't me, it was someone else wearing it. It had a lot to do with my questioning of my sexuality and gender expression.

When we smoke, we form new connections, we understand events that happened with us in a different way. We see things differently, through new glasses.

When I consume, I have more clarity in my imagination. I try - through my art and through different colors - to express that, to manifest that and to create that - because I think I create myself, in the way I look and the way I am.

When I'm high, I look at my reflection and I am often more able to express self-love and confidence.

There are a lot of people in the queer community who consume cannabis... I don't know why in my case, my consumption mixes a bit with queer culture.

I have a really bland experience with my sexuality and bisexuality, partly because my autism and anxiety make it pretty hard to build connections.

This picture represents my experience of being part of the LGBTQ+ community. From an outsider's perspective, if I don't mention that I am queer, there's no way to really know.

In this photo, there is a one-way street, then a stop sign. It's a space in the road that is quite complex because there are different signs, different ways of access like the link between my consumption and between my gender identity.

I found that when I was using, I could do more introspection, reflect and write.

There is all this identity fog of "who is me", and of how I present myself in front of others, and I can't smoke now because of this fog that comes and confuses me.

I find cannabis relaxing and it helps me think because it allows me to focus on one thing at a time.

I've known I am bisexual since grade 6, but it was just when I started using cannabis that I totally let go and accepted who I am. It goes with the don't worry and take it easy mentality that comes with the weed smoker stereotype.

I needed to understand something about missing Native children in relation to myself, my cannabis use and also my experiences to understand something bigger about my childhood and a sense of belonging to the world, which I had to confront through marijuana.

I have a pretty negative experience with religion in general. I'm still working through this, and cannabis has really helped with that so far.

My appreciation of things is greater when I've been using compared to when I'm sober.

I was using cannabis as a way of coming to terms with my sexuality and gender identity.

In these two figures, I see an empty look, a frozen expression. I'll take cannabis to feel lighter, to embellish my reality. But it can be numbing, desensitizing in the long run.

It's a dilemma between taking care of yourself, eating a great meal and smoking a little cannabis, and at the same time soiling your lungs, soiling your head.

I feel like weed makes me really sluggish a lot of the time. I have phases of depression when I used a lot.

This cumbersome drug.

Empty gaze.

Smoking was really disorienting. Already in life I'm not someone who has very precise and fixed reference points. When I use cannabis it's really hard for me to know what's going on.

This picture is related to the anxiety that cannabis was giving me, especially socially. I didn't really recognize myself in this, I was really afraid of how people would perceive me. It really made me want to go hide...like the little bird in the trees there.

I think my smoking doesn't always necessarily help me. I don't know that it doesn't help me either. Maybe there's a connection between when I'm using a lot and the state of my home.

I never thought that my consumption would increase if I was alone. On the contrary, I thought it would do the opposite, that I wouldn't use at all.

Smoking made me gained a lot of weight, which accentuated my anxiety and my inner discomfort.

Captive. At the beginning of the COVID lockdown, I was in an abusive relationship with a person who used cannabis a lot. I started smoking all the time and noticed that I was having trouble with my memory, my motivation, my sleep, my concentration. It was also a time in my life when I was starting to have a lot of questions about my sexual identity, but I was with a person who wouldn't let me explore that.

This drawer represent my consumption which is a bit scattered, which is not super healthy for me either.

Excess: This ashtray is disgusting, because you see that everything is burnt, you know you've smoked it all. It starts to build up pretty quickly and it's gross to look at.

I try to keep food away from me when I'm high. Because I get ravenous and then I wake up and feel bad because I'm like, "I ate a whole bag of chips."

White people are taking advantage of the legalization of a product that has harmed so many marginalized people, and still does. Even though cannabis became legal, some people didn't necessarily get a pardon, they didn't necessarily get out of jail.

I have an eating disorder and when I smoke, it always brings me back to this problem of my body. I have huge cravings and I start to eat a lot. And it is bad for me.

I generally have a bad memory so when I smoke, I forget everything. I don't use regularly because I know it can have negative effects on long-term memory.

When I was smoking, my field of vision was very small, I could see less around me. It was really restricted. The black lines on the picture, it's a bit like the bars of a prison ... I felt caught in my consumption.

All of a sudden after smoking the joint, he really didn't seem to feel good. And when he got up, he fell.

I have a tumultuous relationship with food. I struggle with the munchies caused by weed.

Sometimes I feel trapped, I feel stuck in my body, in my being.

Without therapy, I would not be where I am today in my self-love journey of self-love. Talking to someone about my problems and concerns is helpful because an outsider's perceptive can be completely different from your own.

Two, three weeks ago, I couldn't say the exact date... I took my first ride in a police car to the hospital.

I started looking for a therapist and it was really complicated because with COVID, it's kind of hell, because everyone needs a therapist.

This photo shows the feeling of being without directions in the context of the pandemic with mental health resources that are difficult to access. The feeling of being in nothingness and then having loops of thoughts spiraling down, and then feeling swallowed up by vortexes.

I live in a residential area, and I feel that mental health difficulties can be a bit hidden. Where I live, people don’t really know me.

It's a little bit difficult sometimes to stop and to turn yourself off at night. Particularly being a trans person and being misgendered throughout the day, that kind of minority stress, this stress that I live with every day, microaggressions that are constant.

The first time I smoked I was in Canada. I felt that I was very small in front of this big city and I was still new and I was not included in this big city. It was a lot of anxiety and a lot of claustrophobia to be one among many.

I was smoking more alone because I had to find things to do and I felt more isolated. Like I can see everything, but I feel like I'm in this little dark corner by myself.

I love my mom but she's sexist and homophobic. There are a lot of things we can't talk about, like mental illness.

I’ve written a lot of emails to find a therapist, and I haven’t found one yet. I’m still looking.

It’s like a mental health card game, not knowing like where you will be sent, being sent back and forth.

En tant que personne queer à faible revenu, il est plus difficile d'accéder aux ressources de santé mentale. Je dois gérer mes instabilités d'humeur par moi-même.