Cannabis as a gateway herb with Bridget Conry

Cannabis as a gateway herb with Bridget Conry
Bridget: An exciting thing that has happened during this COVID-19 period, is that cannabis in States where it has been legalized in some form has been declared essential. That is a huge deal, because we're still trying to bring cannabis into federal legalization. And so to have it be declared that I don't think we're going back . And I don't think that's a victory just for cannabis. That's a victory for herbal medicine because cannabis is plant based medicine. And the fact that we're saying that this is an essential service, means going forward people are going to look at plant based medicine more in that lense. I'm really excited to see what happens now that that decision has been made. And it's good for plant based medicine across the whole.
Lana: You're listening to Plant Love Radio, episode number 67.
Lana: Hello Friends. I hope you're having a good week. I invited back today a friend and colleague of mine, Bridget Conry. During our first conversation, we looked exclusively at medical cannabis. Today, we're taking it one step further and looking at the same plant, Cannabis as they gateway herb. Yes, you heard it correctly, not a gateway drug, but a gateway herb.
For over 20 years Bridget has been a student of traditional systems of herbal medicine and aromatherapy. She ran Elemental herbal apothecary, an herbal clinic and product manufacturer serving her community in Berkshire County, Massachusetts.
And about 10 years ago, she began her career at Champlain Valley dispensary as the infusion kitchen manager. Within 18 months, she was promoted to the director of operations, charged with implementation of the organization's mission statement and standard operating procedures across five different departments, processing extraction, laboratory testing, infusion kitchen and facilities. Currently, Bridget serves the organization as the Director of Outreach and Product Development.
With Bridget's inspiration I am currently working at my university to bring together a certificate program for pharmacy students on the topic of medical cannabis.
Based on our conversation I created a short guide that describes several categories of cannabis use and what plants, and I'm talking about herbal medicines specifically, can be effectively combined throughout the day to support the body. To get this guide and explore all the fascinating resources Bridget shares in this episode, please head over to the show notes at https://plantloveradio.com/67. Enjoy!
Lana: Good morning, Bridget, how are you doing?
Bridget: Good morning. I'm doing very well this morning. Thank you.
Lana: I am excited to have you back. We chatted about a year ago, last time we talked about medical Cannabis and a variety of different areas and topics from plant species and properties of different cannabinoids and main uses of Cannabis.
Today, we want to go deeper. I'm going to share the link to our previous episodes in the show notes. But before we dig into our conversation, I wanted to ask you to talk a little bit about your background and how you got interested in the field of Cannabis.
Bridget's background
Bridget: Sure. so I've been a student of herbal medicine for 20 years and alongside being a student, I've been a practitioner and a manufacturer of herbal products. I had my own herbal practice in the Berkshires for awhile called, Elemental herbal apothecary, where I was serving my community, with herbs that were general tonics and health for every day bumps and bruises.
I also have been in the food industry for 20 years, coincidentally, primarily with farm to table, organic, local as the focus. And so I've been managing commercial kitchens during that time and understand what it means to manage a commercial. So those two things kind of came together eight years ago when I was invited to be the infusion kitchen manager for a medical Cannabis license that was in the application process up here in Vermont.
And so I saw it as an opportunity to use my herbal background and my commercial kitchen skills. Some of the products that I knew were in the medical Cannabis space were the traditional herbal products, which were capsules and tinctures and salves but there were also food products, whether they were confections or baked goods.
I just thought what a great opportunity to take those skills, put them together and learn a lot more because Cannabis quite frankly, was not part of my repertoire. And it wasn't part of most herbalist repertoires because it was federally illegal and still is. And so it's not a plant that you read about in your herbal books or that you learn about in most herbal classes. If you have worked with an herbalist with it, it's been on the QT because you were a client and maybe that herbalists was comfortable and had knowledge about Cannabis and was working with you on it, but all illegal. So it was a great opportunity to learn more about this plant, and do it now for eight years.
Lana: That's great.
Common indications of Cannabis
We previously talked about Cannabis being sold for adult or wellness use versus medical use. I wanted to ask you to talk a bit about some of the reasons why you see your clients getting Cannabis. What are they getting Cannabis for?
Bridget: Well, it's different in every state. Because each state develops their own medical Cannabis program and all of them have different qualifying conditions. There's a lot of overlap, but there's some states that have some omissions that are really important. In our state the qualifying conditions are cancer, HIV, MS, any illness that has chronic or debilitating symptoms. Chronic pain was added only a couple of years ago in our program, which really made it more accessible for people. And so those are the kinds of the qualifying diseases or conditions. And when someone applies through their doctor and whatever the regulatory body is, they come to us to basically manage their symptoms.
Very important, I always like to say right off the bat that we're not healthcare professionals. And, we're not in a position to diagnose or treat or prescribe anything at the dispensaries. People are coming to us to look for relief of insomnia, pain, muscle spasms, seizures, anxiety, the symptoms that are related to their qualifying condition.
Lana: Okay, that's great. previously, we talked about the fact that in adult or wellness market, sometimes you see the same type of patients as well.
Bridget: For a few reasons. One, it's hard to get into a medical program. It's an application process. You got to fill out application, you have to have your doctor sign off on it. As I said, we're dealing with symptom management in the dispensaries. Those are things that the general population has. A lot of people are suffering from anxiety or insomnia, but they don't have an illness like cancer that would qualify them for the program. So most of those folks are using over the counter drugs or other prescription drugs, to deal with those. And so they might be going to an adult use dispensary to get products, to substitute some of those other over the counters that they're using.
Lana: That makes sense. other things that you and I have discussed previously that can Potentiate or diminishe effects of Cannabis or the other way around. Could you talk about them? So what I have in mind is perhaps diet or movement or anything along those lines.
Changing the effects of Cannabis with the lifestyle
Bridget: Yeah, well, I consider Cannabis plant based medicine. And in plant based medicine, you're generally looking at taking a holistic approach and you're looking at the person as a whole, what are they consuming in their diet? What is their exercise routine? is there one, what are their sleep patterns? what is their stress level? What is their family history? what is the environment that they live in? What is their constitution? All of those things have to be considered in order to figure out what plants are gonna work best for you. I like to say that when you choose to work with plants, you're choosing to work with yourself, and to learn about yourself. and know the effectiveness of anything that you take into your body Is influenced by everything that you're consuming. So if your diet is rich in nutrients and you're not weighing it down with a lot of things that cause inflammation like alcohol and coffee and red meat and carbs and processed foods, your body's a better receptor for that good information to come in and do the work that it knows what do. I like to talk about plants also is like reminding our body of what it is to be in a healthy state. And so if you're living a life where you've got a solid a nutrition base, you're exercising, you have meditative practices in your life. That's going to make Cannabis and any plants more effective, and you can use Cannabis and other plants to help move your body in that direction.
And I always like to encourage people when they're coming to plants for the first time, it's always a little bit daunting and overwhelming because there's so much information and it's hard to make changes in your life. It's hard to change habits that you have. And I always say, add first, don't take away cause taking away feels like you're denying yourself something. And when you start to add good things into your life, whether it's exercise or diet or a new plant based regimen that can include Cannabis. Once you start to do that, you start to see the positive results and you start to feel better and it's easier to get, let go of the other things that were causing you harm.
Lana: Makes a lot of sense.
Cannabis as a gateway herb
So, Bridget, last time when we talked, you mentioned something that really resonated with me. You said that Cannabis can be a gateway herb for many people. What did you mean by that?
Bridget: Cannabis is a plant. it's part of the complete herbal apothecary, because it is a plant, but it's been removed because of prohibition. And so the 1940s, it's been illegal and it still is. And that's something that I think that a lot of people don't get is that this is still a federally illegal plant. It's only legal in certain States. It used to be in all traditional systems of herbal medicine, Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, they had hemp and Cannabis in their apothecary. We did too, you know, European countries have kept it in there.
And so it's really kind of welcoming it back to where it was to begin with. But as the pharmaceutical industries and allopathic medicine really came to rise in Western civilization before that was herbal medicine, and we kind of left that aside as we grew with the science and both are important. Whenever I talk about this, I don't ever want people to think that like, Oh, herbal medicine is better. They're complementary. So, but most of us have kind of forgotten about the plants as medicine. Because it's just, hasn't been part of our culture. And so now that people are starting to see Cannabis be effective for so many things. And again, I like to talk about symptom relief, not curative. There are people out there, and there are studies going on out there that are talking about Cannabis as being curative for certain things, but we're still waiting on that evidence based science to prove that out.
And so we're talking about therapeutic effects and symptom relief. We're seeing it so strongly in this one plant now, and that's opening people's minds up to like, wow, plants can do this. And so once they do, it's like, wow, there's all these other plants over here that also have very similar therapeutic effects.
And it'll be very exciting when we can start to see Cannabis come back into our herbal libraries and just see it listed, like everything else, like what are the therapeutic effects of Cannabis? Like right now, we know that they're analgesic, that they're, antispasmodic that they're antiemedic, they're antiinflammatory. They help boost appetite, and you can go over to all these other plants and see those same things. Same words because they're acting on the body, in similar ways to bring out the same effects. and so that's why I talk about it as the gateway herb.
Endocannabinoid system
Lana: That makes a lot of sense. And so I have a followup question to that. Is it true that other plants might have affinity to the same receptors as Cannabis does? And why is this an important concept?
Bridget: So what we know about Cannabis, and we've only known this since I believe it was the eighties actually, when the endocannabinoid system was discovered, is that we have this really amazing system of receptors throughout our body, which is called the endocannabinoid system, that really influence a lot of activity in our body.
We're discovering that they're in the immune system, the nervous system, there are a lot of our different organ systems and they really regulate homeostasis. And so we are finding that THC and CBD are the two primary cannabinoids that we know about, they fit like lock and key and the CBD1 and CBD2 receptors in our body.
Now that we're studying the plant more and finding that, Hey, there's a lot of terpenes in Cannabis. We're finding that those terpenes in there also interact with those receptors. We're not exactly sure. They don't fit like a lock and key just like THC does and does CB1, but they're influencing the receptivity of cannabinoids into those receptors. They're messengers. We're not quite sure when trying to figure that out. We know that these terpenes exists in all other plants too. And so it's the same molecule. And so linalool is in Cannabis. Linalool is in lavender. It's the terpene that we think about as being contributing to the sedative effects of lavender. What calms us, helps us go to sleep. It's the same molecule in each of those plants. So now that we know that terpenes and cannabinoids are working together to influence our endocannabinoid system, we know that if we put lavender on our body, that terpene in there influencing that same system, but we don't quite understand how.
We're also starting to learn about a class of plants that are called cannabimimetics - echinacea is in there. Hops is in there. Spilanthes is in there. We're finding that some of the reasons why those plants are analgesic is because they are interacting with our endocannabinoid system similarly, not exactly the same but similar. And there's just a lot of exciting research going on over there in that area right now.
THC versus CBD
Lana: That's fascinating. You mentioned cannabinoids and you mentioned terpenes. You talked about those in our previous interview, but I want to ask you to talk a little bit more about them. So, the ones that most people probably are familiar with, things like THC and CBD. Can you talk a little bit about their difference in terms of their effects and why certain products would have more of one versus another? And why would someone be seeking more of one versus another?
Bridget: Sure. So when we say THC, most people were referring to what's called Delta 9 tetrahydrocannabinol. There are actually quite a few cannabinoids that have THC, as part of their molecule. And so, generally we're referring to as Delta 9, which is, the cannabinoid that contributes to that intoxicating effect that people associate with Cannabis, that feeling of being high, that euphoric sense. THC though also is a very powerful analgesic.
It suppresses nausea, it stimulates appetite. Those are some of the reasons why people might be attracted to a high THC plant in a dispensary, pain associated with cancer, high THC products generally work towards relieving that pain. And I will say that one of the things that we hear a lot in the dispensary side is that, the Cannabis generally does not completely take away all of the pain. Sometimes it does, but what it tends to do is it tends to reduce it, or it allows the person to dissociate from it, so they're not thinking about it all the time. It might still be there it's dulled, but they can function. So THC has those therapeutic properties plus that euphoric effect.
CBD has what we know so far, it can be an analgesic. It seems to help people improve their sleep hygiene. Lots of people are using it to decrease anxiety. it's been very effective as an antispasmodic and an anti-seizure. That's how we first learned about it was with Charlotte Figgy, who unfortunately just passed away recently, which was very sad, but her success story with a high CBD strain to go from 300 seizures a day to two a month. So we know that it has those therapeutic effects anecdotally and in some cases, scientifically proven. But it doesn't cause that euphoria or that intoxicating effect. So a lot of people are attracted to it because of that reason, because there are a lot of people who don't want to have that high experience. They want symptom relief with functionality.
I will say that there's a way though to use Cannabis and consume high THC Cannabis where you can benefit from THC and not have that high, or you can control it. And the ratios of CBD to THC are the tool to do that. Adding CBD with THC formula can increase the therapeutic benefit and temper the intoxicating euphoric effects. So you're starting to see a lot of products that have different ratios, where they're CBD dominant two to one, four to one, eight to one, 18 to one. And it depends on the person which one works best for them.
Lana: Makes sense. Thank you.
Combining Cannabis with other herbs
You mentioned the formula where it's the THC versus CBD, but I know that we began our discussion, talking about combining Cannabis with other herbs. Could you talk a little bit about ways in which other herbs could be helpful when they're combined with Cannabis?
Bridget: So I think there's two important things to talk about here. One, in herbalism we don't usually work with one plant. We work with a plant in formula with others in the actual product, but we also are just taking in multiple herbs in different ways throughout our day. And so you don't necessarily have to have a formula that's got Cannabis in it with other plants, all in one tincture. That can be great. I mean, you can make a tincture with Cannabis, say for like a lot of people will come into dispensary are looking for something to help them sleep at night because their pain is keeping them up. They can't fall asleep and they can't stay asleep because of pain.
So you could develop a tincture formula. And again, you'd want to know, a little bit more about the particular person that you were working with. Cause everybody's constitution is different. That different herbs are better for different people. There's a lot of herbs out there that could help with sleep that are nervines or help with pain, but different ones are going to work better for you.
Consultation's always important. But just generally speaking, one example, you could create a formula that had an indica dominant THC Cannabis strain. Because those indica dominant strains tend to be more sedative. And that's probably because of the terpenes that are in there, not just the cannabinoids. And you could put in things like Jamaican Dogwood, which is a powerful analgesic herb, you could put in Valerian, which is a powerful analgesic herb that is also a sedative. You could put in hops. You know, and depending on whether the person was having trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, different herbs help with that. So you could go that route.
But I also advise that, Hey, it's not just about taking a tincture before bedtime. It's about what we're doing all day. What routines do you have? What can you be taking as a tonic regularly throughout your life? Like. Nettles and oatstraw - having a strong infusion of that every day, just to tonify your nervous system, so that you are more relaxed, in general. Having a tea ritual at night after you have dinner, having a Chamomile, Lavender, Linden balm, or, Linden flower tea. It's starting to set you into the mood of relaxation as you go through your night.
[Then maybe you take your tincture that's got Cannabis and the other herbs in it an hour before you go to bed. Because that it's going to take effect in about an hour and that's when you want to go to sleep. And so it's about layering herbs and different methods of consumption throughout your daily life and overtime, because these aren't quick fixes.
I think that's one big thing that people are learning . The thing with Cannabis is because of that THC and euphoric effect it can mask things that are going on. And you do feel something generally right away with Cannabis when you're dealing with THC. And with other herbs, sometimes you have to take them for a while, in order to feel the effect. And so that's one key difference between the two. And that is something that you have to be careful with with Cannabis, because you can dissociate from your issues because it makes you feel good, but you're not really getting to the core of why you have those symptoms and that disease in the first place.
And when you bring other herbs into your lifestyle, you can work on those core imbalances so that you actually need less Cannabis. And I think that's the goal for us too, is to try to get people to be using more plants. So they don't need to rely on one plant to be managing symptoms. You want to be using plants as a whole to get yourself into a more healthy state so you don't need them as medicine so much. Does that make sense?
Lana: It does.
Quick break
Just a quick break here. Wanted to remind you that I put together a short guide that describes several categories of Cannabis use and different plans that can be effectively combined throughout the day with Cannabis. To bring even more effective results. To get this guide, please head over to the show notes at https://plantloveradio.com/67. And now back to our conversation.
Tolerance and pulsing
I also wanted to ask you to talk a little bit more about this reliance of single plant. Why is it not a good idea typically?
Bridget: So I think Cannabis and Cannabis tolerance is a good place to start that conversation, because if you are using Cannabis, that is something that most people are aware of. Like if you use the same Cannabis strain, consecutively, you are going to find that you need more of it in order to get the same results as what's called building a tolerance to a certain strain.
And so there are ways that you can desensitize and pull back your dose in order to get back to a place where you need less of it to create the same result. And the same thing can happen with other plants.
Yes. There are tonic herbs that you can take all the time that are nutritive. There's no harm in taking them. They're only going to be doing good. But if you're using them to address certain things, certain symptoms or ailments, It's helpful to switch them up and bring in different herbs. And we don't always know why that is, and I'm not a scientist, but our tradition has shown that it's good to mix up different plants to bring those different languages into your body, as new information for your body to work with.
In herbalism we call it pulsing, it's good to switch it up sometimes and maybe take an herb for certain amount of time and more concentration. And then stop, take a break and then start again a little while later, and that might give you a better overall therapeutic effect.
Lana: It's fascinating that you're talking about it. When I went for the first time through my herbal program, the instructor talking about this exact concept and, applying it to everything else in your life like vitamins and supplements and various other things that you cannot continue taking them on a consistent basis. That it's a good idea to pulse them. But I think it's also good to remember that diversity rather than homogeneity is something that's super important in our lives, whether around us or our body. We don't eat the same breakfast every single day. Some people probably do, but the idea is that you put different things into your body and they affect you and they support you from the nutrition perspective a lot better. And so when we're applying the concepts you're mentioning, it works exactly the same way. You are exposing yourself to a lot of different things that are beneficial for you.
Bridget: Yeah. And a good example of that, over reliance on certain antibiotics and overuse them, causes the microbes we're trying to address, they figure out how to overcome that. And so that's one of the differences between pharmaceuticals and whole plant medicine is that whole plant medicine is a lot more complex. You've got all kinds of phytochemicals in there that's hard for a bacteria, a virus to figure out, where it's easy to figure out one thing. And so that's another reason why you kind of need that diversity in your body.
Lana: I liked that a lot. Thank you.
Entourage of plants
Let's go back one step and talk a little bit about the categories of plants you think about when you are trying to combine with Cannabis. You mentioned a variety of different conditions that patients who are using Cannabis for medical purposes might consider. So what are some of the categories of plants? What are some of the specific plants that work really well with those?
Bridget: So I always like to preface this by saying that every individual, again, needs to figure out which plants work best for them
Lana: Of course, of course.
Bridget: When we're looking at Cannabis, and talking about that whole plant again, as opposed to isolating certain active ingredients, we talk about the entourage effect and how important it is not to just isolate THC and take five milligrams of that. That's what's going to do it. You want to take that five milligrams within a whole plant extract.
I like to kind of branch that out and call it like an entourage of plants and finding what is your entourage of plants that work well for you? What plants you want to hang with? Who are your plant allies?
I think it's interesting that it's called the entourage effect in the Cannabis industry. And on the herbalist side, we've always talked about herbal allies who they are . Again, I think that when we come to plants for the first time, or even when we've been doing it a long time, I mean, I still get overwhelmed by how much information there is, how many plants we can actually work with.
There are so many options. If you are looking for a plant that's an analgesic, there are so many analgesics, which means pain-relieving, and there's different ways that they work and some of them are cooling and some of them are heating. It's best to know that information to help you figure out which ones to start with.
Instead of trying to get overwhelmed by it, start small, don't try to add too many plants, find out which ones worked for you generally, start locally like what are the plants that are growing in your region? Cause usually those are the ones that are most powerful for you as well, because they're dealing with the same stressors that your body is on a daily basis. And find a local herbalist to help you navigate. So those are good places to start to figure out. Okay. When I'm looking at plants that are analgesic pain relieving, which is what people are coming to Cannabis for, antispasmodic which is everything from managing seizures to managing just muscle cramps. A lot of athletes are coming to CBD to deal with the strains of athletics - sore muscles, muscle cramps due to overuse, things like that. Anxiolytics, anxiety-reducing, digestive complaints, insomnia. And so, you know, we're looking at nervines, anxiolytics, antispasmodics, analgesics, to name a few.
And so within those, as I've said, there are so many options. I say, start with the basic ones, Lavender, Chamomile, those are sedatives and anxiolytics. Most people know them already - start exploring them more. Have your camomile tea, have your lavender tea, use the essential oils.
Super powerful. The terpenes that are in the Cannabis plant - what is it? chamazulene, bisabolol, which is the other one, both sedative. Those are in Cannabis. And so you could be taking Chamomile tea and as part of your nighttime ritual, but you could also be doing a palm inhalation of Chamomile essential oil to just help relax.
Chamomile is also an antispasmodic, analgesic. It depends on whether you're talking about topical or ingestible forms for a more systemic approach. Ginger, Jamaican Dogwood, White Willow bark, Devil's claw. There's so many again, start with what you know, and part of that is as easy as going into a food co op, which has a great supplement section and has a lot more herbal products there. You're going to find the more common ones there. So that's where I recommend people start. Turmeric obviously is a powerful anti-inflammatory. You're seeing that in a lot of formulation with CBD products right now. Cannabis is a powerful anti-inflammatory, both topically and internally. So those are a few and I never want to like throw out too many. Cause then it gets to be like, Oh,
Lana: Of course. what's interesting is when we started talking about this particular topic, I initially thought you meant combining Cannabis in the same formula, but now it makes so much more sense to me that it's just bringing more herbs in general into your life. Whenever herbalist is trying to put a well balanced formula, some of the things that they are thinking about potentiating beneficial effects, or using other plants as activators. So maybe driving them in the direction of the right organ system or something like that, decreasing some of the adverse effects or decreasing the doses of that the other substance.
And I think everything you mentioned can function in this way, it can either potentiate Cannabis beneficial effects, or it can in some ways help you to decrease the dose or the adverse effects or things like ginger can move into tissues where you need them the most.
So, I really appreciate the idea of it could be in that same tincture bottle or the same preparation, but it does not necessarily need to be. So just like you said, entourage of herbs, it's everything that you want to learn about these different plants and how to take them together.
Useful resources
You talked about finding an herbalist who knows how to work with Cannabis, but I want to ask you in general, are there people that do interesting work in combining Cannabis with phytomedicinals or with botanicals. Can you recommend some of the useful resources or resources that you personally like?
Bridget: Sure. so I'll start with my own company and what we're doing. We're Champlain Valley dispensary, but we're also Ceres natural remedies and Champlain Valley dispensary is a medical Cannabis space where you have to apply and be registered as a patient. It's not open to the public. Ceres Natural remedies is our CBD, or hemp derived CBD store, but the concept there has always been about complete herbal apothecary. And that's where that space is always moving. And we do a lot of work on our website ceresremedies.com that talks about companion botanicals, the plants that are our friends and they also work well together and formula for health and wellness, particularly with CBD and THC or with the Cannabis plant.
Let's see. The Alchemist kitchen is actually a great website and retail store in New York city. They also have an online store where they sell all kinds of herbal products with and without CBD. They don't have a license to sell Cannabis, but they talk about it a lot because hemp and Cannabis are the same plant, that's why. Great resource. They constantly have ask an herbalist. They'll have people on there like Guido Mase who we both know.
People like Zach Wood Farms up here in Vermont, they just started to grow hemp in the past couple years. Melanie and Jeff, Melanie is actually the stepdaughter to Rosemary Gladstar, they've been herbalists for a long time. They grow medicinal herbs. Now they're starting to work with Cannabis. You go to their website - there's not a ton of information that's like Cannabis forward, but they're very knowledgeable about it. So I would say connect with them.
Eleanor Kuntz, works with LeafWorks. And I think that she's doing some fascinating work right now because she's an herbalist, she's a botanist and she's a genetic engineer. And so her company right now is all about managing the supply chain in the herbal market including Cannabis. And so doing that genetic work to understand that what you're getting is what you're getting. And there's issues with that in the herbal market, as well as in the Cannabis. Like how do you know that that strain is what they're saying it is? When you go into the medical dispensary and you have success with a certain strain or product, you want it to be the same the next time.
And there's not a lot of standardization in the Cannabis market right now for that to be there, to build that trust. And are similar issues in the herbal world. There's a lot of companies that add fillers into things and you don't really know if what you're getting is what you're getting.
So her company works on that and is working to have a whole level of Appalachian for Cannabis, so that you start to categorize the Cannabis plants based on their genetic makeup, their chemical makeup, and even where they're grown, just like we do with wine and cheese. Like where did this plant come from? and so she's a fascinating resource and she's at LeafWorks.
Lana: That's great. Thank you so much. I will definitely include all the resources in the show notes and allow our audience to explore this topic a lot further. Bridget, this was a fascinating discussion, and I am so grateful for your wisdom and for your expertise. I want to ask you a couple of questions in closing.
Where can our audience learn more about you or continue learning from you? And then my last question is, do you have any closing thoughts or words of wisdom for our audience?
Connecting with Bridget
Bridget: Sure. So, Right now, I'm actually doing a monthly podcast on Cannabis Economy, which for anybody who is interested in Cannabis in general, it's a great website. He's got a community, a column where he interviews people who have expertise in different aspects of the Cannabis business. And they're all top level folks that you want to be listening to. And I work with him on companion botanicals. So we're specifically talking about how to do Cannabis through the lens of the complete herbal apothecary. so that's a great place to see more of what I'm doing all the time, as well as our Ceres Remedy's website that I talked about earlier.
Parting thoughts
What do I want to leave on? I think an exciting thing that has happened during this COVID-19 period, is that cannabis in States where it has been legalized in some form has been declared essential. That is a huge deal, because we're still trying to bring cannabis into federal legalization. And so to have it be declared that I don't think we're going from that. back And I don't think that that's a victory just for cannabis. I think that's a victory for herbal medicine because cannabis is plant based medicine. And the fact that we're saying that this is an essential service, that means going forward, people are going to look at plant based medicine, more in that lense And I think that if we had all been considering plant based medicine essential before we wouldn't necessarily even be in the position that we're in right now. And I'm really excited to see what happens now that that decision has been made. And I think it's good for plant based medicine across the whole. So that's one good thing that is coming out of this crisis right now.
Lana: That's great. Thank you, Bridget. Thank you so much again. As always, it was wonderful to talk to you!
Bridget: Oh, thank you so much for being here. I love it. Take care.
Lana: You too.
Thank you for listening!
Thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you really enjoyed this conversation with Bridget Conry.
To get all the resources mentioned in today's episode. Please head over to the show notes at plantloveradio.com/67.
Are you listening to Plant Love Radio for the first time, please subscribe to the podcast to seamlessly, get future episodes downloaded to your device. I'm so thrilled to introduce you to too many amazing guests and topics. And of course, nothing says thank you better than sharing this show with a friend who might enjoy it and giving us a five star rating and review. Thank you so much in advance.
The music you hear in the introduction was written by a neighbor of mine, David Scholl and it's called Something about Cat - my deepest gratitude to Bill Gilligan for this opportunity to play it.
Thanks again for being here today. I really appreciate you. Till the next time, thank you for loving plants and planting love!