I incorporate emotional truth exercises in many of my workshops on creativity and creative writing. They free participants of their defenses, their excess baggage, and their psychological burdens. They also have an amazing, healing effect on participants who have any kind of illness.

I have long believed that illnesses such as cancer, for example, are symbolic conversion reactions--manifesting in body parts that should be interpreted as metaphorical messages. They are nothing more than unexpressed emotions frozen within one's cells. Once these are dissolved and dissipated, the afflicted immediately get well.

This is why I believe that cannabis can heal, though I also think that it should be responsibly administered, and perhaps never to young people who are likely to abuse it. Cannabis relaxes the mind and engages the imagination in flushing out shadows from nooks and crannies.

We get ill whenever we forget to relax, or don't know how to.