I had never been a heavy marijuana smoker, by any stretch of the word “heavy”. I never smoked and went to work. I never smoked at work. Hell, I only smoked pot once before going to school in high school, and the day dragged on f o r e v e r so I never did that again. And even though I never used marijuana on a daily basis I was barely smoking at all by this point. Still, because I had been smoking pot for over 20 years I was encouraged by my child’s therapist to attend a number of programs that promised to get me stuck in 12-step hell. It was also suggested by my daughter’s psychiatrist to see a therapist myself and this kook wanted me to go on anti-depressants, (daily, mind you), because he felt that was safer than smoking a joint once in a while to get to sleep. I didn’t, and wouldn’t. Alright, I won’t smoke, but I’m not taking your mind altering prescription drugs either.
Now it’s 1997 and California had just voted to legalized medical marijuana. Many other states followed over the decade and finally in 2007 my state legalized cannabis for medical use. This made me wonder… could the pain relief I have heard promised from Medical Marijuana be real? Will my pain be what brings me back to the mother weed? I hadn’t ever actually used it for pain relief before. Health issues abounded so I earnestly wanted to find some facts because a life of painkillers, new biologic drugs did not seem like a good plan, even if so many people in the current medical community thought it was. And then there is and all the other prescriptions that come along for the ride to counter act the side effects of the nastier drugs.
Good grief! What has happened to us? Why do doctors, who take a vow “to do no harm”* believe this is a good thing to do to people? Don’t they care that there are alternatives? Apparently most of them don’t, can’t be bothered, or are having their own mind war going on as their personal obstacle. I even had one doctor say to me when I told him I was considering using medical cannabis, “Why would you do that?” I then asked why he thought it was ok to be prescribing drugs that were poison to our bodies. They just laughed, gave that condescending pat on the back and said they knew best and pot hasn’t beed tested enough yet. I wanted to scream, “You are a fucking idiot and the drugs you are pushing make people sicker and sicker, and sometimes they even die from their prescription drugs, so take a chill pill, buddy, and get educated.” I guess I am the one who needs to chill out.
* vow to do no harm was part of the original Hippocratic oath, which is my next topic.