My Medical Cannabis Story

I was first prescribed cannabis in 2006 when I lived in Los Angeles — it was to relieve migraine pain. When we moved to Oregon in 2018, I was prescribed cannabis for PTSD (specifically C-PTSD). I’ve also used it to deal with panic attacks and anxiety — and I use different cannabis to deal with all of those different issues. I have, of course, tried to deal with traditional medication to alleviate my symptoms, but Western medicine does not excel at treating people like me.

I am the daughter of an addict and a drunk, and I was born dependent on heroin and gods know what else. Anti-depressants give me akathisia. Novocaine doesn’t work. The first time I was given anesthesia drugs they didn’t work. Pain killers make my heart flutter. Beta blockers act like steroids — the list goes on. Imagine that nearly every interaction that you had with a pill or a medication went horribly awry.

The long and short of it is — I was formed in a toxic soup, not everything works for me the way it does for everyone else.

I use several techniques to bring my symptoms under control that don’t involve pharmaceuticals. I consume cannabis in conjunction with meditation, yoga, and a clean diet — and I’ve been very lucky that this has helped me take control of my symptoms. As more is discovered about terpenes and cannabinoids, I’ve been able to couple my passion for data to use testing information available from producers and understand exactly how cannabis works for me, so I can use it even more effectively.

In a recent study of 20,000 cannabis users by Oasis Intelligence, a total of 19% of users report only using cannabis for recreational purposes, in fact 44% use cannabis mainly for medical users, and 16% don’t even differentiate between medical and recreational.

I had been using cannabis to manage symptoms for years before I even managed to get a prescription. It was always one of the most effective medications I could take to relieve the nausea and pain of migraine headaches, and it was also effective at easing some of my insomnia. It wasn’t until 2006 that I moved to a legal state that I could get a formal prescription. But, in 2006, about the only information you could get about the medication was the THC and strain type, and even that was sketchy. Compared to the sort of cannabis you could score from the dealers I’d had over the years (and I had some great dealers), it was pretty stunning weed (even if the THC numbers wouldn’t blow you away), and I still have some super fond memories of those early Sour Diesels, G-13’s, and Lemon Kushes I got access to thanks to Proposition 215. The sublingual ‘breath tabs’ were also an amazing discovery, and my first exposure to the power of cannabis that has been metabolized by the liver.

Once I moved back to Pennsylvania and the dark ages, we were back at the whim of a dealer. If you’re lucky you’re able to set a price point (meaning you could have the possibility to get better weed than brick weed), but around election time it was always tough to find. Because I still managed to have access, I managed to quit smoking cigarettes by using cannabis. While we in Pennsylvania, I quit cannabis for one of the most extensive periods of my life. It did not go well. While I seemed to be okay on the outside, on the inside I felt like I was teetering over a snarling pit of anxiety and nightmares.

I started dry herb vaping ahead of the move to Oregon, and it really changed how I consume cannabis. It allowed me to fine tune what I was able to taste and feel, and it gave the added benefit of the After Vaped Bud. Having access to decarboxylated weed helped me to learn how and when to apply the body buzz effects you can get from eating cannabis.

What I didn’t realize until I moved to Oregon is how much more I was able to taste pesticides and the chemicals that were left in the black market product when I dry herb vaped — but I could for sure taste the carbon when I smoked. Since I really started dry herb vaping, I save smoking for rare occasions, and my lungs thank me for it.

It’s strange to write about why I use cannabis for my medical issues, because few other patients are in the position of having to defend their medication — but here I am.

I think it’s vital for normalization to understand that cannabis is a medication that can be used to alleviate real symptoms in addition to being a fun intoxicant. If it helps people to understand why this plant should be legal, I’m happy to explain that I’d rather use a single drug, that is under my control, than a multitude of them that aren’t. I’d rather share with others how and why I’m better off minimizing my exposure to the pharmacological-medical complex that doesn’t understand my issues, so they can consider their own relationship to such issues.

And yeah, I like getting high, too. A single tool can be used for many purposes.