I am sitting in a waiting room in an old converted house in a downtown residential neighbourhood. The room is bright and sunny, with potted houseplants, a water cooler and a standing fan in the corner. A few men and women, from their early 20s to their late 50s, also wait quietly. There's a friendly receptionist and office staffers buzz around her. It could be anywhere and we could be waiting for anything...except for the double-locked metal doors at the entrance and the pungent aroma of marijuana in the air. I am in a compassion centre, which doles out medical marijuana. And I'm thinking to myself, "How did I get here?"
I'm a 39-year-old law-abiding citizen. I work in banking. I don't speed, I've never gotten a parking ticket and jaywalking makes me uncomfortable. While I make no judgment of people who use marijuana recreationally, I have never been one of them -- my drug of choice has always been a nice glass of wine. So how did I get here?
Well, I'm also a 39-year-old woman who was diagnosed with a debilitating chronic pain condition three years ago -- fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. It started as a mild sluggishness, which I assumed was my anemia -- a condition I'd had for years --acting up again. But within six months, I was taking vacation days to sleep. Six months after that, I was off work completely. I had always been an incredibly active person, but suddenly getting to the bathroom was a struggle.
I couldn't sleep because of the pain, I couldn't work, I couldn't even sit for more than a few minutes without having to move. Living alone, basic household chores were too much for me -- laundry, cooking, cleaning. I had to give my dog away. I broke up with my boyfriend and let go of any semblance of a social life. My daily routine, as I knew it, was over. Money was also becoming an issue.
When I first got sick, I had complete faith in Western medicine and our healthcare system. I thought I would go to my doctor, who would immediately diagnose me, write me a prescription for some pill that would work quickly, and I'd be back to my normal life in no time at all.
Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way. It took a year and a half to even have my mystery illness diagnosed. My doctors thought it could be everything from diabetes to MS to a brain tumor. I saw more specialists than I ever knew existed: neurologists, cardiologists, ENTs and, finally, a rheumatologist, who was the one to identify my condition. But even with a diagnosis, there was still no clear treatment plan and nothing close to a cure. I did get a lot of pills prescribed -- mostly hardcore, highly addictive narcotics -- which turned me into a drooling lump on the couch, with night terrors and hallucinations. And still the pain didn't go away.
After allopathic medicine failed me, I turned to alternative medicine. I'm pretty straight-laced, as I mentioned, but by that time if someone had told me that standing on my head and clucking like a chicken could help, I would have done it.
I had nothing left to lose. I started seeing a naturopath to deal with the immediate symptoms, and a homeopath who used a regression timeline to eliminate underlying causes of my CFS and fibromyalgia. My shiatsu therapist, who deals with pain management, has, in all earnestness, saved my life. To my great surprise, I started to feel better. I finally had some hope that there was a light at the end of this very dark tunnel. But these alternative methods work slowly and, in the meantime, I was still looking for some relief. Then a friend of mine mentioned marijuana.
I had heard about Canada's program for legal marijuana, if used for medicinal purposes. I had already been unconsciously self-prescribing a bottle of wine each night for over a year, to get some semblance of sleep. This wouldn't be that different, I thought. And weed had to be less insidious than oxycodone, which I was getting from the pharmacy.
I did some research and found that marijuana has definite medical benefits. From Alzheimer's to asthma, marijuana has been proven to not only relieve some symptoms, but to also prevent others. It can keep cancer from spreading, reduces muscle spasms for people with spinal-cord injuries, and can work as an analgesic and anti-inflammatory for people with arthritis. For those with my condition, it has been shown to reduce nausea and chronic pain and to improve sleep. It sounded like the magic pill I was looking for.
I found a local clinic, the Toronto Compassion Centre, a non-profit founded in 1997. Their website was straightforward and very helpful. "We provide information relating to the therapeutic use of cannabis and facilitate access to a consistent, safe, and dependable source of medical cannabis products for people suffering from ailments for which cannabis has been shown to be effective," it read.
You needed to meet their membership requirements and the first step was getting a referral from a doctor. I downloaded the application (an eight-page form) and took it to my GP for her signature.
For part two of this three-part series, click here. This article previously appeared in the Grid.
Jonathan Miller: The Moral Case for Legalizing Marijuana
Medical Marijuana | Pain Management of America
Medical Use - NORML.org - Working to Reform Marijuana Laws
Medical Marijuana Cards, Dispensaries, Doctors, Laws, Legal ...
Noli nothis permittere te terere
adversus solem ne loquitor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Dain_Commission
Forty years ago people of my generation were convinced we were on the verge of cannabis legalization. But then U.S. started its misguided War on Drugs, and Canada followed suit. For decades deceitful politicians have used the cannabis issue as a way of dividing the population to suit their selfish partisan purposes. Further aggravating the problem is the way the law enforcement system has become addicted to the revenue associated with conducting the War on Drugs. Police routinely boast about their busts of growers, and the media plays along by giving them free publicity. Under the oppressive rule of Harper things are worse now than they have ever been. Even though it is obvious that the majority of Canadians want legalization, we are ignored by the politicians whose duty it is to serve us. Democracy in Canada is an illusion.
Unless pro-legalization activists become much more forceful about their demands, the politicians will continue to play self-serving games, and professionals such as myself will continue to have our careers jeopardized because we use a beneficial plant. Why can't politicians see that their actions are causing the public to lose all respect for government, the "justice" system, and law enforcement?
Marijuana: The Forgotten Medicine
Kim Greenwood of Washington state passed this along March 24:
.... It had been 1994 when I last hit the crowds, gathering signatures for Hemp. Yesterday I was back in the saddle, wandering the "Festival of Trees" in Port Townsend, a small and friendly crowd of plant buyers. There's something about this activity..... I especially enjoy the anecdotes that come my way, the confessions I hear, the stories.
Today, for instance, an older woman - in her sixties, I would guess - insisted on signing, and as she did so said, "My mother used to get cannabis at the drugstore to use for her Asthma. It came in a red can. She pulled out the leaf, and there was something on the lid that she would put it in and light it and then inhale the smoke. It was the only thing she found to help her asthma. She was so surprised when she went to the store and couldn't find it anymore."
"That must have been a long time ago," I said.
"Early 1930s," she said.
It was worth being out there all day - not to mention the 75 signatures - just to get that little bit of oral history, history the government would just as soon we all pretend never happened, FORGET it ever happened. I'm telling you so you'll help remember that it happened.
http://www.marijuanalibrary.org/032896.html#mtfm
of the side-effects:
HELICOPTERS!!!
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"The current law against the cultivation of Hemp can be attributed to three men, Henry J. Anslinger, Lammont DuPont, and William Randolph Hearst, who made growing hemp illegal. Anslinger was the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, DuPont and Hearst were the owners of the largest chemical company and newspaper, respectively. Hearst began printing outlandish stories with headlines such as "Marijuana goads user to blood lust" and "Hotel clerk identifies Marijuana smoker as gunman". He also took advantage of the country's prejudice against blacks and immigrants by printing that marijuana-crazed negroes were raping white women and by painting pictures of lazy, pot-smoking Mexicans. DuPont's banker Andrew Mellon who happened to be Secretary of the Treasury under Herbert Hoover, also had a nephew-in-law, Henry Anslinger, who had the Marijuana Tax Law of 1937 passed allowing munitions maker DuPont to supply synthetic fibers for the domestic economy without competition.
These men succeeded in a conspiracy which ultimately added to the destruction of the environment, by them producing plastic and paper where hemp could have been more beneficial. In 1991 DuPont was still the largest producer of man-made fibers, while no citizen has legally harvested a single acre of textile grade hemp in over 50 years. The standard fiber of world history, America's traditional crop, hemp, could provide our textiles, paper and be the premier source for cellulose." http://relegalize.info/hemp/history.shtml
ya gotta grow.
just be careful and use fluorescent or led.
and good luck with your wife.
my wife lost her sixteen year battle with multiple sclerosis not too long ago..
and to the end pot was her only blessing..
that and me holding the pipe and lighting it for her.