Cannabis
I have to admit that I am very
unqualified to write about cannabis sativa. I have personally never
tried it. In fact, I have never even tried alcohol. I am someone who
never likes to be out of control. I sure picked a great condition to
have.
I am not a pro-drug person. I have seen
the devastation that illegal narcotics can cause. I have also seen
the devastation that alcoholism can cause. It has personally impacted
my life. Meth destroys people. I never want to see recreational drugs
advertised or promoted. However, our current so-called war on drugs
is a complete failure that creates crime and does a terrible job of
helping people who become addicted.
I have little problem with marijuana.
Here in California, medical marijuana is legal and easy to get. A
good percentage of the people I know use it recreationally, and for
the most part, I see it causing no problems in their lives. It makes
little sense that people have to go through the rigamarole of
claiming to need it for medical purposes. Alcohol is many times more
potentially destructive. I'd rather marijuana just be out there and
taxed. Our State could really use the money.
From everything that I have read, it
has enormous medical value for reducing pain and nausea. Sometimes
just having the pain levels I get makes me nauseous. Relief from that
alone might be nice. As a non-smoker, I can't imagine smoking it, but
I have friends who have made it into brownies and other edibles.
The problem is that because of our
insane anti-drug laws and pathological anti-drug attitudes, the
medical research on marijuana is lacking. The FDA has not approved
smoked marijuana for any condition or disease in the United States,
largely because good quality scientific evidence for its use from
U.S. studies is lacking. The reason good quality research is lacking
is because it is so difficult to do, since the government classes
marijuana as a dangerous drug. Patients have to stay in a hospital
during drug trials, making research very expensive. The DEA declared
last year that marijuana has no accepted medical use, despite the
fact that this is empirically untrue and not based on science. Even
with all the restrictions on research, clinical trials have been done
that seem to point towards therapeutic benefits for treating nausea,
sleep problems, muscle spasticity and pain.
There are some drugs derived from
marijuana. They are a lot more expensive than just smoking it,
though. Fibromyalgia patients were treated with a synthetic form of
marijuana, nabilone, and they showed significant reductions in pain
and anxiety in a study published in The Journal of Pain in 2008. It
is not FDA approved for fibromyalgia in the U.S., and even if it
were, the drug is very expensive. That is a long way from something
you can grow in your own backyard cheaply.
Experts complain that it is difficult
to control dosages since different plants can have different levels
of active ingredients. Does that really matter, though? If people are
reporting relief, considering the relatively low cost, perhaps that
should be taken into consideration. Considering the incredible
diversity in fibromyalgia and the different types of pain, perhaps an
exact dosage is not even possible to discern.
Here is what I have read about using
marijuana from the above site and others. Keep in mind that I have no
personal experience at all. One person reported that it reduced her
night time pain from a 9 to a 4. For some relief came about 30
minutes after ingesting a brownie, and others reported almost instant
relief. Most importantly for me, I read about people who went into
serious flare with the kind of incredible pain that I sometimes get
who did find relief.
I have no interest in ingesting
marijuana every day. However, I am desperate for something that will
get me through those periods where I feel like I can barely survive
the pain. It has been a difficult decision for me, since I have so
long avoided any form of recreational drug, but I have decided to
have some on hand for my next major flare. I will report the results
here.
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