Cannabis

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.

There is a site where people self-report the effectiveness of various treatments for fibromyalgia called Fibromyalgia Treatment Reviews. It does include those reporting their experiences using marijuana, the most reported treatment on the site. Keep in mind that self-reporting is biased and self-selecting. People are more likely to report a positive effect, and less inclined to take the time to report a negative effect. It is not scientific, nor proof of efficacy, but it can provide a general idea of how people experience it.

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.