Weed is Not a Miracle Drug
Part 1: PAIN.
I have officially been knocked off my magical medicinal marijuana pedestal this week, in an episode that culminated with me crying in an urgent care waiting room yesterday before getting sweet, sweet justice in the form of a NSAID shot straight into my butt-cheek.
So, let's talk about pain. There's really nothing that can turn you into a weepy husk faster than feeling like your body is trying to eject you from itself; and the state of mind where you are continually saying "something is wrong, something is wrong" to yourself on loop, can be entirely debilitating. Thankfully, I have had relatively few experiences with extreme pain. The most notable was when I broke my leg as a result of losing control of an ATV during an off-roading expedition (also known as a regular weekend as a teenager in Kansas). This was one of those experiences where my body was in such a state of shock initially, that I didn't register pain at all. (I've blocked this out, but am told that I was eerily calm, refused to try and walk, and waited patiently to be taken to the hospital.)
Pain all in your brain, and so it can be present or non-present, regardless of physical injury. There are three types of pain (as cited from this great Leafly article):
Nociceptive pain, or inflammatory pain, is a result of tissue damage and linked to physical injury.
Central pain is pain that does not have a known, or central cause. It usually arises from a dysfunction of the nervous system. The most common example of central pain is fibromyalgia.
Neuropathic pain is pain that arises from damage to the central nervous system, i.e. nerve pinching or nerve damage. Examples of chronic neuropathic pain include: multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, HIV, diabetes, and shingles.
All three of these types of pain can become chronic (lasting more than 3-6 months), and cannabis has been effective at treating symptoms of many of them, most notably Parkinson's, epileptic seizures, arthritis, and this women's experience with treating her fibromyalgia. Cannabis advocates preach about how safe it is, compared to the dangerously addictive opioids that have been given out like candy in this country. It can also be effect (for some, not all people) to treat anxiety and depression that can crop up as a result of being diagnosed with a chronic health condition.
Most of this evidence is anecdotal, from people who have taken their medical treatment into their own hands, because the medical establishment still needs federal legality to study cannabis for large-scale medical use.
Part 2: MANAGEMENT.
So being someone who has now written a weed newsletter for almost a year, and who has not great health insurance as a freelancer, I was/am pretty confident that marijuana could/can be used to solve all of my medical issues. And for the ongoing health stuff I deal with regularly -- insomnia, stress or non-diagnosed anxiety -- it has actually been great.
So it was a scary experience this week when I had neck/skull pain, which I assumed was a result of being hunched over a monitor sketching for 6-8 hours a day, that I tried to treat nightly with smoking marijuana, and it had the opposite effect. The first couple of days, maybe it helped a bit, but on Day 3, being high almost made the pain more unbearable. Like a cruel joke where my high buzz was turned into a pain buzz. Which resulted in a nightmarish, painful lucid sleep scenario and a trip to get "chemical drugs" injected into my body. As I was sitting there letting the meds kick in, it was a weird sensation to feel my arms and legs warm and tingle slightly, reminiscent of the body high feeling. All drugs are drugs, after all.
Some quick research has turned up conflicting stories, one that ibuprofen could potentially reduce the memory impairments of marijuana, and one about a woman who got aseptic meningitis potentially from a mix of CBD oil and ibuprofen (I blame the CBD oil, the largely unregulated hemp industry is definitely not following FDA standards for clean and safe production). So the jury is out on whether a cocktail could be helpful for pain management.
Today so far I've taken 400mg of Advil every 4 hours and applied a topical THC product for muscle pain after 20 mins with an ice pack also semi-regularly, and am feeling A LOT better. Next time, I am definitely going to try topicals for localized pain before getting blazed. I've read that topical THC may be the most effective for pain treatment, because it directly connects to the receptors that tell your brain to experience pain, which can be better used locally and apparently when not combined with a mind-alterating state, if the pain level is high. CBD also interacts with THC in mysterious ways, and can reduce negative effects, so it seems likely that a 1:1 THC:CBD might be a lot better for pain management.
Either way, you do what you gotta do to feel better. If weed is part of that magic mix that gets you back to "normal", then that's great, and you should encourage more people to try it out! But weed definitely can't solve every problem for everyone. So it's good to know what your limits are with experimenting, and to always consult people who know more about this stuff than you (doctors) before trying to make up your own treatment regimen.
Here's to health and wellness.
