Healing with Cannabis: Part 1

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Settling in after the move took longer than expected, and while we’re still making our home, I wanted to make some changes to Green and Growing, the first being: start posting again. Some of our plans for the blog from last year & the year before have been put in stasis, but I’m hoping 2019 will help revive some of that. 

So, weed.  

I’m not a long-time user of marijuana. I know a fair amount about the plant, but by comparison to others who’ve lived their lives around cannabis? I’m a complete newbie. My intention for this piece, and others in this series, is for folks like me: new to using cannabis (recreationally or medically), and in need of some guidance. There are hundreds, thousands, millions of articles about cannabis. There are sites, books, institutions devoted to cannabis. I’ve read scads of articles, dozens of books, piecing together a patchwork of information in my own cannabis journey, and if I can save any of you some headaches, I’ll be happy. I’ll post tips on what to look for in both weed and in a dispensary, recipes, and generally try to point you in the right direction on your own journey of healing with cannabis. So for now some background.

As I said, I’m new to marijuana. While most folks have their first brush with marijuana in their formative years, I really had no exposure to it while in high school. Alcohol was more readily available; while I had a acquaintances that used pot, they weren’t the sharing kind and I didn’t pursue the issue. Not even in college. I went to a relatively serious commuter school and no one sat around getting stoned, especially when you had to navigate the NYC subway system. There was the odd second-hand encounter at concerts and clubs, but that was pretty much that. Until, while on a trip to Jamaica just after I graduated college, I ate a ganja brownie procured from a shady, machete-wielding trio who stood in a stand of almond trees by the beach near our hotel. It wasn’t a large brownie, so I ate the entire thing. I figured what the hell. 

Exactly. 

Inside an hour, the sky spilt open, the stars started melting, the beach felt alive, and I thought my toes were drowning. Being an anorexic-bulimic as well didn’t help since that was my only food for the day, except for a drink made with Meyer’s 151. Before the sand could consume me, I ran back to the hotel and willed my bulimia to bring back whatever wasn’t yet digested. I sat on the edge of the bed and tried to still my mind enough to think if anyone had ever died from an overdose of pot. Time seemed to loop on itself and my friend had to then sit on me for about 4 hours to stop me from jumping out a window. To say it was not a good experience would be a gross mischaracterization. I was tripping balls for the next 12 hours. The cosmos seemed to still for a bit while we packed the next morning, since we had to catch an afternoon plane homewards. In grand total, the entire experience lasted about 36 hours from end to end. I struggled with audio and visual hallucinations during our flight and had some of the time-looping hours after I was finally home. I was sworn off weed. Who would want to experience that?

Of course, it almost goes without saying that I had zero understanding of dosage and despite my novice understanding of herbs, I knew nothing of cannabis as a plant, much less a medicine. I was 23 and living a life with far less pain than what I experience now. I did have problems with arthritis and I was an undiagnosed epileptic, but my pain was nothing. And, whatever I had been sold on that beach contained Goddess knows what. Was there cannabis in that brownie? Maybe. 

After that, I had a short-lived brush with being a “pothead” about a decade later (and a decade ago), which was kicked off by my first experience on a trip to L.A. I suppose it’s fitting my first cannabis was grown in the mythic Emerald Triangle.

It was nothing like the Jamaican “ganja” brownie. Smoking cannabis in L.A. was a revelation. In the decade since my Jamaican experience, I had started experiencing chronic pain– brought on by a series of falls from my undiagnosed seizures  and had been injuries  sustaied while I had been an active participant in medieval re-enactment combat.  During my only participation in the annual Pennsic War  my wrist was probably re-fractured when a fellow Tuchux used me as a human shield. So yeah, I was in pain in L.A. I can’t remember if that was why I smoked, but after a few tokes (once I learned the proper way to smoke weed), I felt pain-free for the first time in a while. The next morning even the world seemed more vibrant. I wasn’t still stoned, as with the Jamaican brownie from hell, but I just seemed more observant and more present. I was able to enjoy the world around me more. I also have to say that one of my other struggles, besides pain, has been depression. That’s something I’ve dealt with since I was a kid, literally. I remember getting depressed years before I got my first period and it always lurks around the edges of life. After that L.A. joint? I was depression free for several weeks, which is very unusual for me.

Heading back to NY, we were able to get weed, but there was no comparison in quality and the strength. For me? Lightweight didn’t even cut how I reacted. Whatever I had had in L.A. had been a mellow, happy strain. Back in NY, what we were getting was stronger, less happy, less tasty. After toking one evening about 5 or 6 months into my life as a pothead, I saw the Great Goddess Kali standing knee-deep in a bloody pile of bodies in my TV room no less. My brush with potheadedness evaporated. I had been so out-of-my mind, I insisted that my husband ring the guy he’d gotten the weed from to find out what it had been laced or mixed with, or what kind of ditch-weed we had been sold. That was a high that lasted for about 6 hours and was one of the worst experiences of my life. Anxiety and panic like nothing I’ve ever experienced. 

The last experience has been the reason why, for quite a long time, I shied away from cannabis as a medicine for myself– although I have always been an advocate of it for others. That experience also reinforced some fears that had been lingering from the Jamaican experience. I was terrified of having any kind of anxiety or panic and I was convinced that THC was my enemy.

Those familiar with this blog know the story, but being diagnosed with epilepsy was the proverbial game-changer. The doctor had prescribed an array of pharmaceuticals– several of which I refused to try because of the side effects alone. I am reknown for getting whatever side effect possible on pharmaceuticals. My husband and I both detest big pharma because whenever we’ve used that type of medicine, we wind up getting sicker instead of getting better. The doctors couldn’t get me on a regimen that helped my seizures. I’ve already written about my struggle with epilepsy and my use of an herbal regimen to tackle the disorder.  But about 2 years ago, right before my father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and during his losing battle, my seizures began to crank up again– and my pain was unmanageable. I needed something to help. I had already tried all the pain pills and muscle relaxants pre-diagnosis. Nothing helped to take the edge off the pain except ibuprofen– which I began consuming like candy, taking 4 at a time. Some days that were really bad, I remember far exceeding the daily maximum dosage.

By the summer of 2015, the ibuprofen stopped working and I was often walking with a cane. My husband was the one that brought up cannabis. As someone well versed in ethnobotany and plant medicines, he started putting books and articles in my path. Over the years we had both shared an interest for plant medicine. Me being an herbalist focused on mundane plants for health and healing and he being more focused on entheogens, plant medicines used for spiritual health and healing. We watched documentaries, read articles, and went to talks focusing on entheogenic plants.  As we again reboot the blog, he has plans on finishing the series he started last year on Green and Growing, “Healing with Earth Medicine.”

As my seizures worsened, he happened to be focusing his study on cannabis in an effort to work in the budding cannabis industry. Last year, I posted about my journey with CBD after having come to it initially as a possible treatment for my father.

It took some doing, but I was able to find a doctor to recommend cannabis and I ultimately became a NY patient. As I mentioned in the previously noted article, “DIY CBD Salves”, my first go at medical cannabis was a bust. I tried the “tinctures” for a few weeks and had to stop completely because of some pretty intense complications, partly because the medicine available in NY at the time was highly processed. No plant material was permitted in the medicine. During the time I was a NYMMJ patient, cannabis was only consumed via pill/capsule, oil-based “tincture”, or vaped in an oil. All of the products were also processed blends of different strains. The processing methods varied with each dispensary, as did the other ingredients in the finished medicines and the dosages. Anyone with any herbal knowledge knows that whole plant medicine is better. Whole plant medicine is adeptly explained here.   When considering cannabis, whole plant medicine is even more important.

But,  it was something I didn’t fully understand at the time, nor did those lawmakers behind the medical cannabis program in New York. Perhaps things will change and the NY program will embrace whole plant cannabis as medicine. Despite the work of cannabis advocates in New York, dispensaries thus far have been hampered on what can be offered. Medicines in New York, being processed blends don’t give patients the benefit of the whole plant and don’t use what’s called the entourage effect, which gives patients the seemingly limitless range of benefits of all of cannabis’ hundreds of medicinal compounds, THC and CBD being only 2.

I had had zero success with medical cannabis until Spring 2018 when my brother told me that Etain opened up a dispensary in Union Square. Once becoming their patient, I got to experience the possibilities of cannabis as a medicine. Granted, the medicine from Etain is still highly processed, it wasn’t whole plant, but it actually smelled and tasted like weed, where the stuff from Columbia Care bore no resemblance to marijuana whatsoever. While bound by the NY program rules, Etain’s labels only gave THC and CBD information, but from the smell and taste, it’s a good guess that their medicines contain more therapeutic compounds.

By the time I discovered Etain, we were already planning on a summer move to New Jersey. I was grateful for Etain because it helped me get through the move and helped my seizures reduce in number, though the intensity wasn’t affected. I was able to stock up on the medicine enough to get me into the Fall, when I was able to get into the New Jersey MMJ program. Everything changed with the New Jersey program. I saw how radically different the NY program is from cannabis everywhere else. I saw the amazing benefits of medical cannabis– and how daunting being a medical cannabis patient can be for folks going it alone.

The next instalment (which I’m working on now & will be posted in the next few days) will be a primer on what you need to know when you’re tackling medical cannabis solo. I’ll give recipes, resources, and tips on how not to waste your weed when making edibles.