I've been in contact with a veteran who wants to share his story with others in hopes it will help open a dialog regarding the uses of medical marijuana. As I've shared before, I don't use marijuana myself, but I become more and more of an advocate for it daily for two reasons:
1- the medicinal uses are becoming more and more obvious every day, and
2- the reality is I don't think the government has the right to tell anyone what naturally occurring plant they can eat / smoke / whatever. Keep in mind I'm not talking about processed drugs here such as heroin, cocaine, etc, but rather marijuana, which can be grown in your backyard and requires no 'processing' to use.
Please keep any discussion on trop (marijuana) and avoid the easy-to-fall-into tangent of legalizing all drugs, etc.
This thread is about a man who willingly gave everything he had to serve, and is now having to break a law (which shouldn't exist, imo) in order to live.
The following are 100% his words, not mine.
1- the medicinal uses are becoming more and more obvious every day, and
2- the reality is I don't think the government has the right to tell anyone what naturally occurring plant they can eat / smoke / whatever. Keep in mind I'm not talking about processed drugs here such as heroin, cocaine, etc, but rather marijuana, which can be grown in your backyard and requires no 'processing' to use.
Please keep any discussion on trop (marijuana) and avoid the easy-to-fall-into tangent of legalizing all drugs, etc.
This thread is about a man who willingly gave everything he had to serve, and is now having to break a law (which shouldn't exist, imo) in order to live.
The following are 100% his words, not mine.
First, let me apologize for feeling the need to stay anonymous, but I am being forced to break the law everyday just to live. I am not exaggerating in the least. Without Marijuana, I would not last a year.
I am intentionally being vague with some of the following details, but, again, I am breaking the law and I want to live and be free. Part way through my second tour in Iraq, I was medically redeployed (meaning I was sent home) due to a serious medical condition (I believe influenced by repeated exposer to God awful burn pits and other harmful conditions but I can only be sure of correlation, not causation). After returning home and being on very powerful drugs for 6-8 months, the condition was under control. But the worst symptoms didn’t go away; they got worse. I won’t bore you with unnecessary details, but the gist of it was that it left me on the couch most of the time. Unable to even think well enough to safely drive, cook or even talk 4-5 days out of the week. I had almost complete expressive aphasia. I could with great difficulty say “yes” or say “no”, but many times, I wouldn’t even be able to say “I don’t know”. During bad “flare-ups” the left side of my face would swell up and I would have terrible pressure in my head. Normal “flare-ups” would “only” leave me with moderate pain all over to the point where I have to try and not moan. I could go on, but I think the former explains enough to understand that the life I was living felt more like a living death sentence. Understandably, living like this took a tremendous toll on my family as well. Before, dad and husband was in peak condition physically, happy and well adjusted emotionally, working on finishing a degree in physics, and financially stable. After, I was a wreck of a man, but I was also still a soldier. And I had hope. And determination. I knew if I worked hard enough, I would beat this. So I saw counselors and psychologists and tried every medicine the psychiatrists prescribed. After a year of no improvement, the army medically retired me. OK, I thought, my army career might be over, but I still have a lot I can do in this life.
Fast forward 8 years. I had waited to file for almost 4 years, but I had finally swallowed my pride and was on Social Security Disability. Savings? Gone. Vehicle that was paid for? Sold. House that we own? Rented to someone else because we could no longer afford it and market conditions that meant we couldn’t sell it either. Wife? Going through her own hell working 2 jobs, taking care of the kids and hardest of all … dealing with me. Kids? Too painful still to even type details. Hope? Long gone after years and years of trying every medicine and therapy I could try. And I don’t just mean the approved ones. I even tried the experimental and the crazy because I knew it was only a matter of time until I hit my breaking point. I also knew that it was a race because if my breaking point happened before I found a solution, I was dead. After all, more soldiers die from suicide than from enemy gunfire or bombs. I was at the point where I wondered if I was going to die by suicide or by drinking myself to death. Even sleeping pills wouldn’t allow me get to sleep. I had to drink enough to pass out. Then it was time for the nightmares to start. I was close to my breaking point and I knew it. Something had to change and soon.
In my extensive research during my more lucid states, I had come across some information that purported to show that marijuana could have positive effects for some veterans in similar conditions as mine. But I am a proud Army veteran. I don’t use drugs unless a doctor prescribes them. But I was also a very desperate man whose life and dreams were in shambles and whose clock was quickly running out. So I decided to try it. Initially I had no idea how to get it and I had (and still do have) legal concerns and marijuana purity (scared to death of it being laced or something) concerns. When dealing with what you truly believe to be change or death however, these formerly important concerns are subsequently dismissed. I bought some and smoked it.
Wow! In under 5 minutes, I was speaking and interacting on an almost normal basis! I was slightly impaired from the marijuana but WAY WAY less than on either nothing or the massive dose of Xanax the psychiatrists had prescribed me. I thought this was fantastic. Even my wife who is one of the most anti-drug people I have ever met, was both shocked and encouraged. Oh my God! I am going to live and get some of my life back! Not so fast. No change that extreme is that easy. After about 2 hours, I was on my way back down. Smoked again and it worked for a second time! Only this time, I was more impaired from the marijuana than I was the first time. Still much better than without, but I began to realize the drawbacks. It works for about 2-3 hours at a time, but with declining benefits and increasing side effects (getting too high) with each use.
I began researching how best to use marijuana for therapeutic reasons instead of recreational. I tried THC patches (think nicotine patches) with zero benefit. I tried cbd oil with no benefit. I tried edibles from a dispensary from a state where it is legal with no benefit. I began making my own edibles after reading about another veteran who after losing his family, moved into his parent’s basement and was in his own race between drinking himself to death or just getting it over with. He tried marijuana and saw the potential. No longer having a family, he moved to California and began his own search. It wasn’t overnight, but with help, he eventually learned how to tweak the extraction process. It is a time consuming and aggravating process, but it is well worth it. It took me another year of experimenting with this process and dosing, but I got this life back about a year ago. It’s very different from the one I had before, but it’s still a good life!
I don’t want to get into the technical details of what’s involved in the various prep stages or the different times and at different temperatures that it goes in the oven or the stovetop stage, but I mention this because I think it is important to know that this is an involved process that has parts of many different peoples “discoveries” as well as my own learning curve and adaptations. Start to finish is 8 hours as long as everything goes right. 1 oz produces 36 doses for me. Because they do effect my thinking, I split each dose in half and take them about 2-3 hours apart at night. So 1 oz lasts me 36 days unless I have a crash day. Instead of 4-5 a week though, I am now averaging 1 every 2 months and the last 2 times were because I pushed myself to try and do something that I knew I should not attempt. The time before that, I had run out. The time before that, I thought I was “cured” and didn’t need the marijuana and got slapped down real hard a couple days later. The time before that, I had run out. So again, instead of 4-5 a week, I have had 5 in the last 9 months with 3 of those occurring during the exact 3 times I have been without marijuana. In short, it works and has given me my life back!
It is now 11 months after I figured out how to medically use marijuana to save my life. We have since started 2 businesses. We have employees (and are actively trying to hire more). I am working long, hard, stressful hours (and loving being able to do it!). I am off social security disability. I am now able to help with homework and read stories at night and helped coach basketball this winter and will help with soccer this spring. I am averaging 50-60 business call a day and twice that many texts. I have even made a close friend. To go from where I was pre-marijuana, where most days I couldn’t leave the house, drive, help with anything, have a conversation with my wife or kids or even be in the same room as them half the week to where I am now makes me so appreciative of what I have! And now, my biggest fear is returning to that shell I was before. It would break me. I know it. I’m not proud to admit it, but I am not strong enough to go through that a second time.
At first, I wasn’t going to include this part, as it is still very raw. Late at night, long after everyone else is asleep, when I can’t sleep, I often have mock conversations with a “therapist”. Conversations that I wasn’t able to have with a real therapist even after seeing various ones for years. Recently, one of these led to a breakthrough for me. Imagine the most traumatic event in your life and then imagine that you have absolutely no memory of it or even any idea that anything happened at all. Then you are walking in your house and this memory suddenly hits you with absolutely no warning. It was such an overwhelming feeling, that it forced me to my knees. Still to raw to go into any more detail about events in which I most likely will never talk about to anyone ever. I don’t know for sure that marijuana allowed for this breakthrough, but there does seem to be correlation here, and I absolutely think this should be studied as a possible treatment, maybe in conjunction with talk therapy, for many vets and other sufferers of PTSD because, again, more vets die to suicide than to anything else.
I am not saying it is a cure all or that it has “fixed” everything. It hasn’t. I still can’t go to events where there will be many people in close quarters. And while some of the strains allow me to sleep, others tend to keep me awake for many hours (all have ‘almost’ eliminated the nightmares). I just hate having to live with the constant threat of either not being able to obtain my medicine or that it won’t be of a pure nature. I do NOT what to get high. I do everything I can to minimize those effects. I want the scientists to be able to research this and possibly create a pill that is safe and of uniform consistency. I strongly feel that I shouldn’t have to break the law just to be able to live.
An anonymous vet.