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I am a medical marijuana user. I have fibromyalgia (a catch all label for constant pain), and it helps some with neuropathic pain. My doctor is kept informed ab

I am a medical marijuana user. I have fibromyalgia (a catch all label for constant pain), and it helps some with neuropathic pain. My doctor is kept informed about how much I am using, and I have to get my card renewed each year. MJ works, but at best it dulls the pain, and also helps to make the pain less 'front and center' and instead kind of makes it more something that is in the background. I was never a stoner, and did not use it until I was 38 years old. I am happy it exists, because I was being treated with Vicodin for pain and was on a schedule of 6 pills a day. Enough that liver damage and addiction started to be a concern. I am allergic to pills in the Percoset family (hives and skin lesions) and I consume about 5 joints a day worth of weed. I don't even get high anymore, but it does help with the pain. It is costing me about $100 per week, compared to the $3 per month the Vicodin cost on my medical insurance. I could buy a new car with the weed money, but couldn't buy a coffee at Starbucks with the Vicodin money. I hope the government gets around to reclassifying the drug soon. In the current situation, Child Protective Services would take my kids away if I was to consume the drug in front of them. A reclassification would enable more research, more research would lead to easier ways to ingest it. I find food products make me stomach sick, vaporizing doesn't work as well as smoking, and smoking is unappealing and difficult to do with any discretion. I am fortunate that I can afford it, and can fit it into my schedule (I own my business). Many people need something like MMJ and can neither afford it, nor can they keep their employment with it because of widespread drug testing. While the state I live in says that card holders can't be fired for holding a card, it is a state that has 'right-to-work' laws and you can fire someone for no specified reason at all. (source- I employ ten people).

gadders 13y ago
Interesting that you don't get high any more. I wondered whether MMJ would fall into the category of "do not drive or operate machinery" whilst using.
- apalmer 13y ago
  Definitely would fall into the impairs motor skills category. You can develop a tolerance for almost all drugs, even alcohol and yet many still fall within that category so wouldnt expect ganja to be any different.
  - mistercow 13y ago
    >You can develop a tolerance for almost all drugs That seems to be the common wisdom, but is there any evidence that that's true?
- mratzloff 13y ago
  It does. In Washington state, where it is legal, the initiative that made it so made a provision to amend DWI laws to include THC thresholds.
- nnash 13y ago
  >Interesting that you don't get high any more. At 5 joints a day OP probably has built up a pretty high resistance to THC. Speak to enough every-day smokers and you'll find they go on breaks every once in a while to address this. >I wondered whether MMJ would fall into the category of "do not drive or operate machinery" whilst using. Depends on the strain, if you're smoking Indicas then yes you should not operate machinery.
- gregpilling 13y ago
  I believe most states have rules that are about "driving under the influence" and the influence could be alcohol, drugs, illness, or basically anything that would alter your mental state. I have had days when the pain alone would make me fail a roadside sobriety test (slurred words, can't walk a straight line). I don't recommend consuming drugs or alcohol and driving, prescription or otherwise. At work I avoid operating the forklift, milling machine, or anything else that could cause injury to me or my people. I still get a very slight buzz, but nothing at all like when I first started using it (think 5 or 10% of previous effects). I have had times when I consumed what I needed (four or five bowls) when friends were in the same room, and they have gotten high from just being there while I had no change. In general I consume in the very early morning and at night when I know I won't be leaving again before sleep. I avoid using during the day because most days I have to drive and work. MMJ is certainly not a perfect solution, but it beats constant never ending pain (no drugs) or addiction and liver failure (opiates with acetaminophen) http://www.drugs.com/vicodin.html http://www.drugs.com/vicodin.html .
  - gadders 13y ago
    Fair enough. I wonder if the active component that dulls the pain also the one that causes the wooziness. Is it possible to have one without the other? I suppose smoking the raw leaf is a pretty blunt delivery mechanism vs putting the active compounds in a patch or a pill.
  - peller 13y ago
    Once your tolerance has been built up to such high levels, taking a week off (in my experience) is all you need to get a "90% reset."
- pdeuchler 13y ago
  This is a really good article (despite it's admittedly biased source) on driving while under the influence of marijuana: http://norml.org/library/item/cannabis-and-driving-a-scientific-and-rational-review http://norml.org/library/item/cannabis-and-driving-a-scienti... It's also important to note the most dangerous thing you can do, bar none, is to drive tired and unfocused. Which is very much legal.
  - criley2 13y ago
    Not the most dangerous thing. Try driving on LSD. While drunk. And high on xanax. While shooting heroin. Obviously, there are more dangerous states to drive in than tired and unfocused...
    - ledge 13y ago
      I would rather drive on LSD than drive tired, no question.
      - sliverstorm 13y ago
        Can't LSD cause you to hallucinate? Hallucinations seem like the #1 thing you wouldn't want to happen to you while you are driving.
        ejfox 13y ago
        As a human, you are more able to handle hallucinations than you think. If you see a bear off in the distance, in real life do you freak out and drive off the road? No. You just remark at it. "Holy shit a bear in the distance!" When you're on acid, you don't change as a person, your reactions don't change. If you see something weird you say "woah, that's weird" but, unless you're deep in a trip and forget you are on a substance, you can usually handle it like a normal person.
        ledge 13y ago
        Not really in the conventional way people think of hallucinations. What you see is distorted, but everything you see is actually there. The walls might look like they're dripping or wavy, the branches on a tree appear to reach out at you, and colors become more vibrant, but you won't ever see gigantic bunnies or flying unicorns or some other stupid shit that often ends up in film depictions of a psychedelic experience. As dosage increases, your mind increasingly tends to interpret what you're seeing as something else, like a shadow may appear briefly to be a person. When this starts to happen I would no longer feel comfortable driving, but for me this occurs at the peak of 500 ug + experiences, the equivalent of 5 standard doses. Not saying that driving on LSD is a great idea, but on a single standard dose it's not nearly as dangerous as driving after you've pulled an all-nighter IMO.
- Zigurd 13y ago
  A 1998 Olympic gold medalist in snowboarding was stripped of his medal for testing positive for marijuana. Then someone at the IOC thought better of trying to call marijuana a performance enhancing drug.
evo_9 13y ago
You might want to look at getting one of these: http://openvape.com/ http://openvape.com/ It's very discreet and pretty effective, esp. if you are looking for a more CBD non-thc delivery method. Unfortunately these are a local Denver product right now from what I can tell (my friend in SF can't find them their yet outside of driving to Berkley); so it might be difficult to find outside of colorado. They also make a variety of cartridges including Sativa, Indica and Hybrid. I've switched to using this most of the time esp. outside the house, or when the kids are around. When you exhale there is hardly any smoke either and I've seen people smoking these at bars openly. I haven't been so bold even though I have a red-card, things sure have changed fast, at least in Denver. Edit: Also, the high effect is minimal, esp with the Sativa cartridges. Much more of a body, pain reliever type effect. Edit 2: Cartridges are rated for around 300 hits, and at 40 dollars per that works out be a pretty cost-effective solution from a cost standpoint too. This might not be as effective as a mj joint however; I would be curious to know if you get one if it's more or less effective.
- subpixel 13y ago
  I wonder: what's the relationship between marijuana 'strength' (measured in THC, I guess) and medical effectiveness? It seems to me the studies in the posted article are from a time when marijuana was dramatically 'weaker' than what you get today.
  - evo_9 13y ago
    From my limited understanding THC is the aspect that causes the 'high' whereas the CBD's are effective at pain relief, seizure control, and generally the medical benefit side of things. Around Denver there are a whole class of food additives and edibles that are high in CBD's because of this effect.
  - malingo 13y ago
    Look at THC / CBD proportions. There's research [0] into CBD mitigating THC's interference with memory formation. Also, intentionally-high-CBD strains are under development [1]: "A high-CBD cannabis strain was developed in the 1980s by David Watson and Robert Clarke, American naturalists who founded a company called Hortapharm in Amsterdam to pursue their goal of developing plant strains for different purposes. (The day Watson and Clarke became expatriates is the day the U.S. lost its lead in the field of cannabis therapeutics.) In 1998 Hortapharm sold its seed stock to a British start-up, GW Pharmaceuticals, which has since developed a strain that expresses 97% of its cannabinoid content as CBD. GW plans to test its high-CBD strain as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel diseases, psychotic disorders, and epilepsy. It is now in Phase 2 trials to determine the dose levels to use in clinical trials involving people. GW mixes its high-CBD and high-THC strains in a 1:1 ratio to make Sativex, a plant extract formulated for spraying under the tongue that has been approved in Canada and elsewhere to treat neuropathic pain associated with multiple sclerosis. CBD evidently bolsters the pain-killing effects of THC while moderating its psychoactivity." [0] http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101001/full/news.2010.508.html http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101001/full/news.2010.508.ht... [1] http://www.counterpunch.org/2007/07/14/who-s-afraid-of-cannabidiol/ http://www.counterpunch.org/2007/07/14/who-s-afraid-of-canna...
MikeCapone 13y ago
Have you read Mindbody Prescription by Dr. John E. Sarno? It's the only thing that could cure my constant RSI/chronic pain after years of trying everything, and in the book he talks about fibromyalgia. http://www.amazon.com/The-Mindbody-Prescription-Healing-Body/dp/0446675156/ http://www.amazon.com/The-Mindbody-Prescription-Healing-Body... The idea of psychogenic disorders would have normally have sounded like esoteric BS to me, but I ended up picking up the book at the recommendation of an ex-Google coder who went through all the same things that I did. I'm glad I did; for 15$, I completely cured myself after years of trying everything else (physiotherapy, standing desk, stretching exercises, working out, various books on RSI, ergonomic chairs, keyboards, mouses, trackpads, switching hands, etc, etc), and it turns out the book takes a very scientific approach to these conditions, even if it admits that there's a lot we still don't understand about exactly how our minds work and how they can affect our bodies (it's kind of an engineering approach -- we figured out something that works, now we need to figure out why). Highly recommended to all those of you suffering from constant back pain, neck pain, RSI, etc.
- mikevm 13y ago
  I was thinking of buying that book, but he sounded like a typical wackaloon to me. I mean, just from reading the first few lines of the Amazon review: > Dr. John Sarno caused quite a ruckus back in 1990 when he suggested that back pain is all in the head. In his bestselling book, Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection, he claimed that backaches, slipped discs, headaches, and other chronic pains are due to suppressed anger, and that once the cause of the anger is addressed, the pain will vanish. Slipped discs are due to suppressed anger? What the fuck? I've been having back pain for a few years now (it returns whenever I slouch), but it started directly after a gym injury... what has that got to do with suppressed anger?
  - bithive123 13y ago
    I read his book (http://www.amazon.com/Healing-Back-Pain-Mind-Body-Connection/dp/0446557684/ref=pd_sim_b_2 http://www.amazon.com/Healing-Back-Pain-Mind-Body-Connection...) expecting to have a similar reaction. While he doesn't make the strongest scientific case, you are not doing his proposition justice. It's more about people who injure themselves maintaining unconscious tension in areas which leads to stiffness and pain well after the physiological healing has finished, because they fear re-injury. I found some of his advice helpful insofar as it suggests that mindfulness meditation can help ease tension-induced back pain (which I have found to be true for me) and that there is a mental component in overcoming the fear of re-injury and allowing yourself to resume your full range of motion without subconsciously tensing up. As someone who struggles with anxiety from time to time, I can even believe his statement that he's referred some patients to therapy before attempting to treat their back pain.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
justinator 13y ago
It is time to grow your own weed, on a $100/week script, my man.
- codezero 13y ago
  I have a friend who grows and unless you are re-selling it to shops, you're unlikely to break even growing your own. The equipment is relatively costly and the care and attention required to consistently grow is very time consuming.
  - deadfall 13y ago
    Yes, if you grow indoors you are spending a lot on electricity , but if you grow outdoors during the summer then the cost will be significantly lower. Grow enough to last through the winter. Weed grows in afghanistan in the harshest of climates.
    - selectodude 13y ago
      It's called Weed for a reason. However, the stuff you get from a dispensary will have a significantly higher THC count than the stuff you grow in your backyard during the summer.
      - deadfall 13y ago
        Arguable. Probably depends on experience. The farmers that grow in the green triangle california mostly grow outdoors and they supply dispensaries.
        selectodude 13y ago
        And they're professionals with the correct seeds, equipment, and climate.
    - codezero 13y ago
      Yeah, you are right. My friend grows indoors, I am sure this is part of the reason I hear of his difficulty, among other things, he keeps a busy full time job and had no previous experience growing anything before diving in to it all.
penrod 13y ago
You touch on another way in which drug laws are positively evil - the only reason why Vicodin causes liver damage is because it is legally required to contain a large amount of acetaminophen. The express purpose of the acetaminophen is to permanently damage your liver if you are ever tempted to 'abuse' the Vicodin and exceed the approved dosage. Of course, with opioid tolerance there is no clear line between therapeutic and recreational dosages, and no way of setting an acetaminophen level that hurts one group of users but not the other, so in practice we have legally mandated poisoning of thousands of chronic pain sufferers.
- oz 13y ago
  Do you have any citations for this? I'm genuinely interested.

gadders 13y ago

Interesting that you don't get high any more. I wondered whether MMJ would fall into the category of "do not drive or operate machinery" whilst using.

apalmer 13y ago
Definitely would fall into the impairs motor skills category. You can develop a tolerance for almost all drugs, even alcohol and yet many still fall within that category so wouldnt expect ganja to be any different.
- mistercow 13y ago
  >You can develop a tolerance for almost all drugs That seems to be the common wisdom, but is there any evidence that that's true?
mratzloff 13y ago
It does. In Washington state, where it is legal, the initiative that made it so made a provision to amend DWI laws to include THC thresholds.
nnash 13y ago
>Interesting that you don't get high any more. At 5 joints a day OP probably has built up a pretty high resistance to THC. Speak to enough every-day smokers and you'll find they go on breaks every once in a while to address this. >I wondered whether MMJ would fall into the category of "do not drive or operate machinery" whilst using. Depends on the strain, if you're smoking Indicas then yes you should not operate machinery.
gregpilling 13y ago
I believe most states have rules that are about "driving under the influence" and the influence could be alcohol, drugs, illness, or basically anything that would alter your mental state. I have had days when the pain alone would make me fail a roadside sobriety test (slurred words, can't walk a straight line). I don't recommend consuming drugs or alcohol and driving, prescription or otherwise. At work I avoid operating the forklift, milling machine, or anything else that could cause injury to me or my people. I still get a very slight buzz, but nothing at all like when I first started using it (think 5 or 10% of previous effects). I have had times when I consumed what I needed (four or five bowls) when friends were in the same room, and they have gotten high from just being there while I had no change. In general I consume in the very early morning and at night when I know I won't be leaving again before sleep. I avoid using during the day because most days I have to drive and work. MMJ is certainly not a perfect solution, but it beats constant never ending pain (no drugs) or addiction and liver failure (opiates with acetaminophen) http://www.drugs.com/vicodin.html http://www.drugs.com/vicodin.html .
- gadders 13y ago
  Fair enough. I wonder if the active component that dulls the pain also the one that causes the wooziness. Is it possible to have one without the other? I suppose smoking the raw leaf is a pretty blunt delivery mechanism vs putting the active compounds in a patch or a pill.
- peller 13y ago
  Once your tolerance has been built up to such high levels, taking a week off (in my experience) is all you need to get a "90% reset."
pdeuchler 13y ago
This is a really good article (despite it's admittedly biased source) on driving while under the influence of marijuana: http://norml.org/library/item/cannabis-and-driving-a-scientific-and-rational-review http://norml.org/library/item/cannabis-and-driving-a-scienti... It's also important to note the most dangerous thing you can do, bar none, is to drive tired and unfocused. Which is very much legal.
- criley2 13y ago
  Not the most dangerous thing. Try driving on LSD. While drunk. And high on xanax. While shooting heroin. Obviously, there are more dangerous states to drive in than tired and unfocused...
  - ledge 13y ago
    I would rather drive on LSD than drive tired, no question.
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      Can't LSD cause you to hallucinate? Hallucinations seem like the #1 thing you wouldn't want to happen to you while you are driving.
      - ejfox 13y ago
        As a human, you are more able to handle hallucinations than you think. If you see a bear off in the distance, in real life do you freak out and drive off the road? No. You just remark at it. "Holy shit a bear in the distance!" When you're on acid, you don't change as a person, your reactions don't change. If you see something weird you say "woah, that's weird" but, unless you're deep in a trip and forget you are on a substance, you can usually handle it like a normal person.
      - ledge 13y ago
        Not really in the conventional way people think of hallucinations. What you see is distorted, but everything you see is actually there. The walls might look like they're dripping or wavy, the branches on a tree appear to reach out at you, and colors become more vibrant, but you won't ever see gigantic bunnies or flying unicorns or some other stupid shit that often ends up in film depictions of a psychedelic experience. As dosage increases, your mind increasingly tends to interpret what you're seeing as something else, like a shadow may appear briefly to be a person. When this starts to happen I would no longer feel comfortable driving, but for me this occurs at the peak of 500 ug + experiences, the equivalent of 5 standard doses. Not saying that driving on LSD is a great idea, but on a single standard dose it's not nearly as dangerous as driving after you've pulled an all-nighter IMO.
Zigurd 13y ago
A 1998 Olympic gold medalist in snowboarding was stripped of his medal for testing positive for marijuana. Then someone at the IOC thought better of trying to call marijuana a performance enhancing drug.

evo_9 13y ago

You might want to look at getting one of these: http://openvape.com/ http://openvape.com/ It's very discreet and pretty effective, esp. if you are looking for a more CBD non-thc delivery method. Unfortunately these are a local Denver product right now from what I can tell (my friend in SF can't find them their yet outside of driving to Berkley); so it might be difficult to find outside of colorado. They also make a variety of cartridges including Sativa, Indica and Hybrid. I've switched to using this most of the time esp. outside the house, or when the kids are around. When you exhale there is hardly any smoke either and I've seen people smoking these at bars openly. I haven't been so bold even though I have a red-card, things sure have changed fast, at least in Denver. Edit: Also, the high effect is minimal, esp with the Sativa cartridges. Much more of a body, pain reliever type effect. Edit 2: Cartridges are rated for around 300 hits, and at 40 dollars per that works out be a pretty cost-effective solution from a cost standpoint too. This might not be as effective as a mj joint however; I would be curious to know if you get one if it's more or less effective.

subpixel 13y ago
I wonder: what's the relationship between marijuana 'strength' (measured in THC, I guess) and medical effectiveness? It seems to me the studies in the posted article are from a time when marijuana was dramatically 'weaker' than what you get today.
- evo_9 13y ago
  From my limited understanding THC is the aspect that causes the 'high' whereas the CBD's are effective at pain relief, seizure control, and generally the medical benefit side of things. Around Denver there are a whole class of food additives and edibles that are high in CBD's because of this effect.
- malingo 13y ago
  Look at THC / CBD proportions. There's research [0] into CBD mitigating THC's interference with memory formation. Also, intentionally-high-CBD strains are under development [1]: "A high-CBD cannabis strain was developed in the 1980s by David Watson and Robert Clarke, American naturalists who founded a company called Hortapharm in Amsterdam to pursue their goal of developing plant strains for different purposes. (The day Watson and Clarke became expatriates is the day the U.S. lost its lead in the field of cannabis therapeutics.) In 1998 Hortapharm sold its seed stock to a British start-up, GW Pharmaceuticals, which has since developed a strain that expresses 97% of its cannabinoid content as CBD. GW plans to test its high-CBD strain as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel diseases, psychotic disorders, and epilepsy. It is now in Phase 2 trials to determine the dose levels to use in clinical trials involving people. GW mixes its high-CBD and high-THC strains in a 1:1 ratio to make Sativex, a plant extract formulated for spraying under the tongue that has been approved in Canada and elsewhere to treat neuropathic pain associated with multiple sclerosis. CBD evidently bolsters the pain-killing effects of THC while moderating its psychoactivity." [0] http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101001/full/news.2010.508.html http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101001/full/news.2010.508.ht... [1] http://www.counterpunch.org/2007/07/14/who-s-afraid-of-cannabidiol/ http://www.counterpunch.org/2007/07/14/who-s-afraid-of-canna...

MikeCapone 13y ago

Have you read Mindbody Prescription by Dr. John E. Sarno? It's the only thing that could cure my constant RSI/chronic pain after years of trying everything, and in the book he talks about fibromyalgia. http://www.amazon.com/The-Mindbody-Prescription-Healing-Body/dp/0446675156/ http://www.amazon.com/The-Mindbody-Prescription-Healing-Body... The idea of psychogenic disorders would have normally have sounded like esoteric BS to me, but I ended up picking up the book at the recommendation of an ex-Google coder who went through all the same things that I did. I'm glad I did; for 15$, I completely cured myself after years of trying everything else (physiotherapy, standing desk, stretching exercises, working out, various books on RSI, ergonomic chairs, keyboards, mouses, trackpads, switching hands, etc, etc), and it turns out the book takes a very scientific approach to these conditions, even if it admits that there's a lot we still don't understand about exactly how our minds work and how they can affect our bodies (it's kind of an engineering approach -- we figured out something that works, now we need to figure out why). Highly recommended to all those of you suffering from constant back pain, neck pain, RSI, etc.

mikevm 13y ago
I was thinking of buying that book, but he sounded like a typical wackaloon to me. I mean, just from reading the first few lines of the Amazon review: > Dr. John Sarno caused quite a ruckus back in 1990 when he suggested that back pain is all in the head. In his bestselling book, Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection, he claimed that backaches, slipped discs, headaches, and other chronic pains are due to suppressed anger, and that once the cause of the anger is addressed, the pain will vanish. Slipped discs are due to suppressed anger? What the fuck? I've been having back pain for a few years now (it returns whenever I slouch), but it started directly after a gym injury... what has that got to do with suppressed anger?
- bithive123 13y ago
  I read his book (http://www.amazon.com/Healing-Back-Pain-Mind-Body-Connection/dp/0446557684/ref=pd_sim_b_2 http://www.amazon.com/Healing-Back-Pain-Mind-Body-Connection...) expecting to have a similar reaction. While he doesn't make the strongest scientific case, you are not doing his proposition justice. It's more about people who injure themselves maintaining unconscious tension in areas which leads to stiffness and pain well after the physiological healing has finished, because they fear re-injury. I found some of his advice helpful insofar as it suggests that mindfulness meditation can help ease tension-induced back pain (which I have found to be true for me) and that there is a mental component in overcoming the fear of re-injury and allowing yourself to resume your full range of motion without subconsciously tensing up. As someone who struggles with anxiety from time to time, I can even believe his statement that he's referred some patients to therapy before attempting to treat their back pain.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

justinator 13y ago

It is time to grow your own weed, on a $100/week script, my man.

codezero 13y ago
I have a friend who grows and unless you are re-selling it to shops, you're unlikely to break even growing your own. The equipment is relatively costly and the care and attention required to consistently grow is very time consuming.
- deadfall 13y ago
  Yes, if you grow indoors you are spending a lot on electricity , but if you grow outdoors during the summer then the cost will be significantly lower. Grow enough to last through the winter. Weed grows in afghanistan in the harshest of climates.
  - selectodude 13y ago
    It's called Weed for a reason. However, the stuff you get from a dispensary will have a significantly higher THC count than the stuff you grow in your backyard during the summer.
    - deadfall 13y ago
      Arguable. Probably depends on experience. The farmers that grow in the green triangle california mostly grow outdoors and they supply dispensaries.
      - selectodude 13y ago
        And they're professionals with the correct seeds, equipment, and climate.
  - codezero 13y ago
    Yeah, you are right. My friend grows indoors, I am sure this is part of the reason I hear of his difficulty, among other things, he keeps a busy full time job and had no previous experience growing anything before diving in to it all.

penrod 13y ago

You touch on another way in which drug laws are positively evil - the only reason why Vicodin causes liver damage is because it is legally required to contain a large amount of acetaminophen. The express purpose of the acetaminophen is to permanently damage your liver if you are ever tempted to 'abuse' the Vicodin and exceed the approved dosage. Of course, with opioid tolerance there is no clear line between therapeutic and recreational dosages, and no way of setting an acetaminophen level that hurts one group of users but not the other, so in practice we have legally mandated poisoning of thousands of chronic pain sufferers.

oz 13y ago
Do you have any citations for this? I'm genuinely interested.