CONFESSIONS OF A MEDICAL MARIJUANA PATIENT

or…

HOW TO HAVE YOUR TEETH DRILLED WITHOUT NOVOCAIN (OR GAS)

By George Rohrbacher, NORML Board of Directors, medical marijuana patient

Science and medicine run deep in my family. My dad and an uncle had Ph.D.s in parasitology and pathology. My dad’s dad was an M.D. Grandpa met my grandmother when they were both attending medical school at the Univ. of California, in 1915. My grandma’s grandmother learned surgical nursing during the Civil War and afterward was the “doctor” for Oroville, California for many years. My mother, brother, and several aunts are all Registered Nurses. For at least five generations, our family has been committed to science and healing. It is from this perspective that I view marijuana as a medicine.

Like most Americans, I discovered marijuana as a medicine quite by accident. 60-years old, I’ve used pot for over 41 years simply because it makes me feel good. I like it. But who would have ever guessed cannabis was actually helping me stay healthy at the same time?

A ‘bad back’ is one of medicine’s most oft heard adult complaints, and during my 35-years of farming and ranching, my body has written many a check my back couldn’t cash. Sometimes my back has hurt so bad that if I got down on the floor, I couldn’t get up without help. In the end, after trying numerous back treatments, I found that just plain walking and stretching was the best way to deal with my lower back pain, that is, walking and stretching while consuming marijuana. I had first bunched these activities together so as to allow me to get my hurting back “walked out”, and at the same time, I had the privacy to smoke a little pot out of the sight of my growing children. I soon found that walking and stretching while using cannabis was many times more effective for treating my back pain than just walking without it! Marijuana seemed to relax my muscles, reduce spasms and inflammation. When I later became acquainted with the scientific research on this subject, I found out that was exactly what cannabis, and its cannabinoids, had been doing for my body all along.

Decades of splitting firewood, pounding fence posts and other such farm work has left me with two ruptured discs in my neck and numbness and pain that sometimes plagues my hands and fingers. Nasty. Sometimes, very, very nasty. Cannabis helps control the pain from these pinched nerves and cannabis helps me sleep at night without killing my liver or kidneys, without causing gastric distress or constipation, and without damaging my sex drive or good humor. Cannabis helps me pursue my non-surgical options, while at the same time it reduces inflammation and muscle soreness from my on-going activities.

Along with the work-related injuries, I am also a walking encyclopedia of old football injuries, some that still have me hobbling around, four decades after the last touchdown. I’m a big guy, played defensive tackle and lacrosse, too. I loved banging heads. In the process, I’ve separated a shoulder, had a major knee operation and sprained both ankles numerous times. But, am I standing in line for a knee or hip replacement like my no-pot using baby sister or brother-in-law? NOPE! Why no replacements of my damaged joints? I honestly think it’s because of the four decades of cannabis use that I can still walk five miles every day on my banged-up knee and ankles without any pain or inflammation. As it turns out, even the cartilage in one’s joints has cannabinoid receptor sites.

Oh yes, sure a dislocated ankle really hurts, but for a real front-row seat to the world of pain, there is nothing like a migraine headache. I am one of the unfortunate millions of Americans who have diet-triggered migraine headaches. But fortunately, over the years, I’ve rooted out my dietary ‘triggers’, which include: chocolate, red wine, aged cheese, soy sauce,…and now, I rarely have a migraine anymore. I avoid those triggers like the plague. But in my medicine chest, just in case, to help me deal with one of those aura-producing, skull-splitting migraine headaches that still lurk along life’s path, marijuana is an essential medicine. Almost instant migraine relief is possible for me with vaporized or smoked cannabis.

In late January, this past winter, we had a freezing fog that glazed-over everything for miles around. I took a dramatic fall on the ice and landed flat on the back of my ass. Both feet went out from under me so quickly I had not even gotten an elbow or finger down to help break my fall onto the ice-covered concrete slab. Well, at least I hadn’t cracked my head, I thought, as I lay there on my back on the ice, testing for broken bones. Slowly I started to move. Yup, I was OK. No broken hip, thank God—just the start of one very, very sore ass from taking the full impact of that drop onto the ice-glazed concrete. I crawled back into the house, went directly to our freezer, and took out a double dose of my special medical marijuana spice cake. About an hour-and-a-half later, my wife and I walked out the door on the start of a slow, but enjoyable, three-mile hike. My pelvis was very sore but, with the cannabis properly applied, it was good to go. I repeated this treatment every day for the next week, cannabis edibles and walking.

As my bruised butt was healing, I went to see my dentist for a check-up. He looked into my mouth and said I needed a filling, “Nothing too major.” Fortunately I was prepared; I had taken a good dose of my cannabis edibles an hour or so before my appointment, to allow me to sit, despite my injury, without discomfort in the dentist’s chair. I said to my dentist, “No Novocain today, Doc.” He nodded and started to prepare his drill. He’d seen me do this before.

Cannabinoid receptor sites are primarily in the peripheral nervous system. As cannabis calms the underlying causes of most back pain, the inflammation and tightness of the muscles, the cannabinoids also act on the peripheral nervous system to modulate the pain messages transmitted to the major nerves. The pain from tooth drilling is a bit different, that kind of pain is hard-wired directly into the brain. Cannabis doesn’t block that pain so much as helps a person to simply look past the pain and ignore it.

In having one’s teeth drilled, due to the fear of pain, virtually everyone trades a very few moments of serious pain from the drilling, for about two hours of having one’s face defrost from the jaw-numbing shot of Novocain. I said, “No Novocain for me today, Doc,” because I chose the pain, knowing medical marijuana would help me overcome it.

Here’s how: Take cannabis edibles an hour or two before you are to sit in the dentist’s chair. Not flinching while the dentist is drilling your teeth is a big job. You must lie there absolutely still, melted into the chair, immobile. Cannabis is very useful in this process, not so much to block the high-voltage pain from the tooth drilling, but to help your mind reach the meditative state to deflect that pain, so you can let the pain flow over you like water.

Think of your time in that dentist’s chair like body surfing in big waves. When a crusher wave comes in, you must dive down deep, hold your breath, and let it roll over you. When it’s safe, you can come up again for air. The ocean is too big to fight; you have to hold on until the wave passes. And, it’s the very same thing having your teeth drilled without gas or Novocain. The very second the drilling stops, that tooth pain stops, as well, and you can safely come up for air. With modern high-speed dental drills, the actual total number of seconds of real pain are quite few, providing the excavation isn’t the Grand Canyon (your dentist can help you judge). So, just relax, it’s really not that bad, roll your eyes back, and let her rip! With a little pot spice cake behind you, you’ll be quite surprised, you can handle it! And, it’s only going to hurt for a few seconds, anyway. Afterward, when the drilling’s all done, putting in the filling doesn’t hurt a bit.

One very nice thing about dentistry without Novocain is you always get the occlusion right, the first time, everytime, because you can actually feel your mouth when the dentist tells you to bite down, and asks, “Is the new filling too high or low?” And then, when the dentist takes off your dental bib, it’s all over; it is really totally over—no frosted face, no needle marks in your gums, nothing else to recover from.

Without the Novocain shot as part of your dental work, you can walk out of your dentist’s office pain-free after a filling, your cannabis edibles still kicked in, whistling your favorite tune! Now, you try doing that for the next hour or two with your face and lower lip de-frosting from the Novocain!

I’ve been using cannabis as a medicine for over 30 years, 5 years legally. Washington State’s voters gave me the right to use marijuana as a medicine in 1998; I got my doctor’s recommendation in ‘04. President Obama’s Justice Department has said the Feds will no longer interfere with Washington State law in this area. Decades of worry and paranoia, the fear of a SWAT Team, with their guns drawn, bursting through our front door in the middle of the night, bringing drug dogs to search for my medicine has abated, at least for now. Help NORML end America’s marijuana prohibition for good.

Achieving proper titration: In the words of the DEA’s own Chief Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young: “Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances know to man…” Advances in technology have come in all areas of modern life and making marijuana use even safer is no exception! In the last five years, I have all but given up smoking pot in favor of using a vaporizer—it’s clean and very tasty, with no tars or fire-created carcinogens—although for mobility and socialization it will always be hard to replace a joint. Achieving proper dosing levels using a vaporizer or smoking is quite easy, full effects are seen in about ten minutes and last about an hour-and-a-half before declining. Homemade cannabis edibles take about 20-40 minutes to kick-in, a lot depending on what else is in your stomach, and some experimentation is needed to find the proper dosing levels; but for long term, high-dose pain relief, edibles are hard to beat.

Irvin Rosenfeld, America’s longest surviving Federal cannabis patient, has been receiving federally-grown pot for 27 years. Irv finds smoked pot works best for him. He consumes 10-to-15 joints a day to deal with the challenges of living with a rare form of bone tumors that has afflicted him since childhood. A stockbroker handling millions of dollars in transactions, Irv has said he never feels a “high” from using marijuana, even though he uses it all day long.

About two years ago, when the pinched nerves in my neck were acting their very worst, I began using cannabis at dosing levels where pot’s marvelous, fun and useful psycho-active effects started disappearing for me as well. Damn, it’s the shits to be that sick! Thank goodness, I’m better now.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger: “It’s Time For A Debate”

Last week NORML reported on the results of a just-released Field Research Corporation poll that found that 56 percent of California voters agreed with the statement: “Legalize marijuana for recreational use and tax its proceeds.”

Today, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was asked about the Field poll result, which was the third poll of 2009 demonstrating majority support for legalizing pot among west coast voters.

His reply:

“I think it’s time for a debate (regarding taxing and regulating the sale of cannabis for adults). I think all of those ideas of creating extra revenues, I’m always for an open debate on it. And I think we ought to study very carefully what other countries are doing that have legalized marijuana and other drugs, what effect did it have on those countries? It could very well be that everyone is happy with that decision and then we could look at that.“

What a difference eight weeks makes. After all, this is the same Gov. Schwarzenegger that said in February that he vehemently opposed California Assembly Bill 390: The Marijuana Control, Regulation and Education Act, which seeks to impose a tax on the commercial production and legal retail sale of cannabis.

And today? Well, today the Governor is singing a different tune.

“It’s time for debate. … I’m always for an open debate on it.” (You can watch a video of Schwarzenegger’s remarks here. **Note, the comments come at the very end of the video.)

So are we!

Since March, NORML supporters have sent over 8,000 e-mails to their members of the California state assembly in support of AB 390, sponsored by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano.  Now it’s time to start directing those thousands of e-mails, phone calls, and letters to the Governor.

Tell Gov. Schwarzenegger: “I am one of the majority of California voters who supports taxing and regulating the use and sale of cannabis by adults. Studies consistently show that countries that have removed criminal penalties for the personal use of marijuana, such as Portugal and the Netherlands, have far lower rates of cannabis use than the united States. I agree that the time has come for an objective and public debate on this topic. I urge you to encourage the legislature to hold hearings on this important issue.”

You can also send an automated e-mail to Gov. Schwarzenegger’s office via NORML’s Take Action Center here.

If Someone Robbed Your House Would You Call Your Doctor? So Why Do Cops Keep Talking About Medical Cannabis?

It’s hard to imagine that anyone in Minnesota still believes that the cops are a credible source of information regarding SF 97 and HF 292 — the state’s pending medical marijuana measures.

After all, it was only a few weeks ago when state lawmakers and the local media ‘outed’ law enforcement for continually lying about the bills during their public testimony.

Nevertheless, in the interest of ‘balance’ (and I use that term euphemistically here), state newspapers apparently feel the need to give these tainted folks a platform to spew their lies and propaganda — even though it appears that no one aside from Gov. Tim Pawlenty is listening.

Of course, it’s arguable that by giving law enforcement a forum, editors are actually, if inadvertently, promoting marijuana law reform. After all, the prejudice, fabrications, and misplaced logic exhibited by those who favor prohibition clearly does more to undermine the policy than NORML could ever hope to.

A case in point. Writing in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, local sheriff Richard Stanek goes off on a tirade about marijuana. But if one reads between the lines, it becomes readily obvious (to anyone but the sheriff), that his gripe is really with cannabis prohibition.

Lighten up on marijuana?
By RICHARD W. STANEK

… The connection between marijuana and violent crime should not be underestimated. The violence related to marijuana isn’t a result of the effects on the user but rather stems from the money people can make selling and growing the drug. Violence is part of the trade. By legalizing marijuana-growing operations and drug traffic, we would invite violence into our communities.

… We should never lose focus on the immediate connection between guns, gangs, kids and drugs — and marijuana is frequently the connection. I have been in law enforcement for 25 years and have seen this firsthand. When I was captain of the Criminal Investigations Division with the Minneapolis Police Department, we investigated a case involving a man from out-of-state who tried to buy marijuana for personal use. He unwittingly approached a gang-connected dealer. The man was shot and killed so gang members could keep his money and the marijuana.

Read about any gang-related violence surrounding the sale of alcohol lately? How about vicodin or paxil? Didn’t think so. The irony, of course, is that the very ramifications that Sheriff Stanek claims to lament are, in fact, direct consequences of the public policy he reflexively endorses.

Of course, Sheriff Stanek isn’t alone is his twisted thinking (another euphemism). In a pro/con piece published today in the Rochester Post-Bulletin, Dennis J. Flaherty, executive director and chief lobbyist of the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association, also predictably plays the ‘violence’ card (among others).

The facts are that marijuana is a drug that is associated with violent crimes such as robberies and assaults. Many have and will resort to almost anything to get their hands on it.

And here I thought cops believed that pot smoking made people unmotivated.

The cop lobbyist goes on to make a number of other false accusations as well. You are free to read them here. (Have a strong anti-emetic handy.)

Fortunately, despite this deluge of deliberately false information, most Minnesota politicians — former sheriff and current Senator Bill Ingebrigtsen notwithstanding — are voting on the side of truth. Will Gov. Pawlenty do likewise? If you live in Minnesota, now might be a good time to ask him.

PS: Think that Minnesota is the only state whose cops blatently lie about medical marijuana? Think again!