Written by Add Your HeadingAs Nations Globally Examine The Use Of Cannabis As Pain Medication – Michael Tilton Used It For Freedom: Text Here
Michael Tilton has yet another exceptional story of recovery. Many of us have had our own personal fight against addiction of some type or another. If it wasn’t us we’ve had it within our family or relationships. Without a doubt, regardless of how the person starts using medications – addiction is inevitable for most. What happens after that is generally a road of destruction for all involved. The individual using pain medication (or any substance that is addictive) becomes unaware of their surroundings – I should know as I’ve been there myself, and am withdrawing from pain medication (oxycodone) as I exit pain management right this moment with the help of Cannabis. What happens for many is their world will crumble, things fall apart, and generally in a big way.
Cannabis is truly the answer to not only the withdraws from stopping the pills or illicit drugs suddenly, but for the pain itself. Cannabis treats pain without clogging our neuropaths with addictive substances that lose effectiveness quickly. Like myself, Michael told me that within days he felt as if the pills no longer worked right and increased the dose. For others what can and often eventually happens is the doctor cuts them off from pills and away they go to the street, and sometimes the pills are not available – only even more destructive illicit drugs. Due to the availability, overdose deaths from pills now are 4 to 1 over deaths from an illicit street bought drug.
When asked why almost all addicts refer to pain as the reason for their use. “I just want to stop the pain” is such a common response.
Michael, like everyone, has his own unique story of withdrawing from pain meds that’s very intense – but now that we have cannabis on the scene it’s not as bad as it used to be for those that have found relief in the plant. I most certainly did when I discontinued medication in the first place, that’s for sure – and I am again now as I exit pain management. Dr. Josh Kaplan wrote an editorial for High times in January and was quoted as saying “My wife is a resident physician in Seattle’s trendy Capitol Hill neighborhood. Early in her residency, she was musing with her colleagues over their challenging patient interactions. I chimed in, “How many of your patients are just after pain medication?” One of the residents looked down and shook his head. “Too many. And if we don’t give [opioids] to them, they just keep switching their doctor until they find someone who will.”
Basically we have a healthcare system that believes in drugging us with what I’ve disclosed on this very blog site “Items known to the State of California to Cause Cancer” under proposition 65’s watch list. The very pharmaceuticals doled out daily that we trust as at least ‘medicine’ are acutally, for the most part, carcinogens. Now let’s get to Michael’s story. He told me he loves Skywalker OG – so let’s take a look at his favorite strain that’s growing right this minute!
“I’d be more than happy to tell you my story. It began in the eighties- 2 cervical anterior fusions. 1 cervical posterior laminectomy, 1 ligament reconstruction for the right thumb. I have osteoarthritis, scoliosis. I’m now or will be 66 yrs. old this month. 2 yrs. ago I withdrew from fentanyl after being on opiates( oxy, methadone at different times), it was a waking, brutal nightmare! During this 2 year period, I had the most intense experience of my adult life; I traveled all the way to Texas to spend time with my terminally ill brother, who had adenocarcinoma, a brain cancer. They were to be the last few days of his life, I sat quietly with him, sharing cannabis, and trying to finish his sentences. There were some very profound moments. Anyway, that’s a thumbnail sketch of my last 2 yrs.”
Now that’s just not enough for me! I want more. Michael has much to say in groups about Cannabis so I was sure he had much more to say on this… and he did!
“In the broadest sense cannabis can do what conventional medicine can’t do, when you’ve exhausted conventional med. cannabis steps in to give you what you need. I’ve read long term opiate alters your brain chemistry and in the withdrawal, process cannabis helped me regain a sense of equilibrium. My internist knows I used cannabis, I could have stayed on fentanyl and not used cannabis, but I chose to get off the opiate. I’ve been told my communication skills are better, I feel more aware of and connected to my surroundings, I had become very isolated. It’s a complex plant but understanding the ECS and seeing the health applications is astounding. I’m in my third decade of chronic pain and could have been a statistic in the opiate epidemic. my decision to use cannabis brought me back to life, literally! It is responsible for giving me a much better quality of life.”
I asked Michael to go further into how Cannabis helped him get through the withdraws. I know on my own what it did and how much it’s soothing things. It’s always interesting to hear about another person’s experience as all are so individual. Nobody is addicted quite the same and nobody withdraws quite the same. We all have our own journey and this is what he shared about his: “When going through withdrawal, you experience emotional/psychological meltdown on an hourly basis, day to day, week to week.
I keep coming back to the awesome power of cannabis to regulate and give you stability during and after withdrawal – that’s my takeaway. I tried to just relax and let cannabis do its work, I read as much science as I can to understand how canna is able to benefit us in endless ways. I believe our understanding of the plant is in its infancy, perhaps. It’s a runaway freight train, it can’t be stopped. I’m familiar with research from Israel and Spain and it’s impressive and gives me hope. On the most personal level, canna has allowed me to reclaim my life, that there’s life after opiate addiction, It was my guide through that process and continues to help me when doctors had no clue.”
” Living in an illegal access state, I’m teaching myself to grow but am weary from having to hide like a criminal. Belonging to the medical pot group on social media has given me the sense that I’m not alone, they have shown great empathy, and sharing info to help me become more self-sufficient – It’s invaluable. I can’t find the adjectives to be as eloquent and articulate as I wish in my fascination for this little plant!!! It has given me hope again.”
Like many with pain management issues, including myself, Indica’s seem to be the best choice. Which strain I believe depends on a personal preference to taste and smell – and even appearance. Michael loves his Kush buds of various strains – let’s take a look at some OG Kush growing in Humboldt County greenhouse – Yummy!
My personal choice, of course, is Mike’s Medicine strain grown by Healing of The Nation, a very unique strain that’s very high in both THC and CBD.
Other’s like a very high in CBD strain like “Mike’s Dream” another awesome Healing of The Nation strain
Prescription pain medications – talk about a “gateway drug”! A generation of D.A.R.E. graduate millennials will forever associate this term with marijuana, despite the mile-high stack of evidence that its medicine includes our own countries’ patents. But the fact remains that four-out-of-five heroin users started with a doctor’s prescription for FDA-approved pain meds. Those numbers don’t lie and neither does my own doctor, who’s currently exiting me out of pain management and off of Oxycodone. The withdraw has been hardly bearable but no choice. using Cannabis to ease the symptoms of the brutal pharmaceutical heroin withdrawal it’s actually tolerable.
That’s not dramatic – it’s the truth. Anybody that’s aware of pain medications of that caliber is aware that addicts will pay by the milligram to buy those pills, melt them in a spoon and shoot them up as they are indeed HEROIN. Inevitably, there’s only one way to stop what this country started when it put Heroin into the US Pharmacopeia in 1906, in order to combat the opioid epidemic the best possible strategy will be to end the prohibition of Cannabis. The banning of Heroin didn’t work, 60 years after the ban although heroin is a schedule one substance, Oxycodone/Oxycontin was allowed onto the market in the late ’90s.
Mike Robinson, Medicinal Cannabis Patient
Sign up to receive informative and exciting email updates from Mike's Medicines!
You can sign up for our mail list here:
Didn't find what you are looking for?
Find exactly what you want to when you want it.
Browse through our archives by date, category or by entering a topic in the provided search field.
Archives
Categories
More to come as we have time to add them – there’s 100’s of additional publications!
