Mike’s Plea to Doctors: Don’t Cut Off Your Pain Patients - Let Them Use Cannabis!

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On the eve of being one-year opioid-free - I have just one request to doctors. Take responsibility and make sure those that have become addicted to drugs you prescribed are able to wean safely off them:

It’s been one brutal year that’s for sure. On this day in 2019, I made a decision to not wean, to no longer stand in lines waiting for a pharmacist to fill a prescription or turn me around and say it’s not ready. No more doctors visits where we assess my pain level, write up more diagnostics, order more imaging, and hand out the same life-threatening medications. No more physicians writing prescriptions that their bank account could never cover the cost of loss if they were to kill me without any disclosure. That must be the most disturbing issue that I will address today. We’ve watched as states, cities, and even the Federal government have taken legal remedies against pharmaceutical manufacturers over the research that was done with the making of Oxycodone, Fentanyl, and other drugs. We’re seeing the corporations that made these drugs of heavy addiction be bankrupted by municipalities with the very people that lost their loved ones, decades of their own lives, and much more to addiction are left with no financial avenues to pursue as aggrieved parties.

Where does this leave the more knowledgeable recovered or recovering addict? We have no path for relief other than the individual who is directly responsible. A physician or municipality may place the blame on a drug manufacturer but that drug manufacturer isn’t the one who accepted huge monetary incentives to prescribe it. The pharma company isn’t the one who saw their patient was addicted and continued prescribing and definitely is not the entity that failed to give any warnings to patients that the drugs they were taking cause people to die in their sleep – on the prescribed dose. Without a doubt, the drug manufacturer did not have to go to medical school, did not take an oath regarding care for patients, and does not have medical malpractice insurance in case they omit a very important fact to a patient that could cause harm.

The once important oath to do no harm seems to no longer apply

Failing to state to me “Mike, the drugs I’m prescribing you could kill you at any time – you know that right?” Was the norm. I had no idea that people were dying from the drugs that over a dozen doctors in 4 states over 24 years prescribed to me. I thought Heroin addicts OD’d. I knew people would take too many pills but even having a decently high IQ I still didn’t know that the prescribed dose could kill – and does over 130,000 times a year in the United States alone. It’s not the street drugs killing people and it’s not people committing suicide – it’s everyday people taking the drugs their doctor who dislikes cannabis gives them. So, at the end who is ultimately responsible. Do we arrest people that sell crack on the corners or give them a pass because ‘they didn’t know and only go after the manufacturer?

We arrest, prosecute, and condemn the crack dealer. So, if someone with a dozen years of college and an internship to boot can’t figure out that they’re peddling death to their patients should it really be the manufacturer of the drug held solely responsible? After all, that guy on the corner can’t claim he didn’t know any better as he’s selling death to those that walk by. With pharmaceutical opioids the only difference is it’s legal to sell that death, that death is covered by insurance, that death is ‘not their fault it’s the patient’s, and the entire tragedy is one huge profit for multiple entities in many cases.

Cannabis oil and the smoking of cannabis give people exiting an opioid addiction the relief that’s necessary to eat and regain a healthy lifestyle.

On my year date of being opioid-free, I have a plea and it’s to doctors that prescribe these drugs. Don’t cut off patients suddenly from pain medications because you realize what you’ve done – realize that when you do this you may create not only an illicit drug user but possibly eventually a dealer too – you easily can create death. Learn, educate yourself, humble yourself, realize that millions have perished to prescribed drugs but don’t take such intense action that you leave an addict with no way out. Not everyone can find solace in cannabinoid medicine such as I did, many will be lost. Many will never be found except for dead after an OD on illicit drugs or pills they got from a friend. Realize that cannabis is medicine and that your pain patients will benefit from it. Too many people have come to me after being cut off from their pain management doctor, addicted to heroin, and begging for relief. In 2019 that was my mission – to help others that got caught up in the same mess I did. The only difference is I refused to buy drugs off the street, can’t stand needles, and could never be an IV user. But that’s me, others will die because a doctor made an overzealous move instead of working with the patient they fed an addiction to.

There’s a lot of good doctors that simply do not prescribe drugs dangerously – the vast majority do not. We need to wake up to the true crisis and it’s not that opioids exist as Opium has existed for eons with mankind. Sure there were problems with opium dens but we didn’t have a massive percentage of our population perishing. There are few people nowadays that don’t personally know somebody that died of an opioid overdose. There’s literally almost nobody that isn’t affected in some way by the Opioid Epidemic. That epidemic isn’t just the overuse, abuse, or illicit sales of those drugs – it’s the way they’ve been prescribed and the lack of responsibility taken by those holding prescription pads.

Sooner than later the lawsuits will change the target – as the pharmaceutical corps go Bankrupt the only target left is that doctor who prescribed the drug. There’s no way out other than a humble way – those that remain arrogant and refuse to learn how to treat pain patients with natural remedies like Cannabinoid Medicine are destined to face either Civil or Criminal activity in the future.

I write this based on statistics that show an increase in Opioid-Related Deaths, not a decrease, since the legalization of cannabis. Why did it increase? Because a majority of doctors have not allowed patients to use cannabis to exit from opioids in many states – including legal ones. Instead many doctors cut off their pain patients who tested positive for cannabis and ended up creating the illicit drug user, eventually dealer, and the high possibility of eventually….. a death by overdose. That sounds dramatic doesn’t it – but sadly it’s the cold hard truth that nobody wants to talk about. “How dare you say that about doctors Mike, you work with them right?” One might ask. Well, that’s exactly why I will state that – the doctors I know and have worked with over the years in research and more in the world of cannabinoid medicine work to reverse this trend – not to continue it. There are many physicians that have figured out that they failed to learn enough about what they were prescribing and changed their practice – I applaud them.

Now to the more positive… it’s been a year since I found the courage to face the addiction and quit. I’m free and I can’t wait to write in my blog about all the awesome things that have happened!

Thanks for reading,