After Shane recently referred to an earlier post on medical marijuana, I had to write and tell about my own experience with it, here in the state of Colorado where medical marijuana is legal.
A year and a half ago a friend of ours suffering with illness as a result of withdrawal from over-prescribed anti anxiety and anti depressant drugs, was horribly ill. Anxiety, bodily pain, uncontrollable depression, etc. were controlling his life leaving him jobless and unable to function. A doctor that he went to prescribed medical marijuana. This doctor lied on the medical marijuana paperwork on the reason for the prescription, since this man did not fall into the legal reasons for prescribing. He also prescribed a large amount, which he could obtain for a whole year, and was not watched by the physician thereafter.
Our friend became severely addicted. In fact it was difficult to tell whether the original reason for the marijuana was even there anymore. Smoking both the weed and the hash, vaporizing the weed and the hash and using marijuana syrup drops under the tongue every 2-3 hours around the clock. He could not work, he could not drive, he could not function at all. And he did not have to go back to the Doctor who prescribed it. For those of you that don’t know, this is high quality stuff, and costs about the same as the street price. Very expensive.
The end of the story is that we had to have an intervention, and send our friend to a rehab facility. He is pretty messed up from the whole ordeal, but now has a job and is getting his life back together. The cost of the marijuana and the rehab facility was so huge. It had a horrible impact on him and his wife, their families both financially and otherwise.
In case any of you wonder, this is a Christian man, a member of a good, Bible believing Church.
My Opinion: I can’t say myself, especially in my current situation of being sick with an illness that marijuana is prescribed for, that I would never take it. But other medications have been just fine for me. I really tend towards thinking it is not a good idea. I know that some of the medications that I have had, especially after surgeries, have given me a feeling of being ‘high’. But not really having experience with illegal drugs myself, I have nothing to compare it to. Also, when I have been given prescriptions for pain medications, it has always been controlled.
I know there are thousands of opinions on this, and many arguments for and against. But this is more personal for me. I was guilty of not only approving of my friend using it, but enabling him, helping him financially, letting him and his wife live in our home. The experience of the intervention, my still struggling friend, and the heartbreak his wife has had to endure, altogether has been far more difficult that the original reason he used the marijuana.
