An Undeserved Stigma

Every day working at a dispensary, I interact with hundreds of patients from a variety of age groups. Some patients don’t know much about cannabis, but they know the way they want to consume and what effects/how they would like to feel after consuming. Others can tell me the specific terpenes that they are looking for and how they effect their bodies. To me, it doesn’t matter what the patient knows about the plant as long as they know what they would like to get out of their experience with it. We have to remember the key term “patient” when it comes to medicinal cannabis. This is something that someone is choosing to use as their medicine instead of opioids or other prescription drugs.

The “stigma” with cannabis is one that all cannabis users have had to fight at least once in their lives. As soon as someone hears that you consume cannabis, the inevitable questions and comments begin. These are just a few that I have received since getting my medical cannabis card.
“Oh, so you’re a stoner?”
“So you just like to get high?”
“It’s much cheaper on the streets.”
“You can buy as much as you want, right?”
“Could you grab me something?”
“Doesn’t that just make you lazy and unmotivated?”
“Do you just sleep a lot because you’re always high?”

These are the types of questions that create closed-door conversations for medical patients, highlighting a stigma instead of allowing room for open communication and understanding. How can we judge someone for choosing a plant over pills? Doctors have consistently pushed medicines that involved pills or injections with side effects that can be debilitating.

I have been on prescription medications since I was 16 years old. They started me on birth control and anti-anxiety medicines at this time because I was missing days of school every month. This was my first true exposure to the pharma industry. I’ve been on a variety of these pills for 10 years (next month). When I think about the incredibly long list of medicines that I used to be on at a time – totaling over a page per month – it has really opened my eyes to how dependent I have become on something that was manufactured, not natural. I constantly think about the amount of chemicals that I have polluted my body with through frequent changes to my medicines through doctors that I spent 10 minutes with.

As I was entering college, I was prescribed Accutane for my consistent issues with acne. Every month, I had to get my blood drawn – anyone on Accutane had to have a pregnancy test completed monthly to prove that they were not pregnant or risking birth defects. This was conducted in a lab at home, where we would discuss my progress and how the medicine was making me feel. After the first month, my acne got 10x worse and I started getting hit with waves of deep depression. These effects were stated clearly in the prescription description pages and I had made my choice to see if those would happen to me. When it got to the point that I contemplated hurting myself for the first time, I called my father from my university and we set up the next appointment to get off of this medication. The side effects were said to be worse with withdrawal as well.

The scary thing about this medicine, as well as so many of the other hard-core prescription drugs is that we don’t truly know the long-term effects of them all. We can’t truly track the damage that mixing medications and side effects has done. If we are constantly switching medications, there is no true way to check the ways the chemicals are effecting us and what happens once these chemicals are replaced with different ones. We don’t know if these medications, when taken at a young age, will effect our future ability to reproduce as well.

One of the medicines that I have been on for a little bit of time now actually has some negative side effects when taken late. I do not know which medication this is, as I have now been decreased to two separate medicines and I have felt it with both. When I turn my eyes rapidly to the side or try to turn my head, sometimes there is a shocking pain in my eyes that makes them feel like they are freezing. This can happen at any time, randomly. I have told doctors about this as well as a free-floating black dot that I have been seeing in my vision, and moves when I shift my line of vision. They have “taken note” of this, but have not done any further investigating.

A big goal of mine moving forward is to find a more natural route that benefits my body more than these forced pharmaceutical medications that have been created with no long-term understanding of the changes it can make in your body chemistry. I have begun to implement CBD into my routine and plan to add more as research shows me what helps with my symptoms.

I have had daily migraines for a range of 6-8 years now. I have said this to a few people, but I no longer know what my “normal” is. Being on something that alters your body chemistry every day has molded me into someone who depends on pills and does not know where their body’s homeostasis sits. I want to get back to being able to read my body and knowing when something is wrong instead of having a constant lingering pain and dull pounding in my head. I want to be able to tell myself and others what my body needs. Meditating will be a big part of this as well.

If anyone has any suggestions on these topics, feel free to reach out. If you feel the same way, please let me know. I would love to discuss this. Stay strong and know that things are going to get better.