I’m done with it. Got started on the weed to soothe my arthritis back around the time I left Lockheed for greener pastures. Everybody gets it to some extent, sooner or later. For whatever reason, genetics, injuries, mine’s been extreme. I have three orthopedic surgeries to show for it so far – both hips and the right shoulder.
As things went on, the c-spine injury from 2000 deteriorated to where un-checked radiculopathy was inducing constant sleep loss and severe acute nerve flare elbow pain. It was actually kinda funny how the first resident I saw about that episode diagnosed it. She just pushed down on my head to light it up, same as I’d been doing then lately, moving or sitting in certain positions. So I had some physical therapy for the C6-7 nerves and ended up getting the shoulder repaired in the outcome of that diagnosis. a few years later in 2019 I was subjected to another nerve root damage at L4-5 pursuant to left hip malpractice. It was far worse than the c-spine I did myself moving tires, with fusion removal of the leaking disc constituting my fourth orthopedic surgery, following a year later.
I might seem to have an exceptional amount of orthopedic surgery and nerve damage experience, with needs and wants for pain medication and anti-inflammatory only growing over the years. The Veterans Administration put me through the gamut of whatever they were offering for it. Venlafaxine, Etodolac, Tramadol, Gabapentin, and lots of NSAIDs for years only seemed to make me immune to opiates. I’m pretty sure I was on a max dosage of some of that stuff for literally years. Ongoing addiction/withdrawal cycles were no fun, either. I called it quits after watching myself walking around doing the yardwork in my own little movie one day. It’s called de-personalization, and the pharmaceuticals eventually gave it to me real bad – probably close to serotonin syndrome. I understand this is a desirable psychotropic effect sought by certain drug addicts, dunno. Scared the crap outta me, and I was the biggest consumer of psychedelics in our little street gang, back in the day.
The only real reason or purpose I can imagine for the MMJ program(s) was to get a foot in the door. Tax revenue is the primary government objective. That alone makes the Colorado MMJ program an oxymoron on it’s face. It costs upwards of $300 to get the certification and commensurate tax break. Then an annual subscription fee, all of which goes to the doctors, with reduced tax revenue for the government. Being unaware of the actual demographics involved, I’m probably somewhere in the middle of the volume consumer group for example purposes, but WTF do I know?
My tax break enabled me to just about break even, cost-wise. Why spend time giving the doctors money, when it could be going to the schools? All they do is sit around taking appointments, trying to determine if the patient is telling the truth about their symptoms, with no fiduciary responsibility of any kind, handing out medcards for their tidy little profit. Oh wait, I remember now – they’re not handing out anything. The State takes care of that with their online spreadsheet containing another copy of everybody’s PII waiting to be compromised. I saw the no-brainer there right off the bat, but continued doing the MMJ thing eight years just because the queues and wait times are shorter.
The article linked below, is only a high level intro. It’s what the pharma industry needs to focus on, and what doctors need to recognize for what it is. Economic competition is the only reason it was banned in the first place, and the reason pharma and alcohol fear it now. Put it in the repertoire with everything else and be thankful we have something that actually works for some of these chronic, degenerative maladies. My closing remark on the Colorado MMJ program is: No disrespect to the overworked, underpaid IT staff, but that online spreadsheet looks like something I might have come up with twenty years ago.
Medicine is not a rote discipline, much as many in the field would like to believe.
