This month is all about Lupus Awareness. And to me lupus affects everyone differently and everyone is going to use different things for treatment.  So throughout the month you will see posts written from different authors on how Lupus and other conditions affect them. As well as how they treat their conditions. I hope you enjoy their pieces. This is the first of this Pieces written by a long time spoonie!  She suffers with Lupus, Interstitial Cystitis, and Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome among other things. Here’s her story on how legalized marijuana helps the chronically ill! 
As promised to my pal Amber & since I proudly own the title of the tree hugging hippie Canadian who eats pot, I agreed to write what I know about the miracle wonder weed aka marijuana. I promise you , When I am done, your opinion of the weed smoking ” stoners” were nothing but idiots & uneducated will change! The amount of info they must learn is phd level.  Ok here I go – Have a seat, pot school is in session Ready? The fact that I use it now medicinally surprises me more than anyone. I was anti pot. I may have drank & been a tad loosy goosly once upon a time but NEVER DRUGS. I went to school, became a social worker who dabbled in drug & alcohol awareness, while working with low functioning developmentally delayed clients along side the Main Street bad guys ( that was a trip ) in a halfway house. All thorough out my career I suffered horribly with IC & cyclical Vomiting & what they thought was fibro ( it was not , it was Lupus). Career wise, I started out being a Private Investigator trying to catch the bad guy, to working in a halfway house trying to fix the bad guy, to working at Welfare & no longer caring about the bad guy. By the time I got to the last part of my career,  I was a sick puppy with an undercooked baby with a bad heart for a child. Not my finest hour. I got wigged out on Oxys & Lorazepam, lost my first spouse whom I loved dearly & had to leave my hard earned career permanently. The big pharmacy world was slowly destroying my life. I was asked by my pain doctor if I would be willing to try various strains & delivering systems using MJ. I had tried Nabalone, Marinol & Sativex – all prescription man made alternatives utilizing THC – the main ingredient in MJ. Personally the marinol did nothing, the sativex spray burnt the inside of my mouth & Nabalone helped with constant nausea but did nothing once an attack occurred. I use it as preventative agent now. Because I do not like taking anything I am not well versed in, after I was asked to try edibles infused with MJ , I cracked open the books. It’s important if folks are going to use it properly & get the most out of it to make sure they are well informed. 

First off – there are 3 types of MJ

Sativa-if you are prone to paranoia – don’t use straight sativa as it has invigorating, uplifting cerebral effects that go well if you have to be alert , witty & physical active at an endurance level 

Indica- sedating , perfect for going to bed or needing to relax & unwind . 

Hybrids tend to fall somewhere in the middle . Because they work so differently , a patient suffering from depression may use a sativa during the day & someone else treating pain or insomnia will choose an Indica strain at night 

High CBD strains are used for treating seizures, anxiety & pain just to name a few but have no psychoactive effects aka feelings or making one high.

The 2 main ingredients in MJ are CBD – cannabidiol & THC – tetrahydrocannabinol . Many strains of MJ arenknown for having an abundance of THC & not CBD. Case in point. A young girl in the US needed a high CBD cannibis to juice that would reduce & eventually eliminate her seizures. They, in fact named a high CBD strain ” Charlotte’s web” after the little one who desperately needed it. Her parents moved her to another state where it was easier to grow Charlotte’s web due to growing conditions & legalities. There home state wanted to put the parents in jail & take their baby away & put in foster care because some bureaucratic idiot decided they were endangering their child . Family packed up to new legal state, Charlotte took less that 1mm droplet of juiced high CBD levelled Indica 2-3 xs a day at first , now down to 1 dose a day & she is one beautiful young girl whose seizures are controlled by her use of cannibis. I think parents who are not willing to give their kids with seizures juiced MJ should be charged with child endangerment 

. The stigma is beyond ridiculous . 

Here are 5 differences between CBD & THC 

1. the high – while disappointing to the community wishing only to get high , the medical community is realizing CBD actually works wonders as a medicine 

2. THC is known to cause folks to be jittery , anxious & paranoid . CBD appears to have polar opposite effects., studies have proven that CBD works to counteract the anxiety caused by ingesting tHC . Also a number of studies state CBD can reduce anxiety when administered on its own – nature’s Valium. 

3. CBD in addition to being non psychoactive it appears to have antipsychotic properties & is being used for folks with schizophrenia & bipolar . For folks who are having a bad ” trip” making them anxious. Ingesting CBD MJ will calm the person down. 

4. Sleep- this is going to sound confusing but here I go / if you want to sleep & pronevto paranoid – don’t use a Sativa high in THC. However, if you want to fall into a sweet slumber and paranoia is not an issue – an Indica with both thc & CBD works well or just high THC. High CBD strains often keep folks awake & helps with pain. I like a hybrid of both CBD & THC in an indica as sativa makes me jumpy . Induction with CBD & thc helps with pain sleep & nausea . 

5. The last difference between the two will soon be a non issue in Canada when they legalized MJ across the country not just for medicinal use. The difference is there is CBD in hemp – hemp is a food, can be made into clothing etc & because it had no ” high ” effects , it’s classified differently & recently the FDA approved a form of CBD called Epidiolex that can be tested on children. 

There have been many jokes about cannibis use as well as lies & misconceptions that it is the gateway drug to hell. It is NOT!!! It is not physically addicting . People may believe they are chemically addicted or dependent on it but they are not. Anyone can stop without any worries of withdrawal . It does not take you by the hand and lead you to other big bad drugs. In fact they now use it to help with withdrawal from the hard crap out there. If people are going to do hard drugs …. they will despite whether or not they used cannibis first . 

If one is ingesting non heated CBD ( juiced cannibis) they can walk tightropes, fly planes & not be impaired at all. If one uses Indica high THC cannibis that has been heated / cooked at some point – stay off the streets , do not share it with your kids or pets, behave & go to sleep . 

I can’t smoke it. Somewhere along my almost 52 years of breathing , i did not learnt the fine tuned skill of breathing in with my mouth & out my nose without making myself hyperventilate . Add smoke to the mixture & I am just one hot mess. Unless I have been run over by the Benny Bus ( biologic Wonder med for Lupus that can make you feel like you have been run over by a bus or 2), I am having a ” making Linda Blair from The Exorcist look like an amateur in the barfing department ” aka a cyclical Vomiting attack , I don’t use it during the day. My dear pal who was a quadriplegic due to being shot when we were 18 used it through out the day to stop involuntary spasms . In her case & mine- using a Sativa with high THC levels would not work for our needs. We both used Indica with s combo of CBD & THC. When I juice MJ , I use    

The entire plant leaves, stems etc that contains both CBD & THC . Due to fact I am not heating it , the thc levels are irrelevant because they can only be released when heated. 

Because I turned a leaf ( pun not intended) in my views of MJ, I got off Oxys, will never use lorazepam again , reduced fentanyl patch from 200mg to 25-50g & I’m back to me again. Those other drugs rob folks of their souls & true identities : we have an awesome form of medicine right at our finger tips & the fact folks would rather take brain numbing & cell destroying pills baffles me. If I can change my views , anyone can once they have done the research. 

Enclosed are a few more reference pages to read if interested ✌️✌️✌️