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I Tried Medical Marijuana for Chronic Pain. It Didn’t Work.
Cannabis can’t do it all for all of us.
I’ve got nothing against weed. I started started smoking it as a pre-teen in 1969. Off and on, I was a daily user. Weed was so cheap back then, people sometimes gave my dog a bud to eat. It made her very mellow.
The best thing about smoking pot for me was how it enhanced sensations. The ocean looked even more magnificent than usual. Flowers looked unbelievably intricate and beautiful. Cupcakes tasted like heaven. Music was so powerful, I could feel it massaging my brain.
Oh, wait. Maybe that was LSD. I was an enthusiastic user of many recreational drugs.
Getting high, as I discovered in my thirties, was in my blood. I grew up in a troubled adoptive home, but addiction was not one of that family’s troubles.
In my blood family, though, there was a long history of drinking and getting high. Sometimes that came without consequences; sometimes it could be a killer.
In the 1980’s, still smoking weed, I was a public defender. I’d argue with cops and probation officers and judges about why our legal drug should be marijuana instead of alcohol. “You know how many problems alcohol causes. What’s the worst thing people do when they’re high?” I’d ask them. While…
