Medical Cannabis

On March 1, 2019, after paying the required $50 fee, I hit “send” on my application for medical cannabis.

This afternoon, I pulled my Subaru into the crusty parking lot of Charm City Medicus on North Point Boulevard to pick up my first prescription.

If you aren’t for cannabis, medical or otherwise, maybe best to pick a different post. I am all for hearty debate, but there is evidence that cannabis helps with seizure disorders, chronic pain, and some mood disorders (including depression and anxiety). For the most part, though, findings are mixed, and most studies are neither scientifically valid or adequately funded, which means that most of the “research” on cannabis is largely anecdotal. One nice fat review of studies done by Canadian researchers showed that medical cannabis exhibits promise in the treatment of PTSD and substance abuse disorders (including opioid addiction). Otherwise, pickings are slim, and results both pro and con often come from seriously flawed studies.

I’m not here to argue about what or who it does or does not help. I am just desperate.

I have had diagnosed generalized anxiety disorder since 2006, but I have experienced anxiety for as long as I can remember (legit). I remember anxiety attacks from as young as five, but I would not have been able to paste that label on them at that time. I think most people just thought I was overemotional or too loud or too something.

My anxiety manifests itself in a physical way with a charming combination of gastrointestinal effects that only manage to increase the anxiety (I will spare you the details. But just imagine food poisoning for four to six hours, once or twice a week at the height of anxiety and you’re close). My worst attacks from as far back as I can remember are accompanied by fainting.

Picture this: you are driving a car with your child inside on 495 in DC, and the edges of your vision start to get fuzzy and black, darkness creeping towards the center. Your lips go numb, and you can feel your head start to swirl in a circle on the inadequate stalk of your neck. This happened to me racing from a baby shower in Middletown, Maryland to my brother’s house in northern Virginia in order drop my daughter off and then catch a plane at Dulles. I thought we were going to crash. I had to get off on an exit that turned out to be pitch black with no shoulder. I pulled over on the side of the road as far as I could go, and threw myself out of the car to a grassy area on the passenger side where I let myself faint for a few seconds. Sicily – used to this by now – just asked, “Are you okay, mama?” I don’t think it even phased her. She was seven.

These days, some of the pieces of writing and art that I am working on seem to have found an extra gear in the transmission of my anxiety. A low-level buzz of anxiety is ever-present and has been for the past six months. At night, I have been waking up every two hours for the past month or so. It’s as if in reliving some trauma I have actually given birth to myself as a newborn (see what I did there?).

On top of that, due to a fivefold price increase in my anxiety medication, I have not refilled my prescription, so what I am taking is fairly expired. So that’s not working.

But even if I could routinely buy clorazepate, I would like to be done with it. Benzodiazepines increase the risk of dementia by 40%, more if you use them daily (which I do not – just as needed, which is sometimes daily). Although they were a lifesaver in the past, they don’t seem to be working anymore. Whether it’s the fact they are expired or that I have some kind of tolerance, I have no idea. It’s just not working for me anymore.

So here I am in my kitchen, a few hours after the doctor I paid $200 said yes, and the lovely lady at the dispensary helped me pick out a Tangie cartridge and a vape pen (and some higher THC mints for insomnia), about to sit down to Canadian gluten-free fusilli with pesto, arugula, and chicken, legally high after figuring out how to work my vape (which, friends, is harder for old people to figure out. There’s counting and paying attention involved, which seems paradoxical to getting high, like a stoner Zen koan).

It’s strange. I spent a lot of money to figure out whether or not this will work for me. Right now I just feel like sitting down. A lot.

It is important to me to mention that in the entire series of transactions I conducted in getting prescribed medical cannabis, the only person of color to cross my path was the doctor who certified me. The receptionist and the patients at the doctor’s, the security guards, receptionist, and patients at the dispensary, all three bud tenders, the greeter – every single person was white. Yet another system in which privilege gives me access, and I don’t know what to do about it.

It’s not just a fleeting thought as I walked back to the car from Medicus. It’s the entire process from the application to the fusilli, peopled almost exclusively with white people. I wonder if other people are thinking about it, and almost asked the bud tender about it but felt dumb enough trying to understand what she was talking about and nodding like I got it when she explained to me for the zillionth time about sativa, indica (“In the couch,” she offered as a mnemonic device), CBD, and terpenes.

As I finish up and proofread this post, I am less high, uncomfortably full of pasta, and still unsure how to think about the color of my experience versus the experience of people of color who are disproportionately arrested and overwhelmingly prosecuted for the same substance that I legally obtained (even after cannabis is legalized in many states).

Maybe I use my voice at the polls and my dollars at the dispensary to champion black cannabis cultivators. Still seems inadequate, especially given the fact that my consumption will probably be very, very low.

We’ll see how it goes – Charm City Medicus offers cannabis cooking classes, and I foresee some interesting concoctions coming out of those. At the very least it’s maybe another tool for sleep.

Have you considered medical cannabis for what ails you? Interested in your experience, if you’d like to share below.