Jennipher Schafer/Contributing Writer
Medical marijuana is on the ballot for this year. Some people have mixed feelings about this but I’m not one of them. As someone suffering from one of the conditions marijuana has been proven to successfully treat I am completely on board with this idea. I’ve seen firsthand what the traditional pharmaceutical industry does to patients and am welcoming of a natural alternative with steady proven results.
As I mentioned I have one of the conditions this has been shown to treat. I’m epileptic. Conventional anti-seizure medication has often increased my seizure activity rather than subdue it. It has also increased my need for the sedative Valium which can be addictive as well as harmful to my body over a long period of time. I was at one point on a regimen of my main anti-seizure medication twice daily and two Valium twice daily for both seizure prevention and my chronic back pain. The side effects were terrible. I spent a lot of time in bed, suffered a dramatic loss in appetite, and often found sleeping at night difficult. Clearly it wasn’t working.
The type of marijuana used to treat epilepsy has been bred to not contain THC (the chemical within the plant that gives one a high). The drug then targets the neurological system causing it to relax which reduces the potential for electrical misfires within the brain which cause seizures. For someone like me this is fantastic news. In fact, this kind of marijuana has been proven safe for children under the age of ten who suffer dangerous levels of seizures on a daily basis.
There are other conditions the plant has been proven to have medicinal uses for. Some of these include multiple sclerosis, migraine headaches, fibromyalgia, intense anxiety disorders, and the negative effects of chemotherapy. For migraines, this is especially useful. Migraine headaches often come with intense pain that is akin to someone taking a rusty power drill to your eye from the inside of your head. And that’s a weak one. Add to that sensitivity to light and sound and some very intense nausea which all can last for several days at a time. You probably get the picture. The usual treatments for these headaches are powerful and dangerous narcotics which over time do two things. First the patient gets used to the drug and needs higher doses over long periods of time. Second the drug does damage to internal organs such as the liver. They usually will also need to take something to curb the nausea just so they can hold down a meal. For the migraine sufferer a natural painkiller that also combats nausea is obviously a very welcome thing. It exhibits the same for chemotherapy patients.
At a time when some states are even decriminalizing the recreational use it is about time we recognized the medicinal uses in our state. Even the president has said it is less harmful than alcohol as multiple studies have shown. I’m not advocating for everyone to just up and use it here. But I am in favor of us finally having access to a proven medicine which will help perhaps hundreds of thousands of people to live normal lives. Isn’t that worth fighting for?
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