Hey captain, I don’t know if I help or not but let me tell ya my story. It’s a little bit like forest gump! Honestly it does but I swear down hand on heart it’s the Gods honest truth, I won’t go fully into it but il just put the bits in that I can relate too.
Just a little background tho to start: I’ve always liked weight training since my uncle got me into it so have always worked out at the gym, I was 22 and half stone 6ft 2” so I was a big guy to say the least! At the beginning of May 2013 I had been training hard during the week and come down with a chest infection, I’m asthmatic too so as any asthmatic will tell you, if you get a chest infection it’s multiplied 10 fold in severity! I had it for 3weeks and I had a mad violent coughing fit that I couldn’t stop and it blew all of my lower back out, 3 discs where, trapped along with nerves, I was bedridden for 9 months and had to have 2 surgeries to try and fix it. It sort of helped but then in 2016, my lower back just naturally blew out again, so had to have a more severe surgery to fix it. It hasn’t fixed it cus I’ve been left with chronic back pain to deal with. The thing is since 2013 I have been on prescription meds which includes loads of opioids, zomorph 10, 30, 60mg, 500ml oramorph, diazepam. I have all those plus another 8-9 different nerve agents, MS treatment, antidepressants etc I’m taking like 8-12 tablets with 20ml or oramorph 3 times a day day every day so now my body has unwittingly become totally dependent upon all of my medications, if I miss out 1 treatment slot with my meds, I get severe withdrawals! And I do mean SEVRE!!! Like get the shakes and shivers, hot/ cold sweats, feeling extremely nauseous plus a whole host of other issues that make your body feel unbelievable I’ll!!!
I been toking on our lovely green erb for over 25 years, mostly recreational but for the past 7 months I have under my doctor’s advice been using it medically. Last year was one of the toughest years of my life, having to deal with multiple family deaths, work issues, financial issues, stress of trying to get our second property sold, health issues deteriorated badly, like real bad, my marriage and relationship with my wifey was falling apart and with my chronic back pain issues I could only work in the office for 3 days and work at home for 2 cus my body was breaking down bit by bit as the year went on. By the end of the year and the first 3-4 months of this year my back was causing so much pain that it was sending me deeper and deeper into severe depression. I was then made redundant in January and with all the crap going on I was going into deeper darker thoughts to the point where I felt suicidal.........,:
Yep! Things were that bad that I couldn’t cope and I wanted it to all end 8( it takes a fukin lot and I do mean a lot to get me wound up, but with all the stress and issues going on with my health, marriage etc I almost broke and cracked open! My thoughts were so so dark I had thought about ways to do it, you probably don’t wanna know all this shit but I’m going somewhere.
I visited a few websites for both the bad way to go and also the way to get support. Thing is during all this time of really bad negative thoughts and thinking bad things got changed.
What do I mean by that? Well it was while I was searching-the web for good and bad things I came across many instances whereby several people had gone through similar symptoms as I and issues.
To try help treat their conditions they where put onto medical cannabis by their doctors. This has drastically changed the now patients for the betterment. Those suffering with chronic pain and depression where helped significantly.
To the point whereby one patient who was in a similar medical and mental situation as me, was prescribed cannabis as a form of treatment. This helped them significantly to the point they could go about and return to a normal way of living.
But for me, I went to my doctor and they gave advice on using cannabis but they said that they couldn’t prescribe the medical cannabis, even though the laws where changed last November or the November before so that doctors could start prescribing weed. My doc gave me advice that I already knew so was let down again by them. So I find a few different sites that sold weed (I can’t get a prescription as yet, as from my research I need to get a referral by the docs and then you go off to a specialist center for treatment). I have been looking at it but it’s a very VERY expensive way to do it, like £2-3500 a month! I can’t afford that so finding LB has been life saving for me.
I now buy my weed on here, yep it’s still the non legal way to do it but I can’t go through that pain of my back blowing out.again. I been using cannabis as a treatment by having 5-6 2gram joints (I toke it pure in a joint, no tobacco) a day, this helps to combat all the negativity in my mind and body, sounds corny but it’s true! Toking certain strains recently has really helped me deal with my chronic back pain and mental issues, I have been able to reduce down some of my opioid medications. I have a long long way to go but I have started now and I’m able to do a hell of a lot more than I could do post surgery. I’m saying that having weed is helping me lower my pain levels and medications too. The other positive is finding the LB community, they have helped out without even knowing it, just being there for support and whatever. If you are struggling with ‘getting off’ then just lower your opioid levels bit by bit day by day whilst steadily increasing your consumption of the cannabis. I have found this to be the best way to lower my opioid dosages whilst staying in control of the pain levels. I will be doing this for a while, as the doctor said you need to go low and slow on your reduction of the opioids this way you can get your levels down and eventually you will be able to stop needing them. This will take a few years I know as I’ve tried before to lower my dosages and it takes ages, but persevere at it and you can do it. You just have to take it day by day and have a good support system, family or friends. Just know you’re not the only one thats suffering and you didn’t need to suffer alone either, the community on here can help you too.
I hope that this helps and not make you think I’m a crack pot!!!
All the best 8)
