Pot

When you have cancer, people will talk to you about marijuana. Pretty much right away. A lot of people (I suppose this depends on the circles in which you travel, but still, I’ve been surprised by who and how many).

There is the obvious topic of pot for nausea during chemotherapy. I was offered pot and edibles right away. There are also those who have talked to me about it as a cure.

If I’d had my diagnosis when I was in Las Vegas in January, I could have easily gotten a prescription and walked into a medical marijuana dispensary and bought some. Then would I have flown with it in my suitcase? Truth be told, I took a very small amount of pot with me to Vegas. I am an extremely occasional user, still working on a small amount someone gave me as a birthday present three years ago. But, you know, desert seemed like a good place to have a little pot. In the end I took a few puffs one night, which aggravated my “chest congestion,” so I packed it back up.

When I got home and opened my packed suitcase I saw that the TSA had searched it. The pot probably looked like more than it was, because I was so crafty I packed it with coffee in the bag (haha). They decided I wasn’t worth it, I suppose. I mean, it was Vegas.

After the diagnosis, I knew right away I didn’t want pot from the “street.” It’s important to me not to participate in the international drug trade (I realize the previous paragraph points out my inconsistency here, but I assumed now I was talking about a different quantity). The fact that I have access and no fear of prosecution at this point speaks not just to changing attitudes in the country about pot, but also to my privilege. What has surprised me the most has been the offers of pot over e-mail and Facebook. The cat is out of the bag, folks. The fear of disclosing illicit or illegal activity in this particular arena is seriously diminished.

I do have access (again, privilege) to medical marijuana channels. I ordered some edibles made with Washington State medical marijuana through a friend and got them through the mail. My thought was that I would use pot sparingly for chemo side effects. I told my oncology nurse during treatment and she put it on my medications list. I have not had nausea, but I used the edible early on as a sleep aid and appetite aid. In early weeks when I was up for hours in the middle of the night, it did help me sleep.

In Minnesota, medical marijuana legislation passed last year, on an extremely limited basis. It was mostly a compassionate measure for children with seizure disorders or a few types of chronic pain. A very few doctors can issue the prescriptions and the treatment, only in pill form, must be taken through a very few channels in the state under close supervision. Not surprisingly, the numbers of people taking up this option are extremely small. According to a radio show I heard in Vegas, which was about dispensaries setting up banking co-ops to try to handle the financial complications of selling a federally illegal substance legally in a state, the numbers are vey low in Nevada as well. I suspect this has to do with the easy access to illegal pot and its cheap price. Who wants a prescription for it on their record or to draw attention to use when there’s a guy on every street corner and, I assume, in every casino?

I think decriminalization of pot is a good thing. I think it clearly has medicinal uses. I also think we can decriminalize it in a way that provides people with relief, quality, and a way to diminish illegal trade and all the violence and danger associated with that. We can’t make people be responsible about it, but we can’t do that with alcohol either—except we’ve done as well as we can with drunk driving, and we need to do better in all areas with “impaired” and distracted driving—including cell phones.

My experience, here in week ten of treatment, has been decidedly mixed. A very small amount of the very strong edible basically wrecks me. It puts me to sleep, which is great, but after a couple hours I’m awake again. I don’t get any pleasurable high, rather kind of a dizzy in a “don’t operate heavy machinery” way, just of out of it. I hardly ever use it. I have to kind of remind myself about it as an option.

But also, and this makes me want to keep taking it, it makes the cancer hurt. In my chest and my abdomen—it makes the cancer really hurt. And that I’ve taken all along as a sign that something is killing the cancer. So if it’s helping the chemo along, or targeting the cancer directly, I don’t know, but it feels like part of the overall treatment. Here is a link to the NIH Cancer page that says cannabinoids have been shown to kill cancer cells in a laboratory.

So there’s my experience. I’ve found it valid for medicinal purposes. It is not about people hanging around in bed smoking big joints and all mellow as you may have seen in the movies or on television. Nobody in treatment for cancer is giggling their way through life by smoking pot.

Also, it is out there. It is everywhere and the distribution and usage and punishment over it is completely driven by privilege or lack thereof.