I found recovery in April 2011 at the ripe age of 22. I was a shell of a person bouncing from couch-to-couch trying to avoid the people I had ripped off. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired and decided to make a change. I had all of these “barstool dreams” I wanted to achieve but just couldn’t, due to my addiction.
Fast forward five years and I have achieved every single one of those barstool dreams. I am happily married with two beautiful children and live in a house that I own. I am accomplished in my career and drive a car I never thought I could afford. I wake up in the morning grateful to be alive and not hungover, withdrawing from opiates, or scrounging around for a tiny rock I may have dropped on the floor the night before. And oh yeah, I smoke pot.
Smoking pot in recovery was never something I thought I would be doing. I didn’t even like marijuana when I was out there using. The only time I sought out the devil’s lettuce was when I was sick or hungover and needed a quick cure in order to hustle and do it all over again. Mary Jane and I were merely acquaintances that met during desperate times.
Desperate times is how MJ and I became reacquainted. I was extremely ill, taking pharmaceuticals I could not even pronounce and still seeing no relief of symptoms. My doctor mentioned medical marijuana and my first reaction was “DON’T YOU KNOW I’M AN ADDICT!?”…but here I am, hiding in my backyard, smoking a joint. How the hell did I get here?
When my doctor brought this up to me I thought he was the one smoking pot…Who in their right mind tells an addict that marijuana IS the solution? This quack obviously did not know anything about addiction, recovery, or pot! After his proposition of exploring medical marijuana as an option bounced around in my head for a while, I mentioned it to my sponsor expecting wholeheartedly that her response would be “Find a new doctor.” Her response? “Let’s talk about this more.”
You see, I have always had to be on some type of pharmaceutical since I got clean. I used drugs and alcohol because they worked for my ailments, be them mental or physical. My hors d’oeuvres just changed to legal and regulated drugs once I became clean. One for sleep, one for depression, one for anxiety.. add my chronic illness onto that and I have a pill for every letter of the alphabet. I was damaging my mind and body by putting these chemicals into me but I was told this was the only acceptable way to cure or at least put these symptoms at bay. *Insert medical marijuana*
Without giving too many details that may be able to connect back to my true identity, I will tell you a bit about what drove me to finally take my doctor’s advice. I was on a slew of medications, some to just offset the side effects of the others. And yet, I was hardly seeing any relief. It was a particularly bad night where I had gotten no sleep, I could not keep down any fluids or solids and I swore I was on the brink of death. The next day I started the process of getting my medical marijuana card. This process took about two weeks and once I received the all go, I made my first purchase of legal marijuana.
…. “Am I laughing or crying right now?”… Oops, too much!
The first time I “medicated” it was intense, scary, and downright awful. So was the second, fourth, and twentieth times. You may think that smoking pot is an enjoyable experience for an addict… it’s not. Because medical marijuana is not widely accepted there is not a lot of human testing done for the vast array of ailments it can help, if not cure. This leads to patients having to “experiment” to find the right dosage.
It’s not like you walk into the marijuana doctor, you tell them your issue and they give you a script for a 10-day course of OG Kush or take ONE PUFF every four hours type of thing. They recommend dosage/strain/route of ingestion but their recommendations could keep an elephant stoned for 48 hours (this is not an exaggeration). This experimentation period proved to be extremely stressful. This is not unlike trying to find the right anti-depressant or pain management course… just more “taboo.” Once that experimentation period was over and I found what worked for me; my world changed. For the first time in three years I was physically, mentally, and spiritually healthy.
I am currently on two medications: one is an enzyme I lack that can only be replaced by prescription drugs and the other—marijuana. I am by no means putting this out there to put drugs into addicts’ hands. Quite the opposite, actually. As I sit here writing this today I am filled with anxiety. I want to make it clear, however, this anxiety is not coming from a place of shame or guilt. I am 100% confident in the way I choose to medicate myself.
My anxiety comes from being found out. I have people in my network that do not know this truth about me. Again, this is not out of shame, but out of respect to their recovery. How do you explain to someone that, yes, sometimes marijuana can be used in a responsible way? How do we distinguish who does make a good candidate for medical marijuana and who doesn’t? Without advocacy for further testing and regulation on this, the option of medical marijuana for addicts, or anyone with a chronic illness, is a hard one to choose.
I chose to write this piece because I believe that there are others out there like me. Addiction and chronic illness go hand-in-hand. Who am I, or anyone else for that matter, to judge the way that someone chooses to treat their chronic illness? Yes, there is a risk that I am going to abuse my medication. As was there a risk that I would have abused any number of my pharmaceuticals. But I haven’t. I didn’t.
For this addict, marijuana over opiates, benzodiazepines, and hardcore immunosuppressants was an option and the option that worked. Just for today, I choose to medicate myself with medical marijuana. Just for today, I have not chosen to abuse this medication. Just for today, I choose to expose truth with the hope that a conversation will be started. A conversation based around acceptance. A conversation of how to create a recovery community that doesn’t exclude people for their choice of medication as long as it’s done in a legal and responsible way (this includes pharmaceuticals and medical marijuana). A conversation so recovering addicts like me don’t have to hide in their backyards “smoking joints.”
DISCLAIMER: THE DECISION TO USE MEDICAL MARIJUANA WAS ONE I MADE WITH MY DOCTOR, MY SPONSOR, AND MY HIGHER POWER. I AM IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM ADVOCATING FOR ANYONE IN OR OUT OF RECOVERY TO SEEK THEIR MEDICAL MARIJUANA CARD WITHOUT THE CONSULTATION OF THEIR NETWORK, SPONSOR, AND A MEDICAL DOCTOR.
Hillary Gladstone is a pseudonym for an American writer.
