I have long supported legalization of most (all?) drugs, including pot. Used to be a pretty serious fan myself. Personally, I am quite dubious of many (not all) claims of medical benefits. But yeah, smoking pot generally cures what ails ya. 
I regularly encounter people who claim to either self medicate or have rx to treat pain w/ pot. For me, getting high made me feel better, whether I happened to be perceiving pain or mental distress, or not. Smoke it if you got it.
Of course not. It just seems like common sense that “I’m high” = “I feel less pain”
I once used 12 ozs of Rum administered orally over 2 hours to stop the pain of sunburn, so I’m cool with it 
I understand what you’re saying, but in some/many cases it doesn’t matter. As long as I’m not in pain, and whatever ails me isn’t something that can be fixed easily, what’s the problem if I’m high or not? Don’t forget, opiate/opioid meds are doing the same thing. As they say ‘it doesn’t get rid of the pain, it just makes you not care’.
Yes, in many cases if you can use a med that’ll knock down some inflammation or help you overcome a painful issue, that’s probably a good course of action. But as long as you feel less pain, that’s generally the goal.
ETA it’s like when I mention something or another I do that fixes some type of pain I have and they reply by saying ‘it’s the placebo effect’. My response to that is ‘so what, if it works, it works’.
If drinking away a sunburn makes you feel better and you’re not putting others in danger, why on earth would anyone else care?
I said for years and years and years, here even, that if you want weed to be legalized, don’t use MMJ as a stepping stone, just fight for legalization. My fear was always that if it became legal for medical reasons, then you’d need a prescription and where does that get you? It would be treated the same way as oxycodone. One person even brought up the point that that would open the doors to big pharma grabbing it and really reduce the chances of it getting legalized for recreational reason.
While I do still feel that way, so far, the way things are heading, it would appear that I’m wrong.
There is no problem. Not sure why everyone thinks I have a problem.
Just seemed strange to me that someone would post “Hey, I smoked weed and my pain went away!”
Seems like a no brainer, that’s all Smoke away.
In fact, this whole thread is kind of strange. “Hey, who gets high so they don’t feel pain?”
It’s as strange to me as someone starting a thread “Who is using 100-proof vodka for pain management?”
It’s not quite that simple. Depending on the strain of cannabis, I’ve smoked weed that amplified pain and made me worry that something truly serious was going on. Shoulder pain quickly became undiagnosed shoulder cancer, that kinda thing.
Similarly, if 100 proof vodka is being used for pain management, one concern would be if the pain were due to a gastric ulcer and the treatment aggravated the pain. Or if the patient over-consumed the vodka and is now in a coma from alcohol toxicity.
Now, pass to your left.
I take blood thinners so basically all NSAIDs are a no-go for me. I also have a bad knee that I don’t want surgery on and spent well over a year with massive pain from a frozen shoulder (it’s better now but still not pain free, just better) along with the other various aches and pains of age. I also get migraines. You betcha I medicate with cannabis because it works and doesn’t, y’know, kill me from bleeding out if I get a scratch.
I’ve discovered that a high-CBD strain like Harlequin that also has a decent THC load works the best for me–the THC relaxes me and reduces the pain quickly then potentiates the slower acting CBD so I get good relief for at least as long as Tylenol would last. I also keep cartridges of pure CBD oil around to bump things if needed, say if my pain is such that enough THC to knock it out would also have me asleep on the couch but I still need to be alert.
One thing that makes pain worse is anxiety and tension and the THC helps knock that right out, assuming you find a good strain that works for you and doesn’t induce paranoia of course. I’ve been dealing with chronic pain from various sources ever since I was twenty and if I’d been using pharmaceuticals all this time to treat pain I’d either be a junkie or my liver would have turned to gravy–cannabis is obviously the better choice. I remember the days when I spent most of my time in an opioid fog–I don’t remember them WELL, mind you, but I remember how dull and absent I was most of the time and I’ll be damned if I go back to THAT. Cannabis allows me to function in the world while managing pain more than adequately and that’s something Purdue and Pfizer can’t say of any of their products.
Indeed.
Old anecdote: many years ago, I used to have bad period cramps. I heard some people saying smoking weed was good for pain, and hey, there was plenty of weed around in my life at that time. So one day when I had bad cramps I got stoned. And everything was fine indeed . . .
until I remembered about the cramps. At which point I had terrible cramps; because I was thinking about them; and, for me, marijuana increased apparent perception of whatever I was thinking about at the time. Great for listening to music. Not so great for thinking about pain.
– that certainly might have been strain related. I had no way at the time (close to 50 years ago) of telling what strain anything was.
Of course. But I doubt you would go on a message board and proclaim “Hey, I took drugs and miraculously my pain went away”
“Using THC for pain management” just seems a strange way to put it. “Smoking weed takes my pain away, anyone else?” seems a more realistic topic. But then, again, it seems to be a known truth. Similar to if I started a thread “Who is using alcohol for stress management?”
What I just posted was that in my case it wasn’t a truth at all.
I took the OP to be asking whether people in similar situations (which mine wasn’t really) were actually getting significant pain relief from marijuana products containing THC. You seem to be taking it for granted that of course everybody would. I don’t think that is a “known truth”.
I would bet most people who smoke weed experience less pain. I doubt people would continue to smoke if it caused them more pain. It’s the conversation using phrases like “marijuana products containing THC” that amuses me. “Anyone drink liquids containing ethanol to control stress?” seems similar to me. I just find it amusing that’s all. I’ve nothing against anything that people what to smoke, drink, inject, ingest, whatever as long as they aren’t hurting anyone else.
I don’t think most people who smoke weed are doing so for reasons having to do with pain. They’re doing so because they want to get stoned: which is a state of mind that has a whole batch of effects, varying with the person and to some extent with the particular weed. Most people IME are after some of the other effects. Some people searching for pain relief of course don’t want to get stoned, but will take it in preference to the pain if it actually does control pain for them and that’s the only way they can control their pain; but I don’t think that applies to most marijuana users.
Being under the influence of alcohol and being under the influence of marijuana aren’t all that similar, even if some people do refer to both of them as being “high”. But lots of people drink alcohol for reasons that have nothing to do with pain, also. And people use both of them when they aren’t in pain in the first place, because they’re after the other effects; and some people would use them even if they did cause some degree of pain, if they wanted the other effects more than they didn’t want the pain.
I’m puzzled by your apparent assumption that “stoned” is automatically the same thing as “numbed”. It’s often rather the opposite.
That’s fair. I’m similarly puzzled by your assumption that “pain” is only the physical kind.
Nm
I wasn’t assuming that.
But I do think it’s physical pain that the OP was talking about.
Lots to say, so I hope bulleted points will keep me concise.
• Friend with chronic, debilitating pain from complications of childhood polio switched from opioids to cannabis. The relief was total, and five years later, he’s still using it–no opioids or NSAIDS. (Not sure if he smokes it or what.)
• I tried pure CBD capsules. No noticeable effect. Guy I knew who owned a large grow operation said a little THC (not enough to get high) helps activate the CBD.* Eureka! However, it tanked my BP. No THC for nellie.
• Topical CBD does zero to help my lupus pain. That’s probably because the salve I used doesn’t contain a high enough concentration of CBD. The stuff that does is, again, out of my price range.
• Retired MD friend with lupus said CBD works only when taken in sufficient quantities and in higher concentrations. Friend with fibromyalgia says the same. Problem: it’s VERY pricy. We’re talkin’ $400/month. I don’t have that kind of cash. Also, fibro friend said the effectiveness started to diminish. I think she’s going to go off it for a bit and then try again.
*It’s legal here.
It doesn’t necessarily follow, though. When my mother was put on opioids for her back pain, the pills didn’t do anything for the pain while shattering her inhibitions to Hell. Before that scrip, she’d complain and moan; on the scrip, she yelled insults and threw things. She also tried to hit people but given her mobility she succeeded only once with each person. For several months at that point, she’d required Dad or me to feed her; during that time, we refused to let her “try to feed herself” after a couple of incidents involving trying to hit or stab us with the cutlery. I didn’t let my brothers get close to her.
Taking her off that scrip required a five-week hospital stay, with the back pain still unsolved (eventually, it required surgery; the source of the pain was a nerve being pinched because its canal was too narrow).
As far as I know, she rarely uses the narcotics - she doesn’t want to become dependent. I know she does a lot of physical therapy, and she gets some sort of electro-shock treatment - I saw a photo she posted on FB.
That seems to jibe with my experience. The smelly, all-CBD salve I ordered online says “500 mg” on the label, and the less smelly stuff I get at a dispensary says “150 mg”.
The 500 mg stuff works quite well, and the 150 mg stuff, even though laced with THC, only works slightly.
ETA: THC tanks your BP? As in lowers it?
I live in California, and went to the grand opening of the first pot store in town. They had a boatload of salespeople, and they seemed to be well informed. If you live in a legal medical marijuana state, it might be worthwhile to go and chat them up to get some recommendations.
Reviewed a file the other day in which a young man was self prescribing pot for purported pain. Of course, then he claimed he still had pain, but also lacked motivation! :smack: