By Jane Stillwater
http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2012/01/e-cannibus-unum-has-medical-marijuana.html
I’ve just about tried everything there is to make my sore knees and right ankle feel better — physical therapy, acupuncture, SynVisc (nasty stuff), chiropractic, Advil, hydrotherapy, Tiger Balm, xi gong, steam baths, reiki, Filipino psychic surgery, hypnotherapy, Zam-Zam water, deep-tissue massage, yoga,.. You name it and I’ve tried it. But nothing has worked — until now.
Now I’ve discovered “DocGreen’s Therapeutic Healing Cream,” which is made from shea butter, palm oil, vegetable wax and cannabis. That’s right, you read that right. I am currently rubbing marijuana onto my knees.
And, yes, it’s legal. And, yes, it works.
“But where did you get this stuff?” you might ask. “While standing on a corner in West Oakland? After skipping across the border to Tijuana? By following hippies around up on Telegraph? In the evidence room at the DEA? Where?”
I got it at my friendly local marijuana dispensary http://www.harborsidehealthcenter.com/. And what a trip that was too, with all kinds of types — from arthritic old ladies and dying cancer patients to young men and women who looked like they’ve never been sick a day in their life — standing in a really long line and waiting their turn in front of a huge display counter featuring everything from manufactured doobies and sativa buds to infused chocolates and ointments like the kind that I got.
But, hey, DocGreen’s soothing therapeutic ointment worked.
Plus it also made me sort of happy — a big surprise there. Not that I was stoned or zonked or nothing, and there was definitely no slow-motion-type incapacitation or uncontrollable munchies like I’ve heard that you get from eating dope brownies or smoking a spliff. And there was none of that sudden Bob Marley “one-love” positive-vib stuff either. I still have all the same worries and troubles that I used to have before — that corporatists are still destroying our country and my tooth still hurts and I’m still overdrawn at the bank — but now I’m just a little bit less on edge about all that and a little bit more able to cope.
PS: I figured that since just a little bit of DocGreen’s healing therapeutic moisturizer helped my soreness and also my frame of mind, then perhaps I should try a bit more. So I rubbed some of the ointment onto my sore neck as well. Wrong thing to do. An immediate headache resulted, and then I started worrying again all over — but this time more fiercely. Oh rats. I just knew it was too good to be true. Looks like I’d better go back to trying holy water and saunas.
But then I listened to Layna Berman on KPFA and she said that many people end up getting addicted to various substances by trying to “take the edge off” their lives. Hey, I wanna take the edge off! But according to Berman, no, that’s not a good idea, Apparently having worries is a good thing — because they force you to act, to try out different things that might end all those worries. Perhaps like joining OWS in order to end the corporatists’ sleazy reign of terror in Washington? Oh, okay.
Berman also stated that by using outside means of cheering oneself up, then our body loses its own ability to cheer itself up.
PPS: Then I listened to a video on “Full Disclosure” that talked about how California is being taken over by Mexican drug lords — even including taking over the legal medical marijuana trade. Yikes!
According to a recent “Full Disclosure” report, “Mexican Drug Cartels are controlling industrial farming of Marijuana while enslaving both the illegal alien laborers and the U. S. Farmers. Once entrapped by the Cartels, they are unable escape with their lives.” http://www.fulldisclosure.net/Blogs/107.php
Double yikes! Now I’m in danger of becoming a member of the Sinaloa drug cartel! Just because I’ve got bad knees.
PPPS: If marijuana is illegal, shouldn’t they make all those other artificial feel-good substances illegal too? Like cigarettes and booze? Wouldn’t it be nice if you had to have a doctor’s prescription before you could set foot into a liquor store?
PPPPS: Someone else just recommended that I just simply stick to eating mushrooms. According to a recent TED video on the subject, mushrooms are the last best hope for this planet and we can even use them instead of fossil fuel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI5frPV58tY Yeah, but can mushrooms make my ankle and knees (and brain) feel any better?
PPPPS: Then I went up to that dispensary on Telegraph Avenue at http://berkeleypatientscare.com/ and got a chocolate infusion to eat. Forget that! One small bite almost the size of a baby’s fingernail and I was absolutely frozen in place for the next TWELVE WHOLE HOURS. I couldn’t even get to my computer to call for help on FaceBook!
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This article is Part One of an ongoing series regarding the advantages and disadvantages of using medical marijuana. And if anyone wants to try DocGreen’s Therapeutic Healing Cream, please let me know and I’ll give you the 411.
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From Yoko, regarding an update on the food and radiation problem still haunting Japan:
Kayoko and I have been invited to give a presentation at Pecha Kucha next Tuesday 1/24 in San Francisco. We will be speaking on our experiences during our trip to Japan last October, in regards to food and radiation. Please find all the info here:
http://www.umamimart.com/2012/01/umamimart-pecha-kucha-124-sf/
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From Full Disclosure: The Dark Side of legalizing pot: Is California headed for corruption much worse than in Chicago in the days of Al Capone and prohibition? Watch this video assessment by Mexican Mafia and Gang Specialist Sgt. Richard Valdemar, who retired after more than three decades with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. He describes how the Mexican Drug Cartels are controlling industrial farming of Marijuana while enslaving both the illegal alien laborers and the U. S. Farmers. Once entrapped by the Cartels, they are unable escape with their lives. Valdemar cites a recent example of the desperation of “medical marijuana” dealers in the U. S. who cannot turn to the police to save themselves from the Mexican Drug Cartels now taking over operations in California. http://www.fulldisclosure.net/Blogs/107.php
I was on THC pills (Marinol) for many years because of a condition where I was vomiting all day long. It was the only way I could have a short period to eat. Like your chocolate infusion, sometimes it would zonk me out of my head and other times it wouldn’t work at all. The quality control obviously wasn’t too good. In that instance, smoking a hit or two and waiting to see if I needed to smoke more would have been much better for me, but in Texas, you’d have to take a risk of getting arrested to purchase marijuana illegally.
My late wife had an uncle who had some people on his land in Northern California. He couldn’t go on that part of his land because of the growers with automatic rifles. Legalization would have helped situations like the one in your last video. If it were legal, no one would worry about going to the law.
If they want to offer marijuana as a medical remedy, there needs to be much better quality control, but for people undergoing chemo or who have other disorders which severely limit their ability to eat, it is a lifesaver when it works.
Jane, i find it interesting that putting some of the ointment on the back of the neck gave you an immediate headache. The neck is where tension first begins to collect, then moves down. It’s possible you had a whole tangle of tensed nerves back there and the first effort to relieve them caused spasms, resulting in a headache. I’m just theorizing here, as i can get my neck muscles to relax, either. Not with massage, not with yoga, and even after a hot tub the muscles tighten back up within an hour.
We live in pretty horrible times. Even non-activists, carefully doing everything they can to not commit infractions of the law end up toeing a very careful line if they don’t have the economic resources to remain within the statutes of the law. Daily, law abiding people are fined for traffic violations due to improper maintenance they can’t afford to keep up, building violations for the same reason, are investigated for being an unfit parent because they are poor or their child acts up in school, or simply investigated because they haven’t been busted yet so the police think they are simply being clever and trying to hide something.
There are no longer laws against entrapment. Recently a friend of mine was busted for selling alcohol to a twenty year old army recruit because she didn’t know how to read a military ID. It was a sting operation, designed to make her fall. She is a single woman with kids, has three part time jobs and now faces a $3,500 fine and three days in jail. In the bars, the waitresses and bartenders can lose their jobs, lose their establishments, go to jail for continuing to serve alcohol to somebody who is already inebriated.
If they can’t find a way to bust you for infractions, they bust your economic assets. If you are an activist, they simply sit and wait until they can bust you in one of your demonstrations. In the meantime, they pound the drums of war while half the world is pointing their guns back at us. War, civil upheaval, an oppressive government looking only for a tidy sum to put in their pockets… only someone who doesn’t give a damn about anything wouldn’t have muscle tension.
@ Karlsie,
“We live in pretty horrible times. Even non-activists, carefully doing everything they can to not commit infractions of the law end up toeing a very careful line if they don’t have the economic resources to remain within the statutes of the law.”
And this is why I stopped being a “law” abiding slave – there’s no point trying to obey the “law” when its just a tool to fuck you over with: stick to “legal” forms of work and the employers will find a way to keep you working for as little as they have to pay you, get a degree to improve your lot in work and you go into debt with no guarantee of a decent job afterwards, buy insurance for your vehicle and get screwed by rising rates (especially if you have an accident) or risk arrest (along with your driver’s license, rendering your car useless) – no matter what you do, the “law” is against you at every turn!
If my options in society are limited to “criminal” or slave I pick the former…
Here is the reason I’m so adamant about keeping pot illegal. THIS MAN, known as El Pareja, whose real name is Victor Escobar, was the reason we fled Mexico. Not because we tried to become involved with him; or because we had any interest in drugs what-so-ever (neither of us did drugs or had anything to do with them). But because he wanted to force many to become involved with him to help him distribute his drugs. And that included many innocent people, like us. http://youtu.be/hwT8blqUx48
Jennifer, i’ve been thinking about your comment. The gangs and cartels originated as a means of trafficking drugs that had strict repercussions for those who got caught. Possession not only meant jail time. It often meant a total wipe-out of all your assets. In many cases, the police were extremely brutal. I knew a man in Jalisco who was shot through both his knees by federales when he refused to give up the name of a grower. Brutality breeds brutality. The gangs began following strict rules. You didn’t turn anyone in, ever, because if you did, gang retaliation was much worse than the sentence you’d receive.
I know a lot of people whose only “crime” is a fondness for marijuana. In every other way, they are decent, hard working people. It should have been legalized a long time ago, before users had become hardened by the criminal system and passed on their cartel ethics to their children. In fact, by now, a great many of cartel controlled growers and traffickers don’t want to see marijuana legalized because it will drive down the prices. With relaxed laws, they are determined to control the market because they don’t want to lose their highly profitable trade.
It was stupid to allow this war on drugs to go on so long and now we must pay the consequences. I don’t know what the solution is to the viciousness of the drug lords that are now creeping into California growing operations, but these problems are the direct result of a violent law enforcement agency using violent means to control drug use. Take away the excuses for using violence and liquidating property because of anti-marijuana laws, and we can concentrate more on those who are using violent means to control the drug circuit.
@Karlsie-Creeping into California? They have a firm stronghold here. Also it is the war against drugs that keeps them in buisiness.
@Jennifer. I understand your experience and resultant distast for drugs in general and marijuana in particular. I myself do not have any use for it. However, I don’t understand how making it legal (and by this I mean all the way legal, not the half-assed restricted sort of legality we have now) would help these violent people. If nothing else it would force them into legitimate buisiness practices if they wanted to stay in the trade.
But there will always be those looking to get around legitimate means of income and the really badmen will find another avenue to pursue. That I do understand. I just don’t get that marijuana is responsible for this deep and hard to get rid of social structure.
Ditto Grainne – it’s irrational to blame a product for things like brutallity on the part of those who possess them: by that logic cars are responsible for highway fatalities, guns are killers and bath tubs drown small children. Any material object is only as dangerous as the context it exists in (ex. a gun in the hands of an unsupervised child vs. an expert marksman at a firing range), no more no less…
Yesterday, a pot shop in the San Fernando Valley was shut down. The man running it had made $600K in one year from selling his pot for $20 per gram. It was supposed to be a holistic health shop. It was a mercado for drugs, illegal in the state of California. What they carted away along with the pot were a large cache of weapons. Why would a holistic health facility need guns?
Because they get much of their product from the cartels in Mexico.
Who was one of the persons rescued in Mexico during the arrest of Victor Escobar? A local Medical Marijuana shop owner, who had been kidnapped and was being held in Soler, a colonia in the outskirts of Tijuana.
I cannot and never will buy the idea that people like Joaquin Guzman, or any of the Arellano Felix family, or Héctor Beltrán Leyva, or even Victor Escobar care about getting their product to the public in a safe way. And I really don’t care that police are hostile to some bastards that have beheaded and brutally murdered innocent people in the name of profiteering off of drugs.
Héctor Beltrán Leyva’s brother Arturo was shot dead by marines in December 2009. Gunmen then massacred a marine’s family in what appears to be an act of retribution. Leyva has been indicted in New York and the District of Colombia.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2019221_2019202_2019196,00.html #ixzz1l2tQO4DA
The marine’s family…what did they do to deserve that? This is what we are willing to accept in the name of getting high? Seriously? And we are actually willing to make excuses for these animals?
The problem is that PROFITS from marijuana IS responsible for this mess. That the drug exists and has before all of this happened is not the problem. The problem is that the sales of this drug has created a huge network of criminals that do not value anyone.
We can debate this and say that X equals Y and that leads to the conclusion of Z; but that doesn’t change what is happening. And what is happening has EVERYTHING to do with marijuana sales; both to drug dealers on the streets and drug dealers opening pot shops under the guise of medical marijuana. Legalizing marijuana won’t change that. It will only drive these corrupt organizations into other forms of profit making, now that they’ve already made fortunes off of selling dope to dopes. And it won’t stop the problem of selling coca to coke heads, or meth to meth heads.
Since many marijuana smokers also dabble in those drugs, it is likely that after they reach their optimum high getting legal marijuana that they will dabble some more. Do you intend to legalize all drugs then? Heroine too? And after the number of drug addicts grow to a number so high we can’t afford to clean them all up, what then?
The war against drugs does not keep the cartels here. The gangs do and the gun sales in other countries support that. Gang members have become the cartel’s greatest asset. They use panderos to sell their drugs, distribute them, and as low level enforcers and contacts. The gangs won’t go away because we have cultural disparities that breed gangs.
I know a lot of people who have a fondness for marijuana too. And in each case, they fail to have reached their potential because of their fondness. Simply, the addiction took over their motivation. And I find that tragic. Are there marijuana addicts who manage it better? Certainly. But it isn’t the norm. Just as the engineer who once worked for a rather large company in San Jose, and was the only person allowed to drink on the job (actually had a cooler full of beer each day) because he was so genius with design wasn’t the norm. (True story…my husband worked with him in a design lab).
But it all comes back to the fact that people are being killed NOW due to marijuana addiction. And that is why I am so adamant against it. Kill yourself with your addiction, fine. But don’t jeopardize my life because of it!
@Jennifer- I do actually think ALL drugs should be legal. It would take the piss out of a lot of crime and if people want to kill themselves, have at it. Also, in actuallity at times in history when now illegal drugs like Heroin (which was actually the methadone of its day) was legal there was relatively less addiction. Adding to that I feel that Heroin, Opium and yes, even Cocaine are easier to kick than synthetic replacements like Methadone because they are more naturally interacting with our bodies.
Now, that being said, I do absolutely agree these criminals will not stop being criminals. They want to make their living this way. Legalizing this or that will not change their behavior. These people are like unto rabid animals and should be dealt with accordingly.
However I fail to see how keeping marijuana illegal HELPS with the problem of criminality. True legalization would DESTROY at least that portion of their income.
I agree that our pharmaceutical companies ARE just as evil as the drug lords. They have legally removed publications from library vaults regarding a bacteria that was proven to eat cancer, back in the 1950’s. Yes, you read that right! There was a bacteria that was written up in several medical journals back in the 50’s, but the pharmaceutical companies squelched it with their treatments of radiation treatment and chemo. I was trying to locate the articles on this bacteria some time ago; and I challenge anyone to find it. The news articles with the write ups were even missing.