How Can Medical Marijuana help with the Opioid Abuse and Mortality?

I am a stoner of 20 years with a medical marijuana prescription. While I admittedly smoke for recreational use, there was a string of five or so years that I used marijuana as an antidepressant and I identified as being “chemically depressed.” I tried to get prescribed “real antidepressants” but I was evaluated as not qualified by my local LGBTQ medical clinic. I don’t “have depression” but I do smoke to feel less depressed at times, if that makes sense. It is excellent medicine for me, but I have learned quite well how to use medicines to my advantage. Other people are not naturally introspective, or critical of their doctors or the system and unfortunately many are in situations or states of being not able to control well what is best for their body, mind and souls, which is why there are doctors, lawyers and police officers enlisted to take care of that for those that fall short of solid decision making. The enforcers of your choices are not always right, kind or ethical but what can you do if you can’t do? Nothing. Exactly. The recent Fentanyl overdose problem has created an unforeseen crisis that luckily many of my former heroin/opiate addict friends missed. B was one of them. B is a good friend of mine who is a daily user of cannabis wax and other psychotropics that he calls “plant medicines.” He chose to live in California, a state with legal access to cannabis specifically because he once lived in Ohio and had a wicked painkiller addiction problem. It was plant medicines like Ayauasca that was the gateway that helped him to kick his habit but he and I would agree that it isn’t any substance or plant or pill that can heal you if you are prone to addiction or abuse, it has to do with a desire to change your life and patterns. Some choose Ayuasca for this, others choose 12 step programs. Ayuasca and other plant medicines are illegal and probably won’t see the light of a brick and mortar dispensary with a neon sign in the window like your local medical MJ store but I find that plant medicine retreats were getting quite hip and pretty easy to find access to, even through Facebook event invites! Medical cannabis is for those on the alternative non clean and sober recovery plan and it works out great for a lot of people. Recent research has shown to reveal significant reduction in opioid prescription rates in Kentucky, Minnesota and Illinois. Worldwide studies have conferred in Israel and Mexico who were regular opioid presribed patients reduced usage where cannabis was legal or medical. CC, another former trusted opioid user friend who doesn’t use weed at all tells me,“Opioids are always going to be necessary for higher duty hardcore pain, people too often champion one at the expense of the other when there are so many kinds of pain and so many different kinds of individuals with different needs.” As a habitual weed user, I fully agree and understand this well as I’ve certainly moaned,”I NEED SOMETHING FUCKING STRONGER!!” while in unbearable pain because, if you smoke weed everyday, smoking more weed when you are have some sudden major injury is not going to cut it at all. Going back to the famous but simplified rat park study, in regards to emotional pain needs being met, I think cannabis works better for this type of pain than opioids, but I don't claim to represent all humans or all rats in the park. It’s about giving patients options and trusting that they can make choices. This sounds quite simple but its not, because there will always be some people who don’t like to or simply are unable to make sound or conscious choices at all.

#Drinkingtoo, #Drugstoo, #Huggingtoo and #Chickentoo

“What did you put in this anyway?” Bruce said with a smile. “Acid.” I winked and nonchalantly picked up my guitar. He picked up his trumpet and started to play our song but about ten minutes later he asked me again, “You didn’t put acid in my drink did you?” I laughed. “Dude, I would never do that.” A few weeks later he brought me some noodles from a Chinese restaurant and I was really excited but then after I started eating it, I realized there was chicken meat in it. “Dang,” I said,”We go out together all the time and you know I’m not a carnivore.” he laughed. “Just take out the meat!” he chided. I frowned. I know that inadvertently spiking a non meat eater's food with chicken isn’t the same as giving someone drugs without their consent but the theme here is trust and safety. If I was a Muslim or Hindu and eating chicken was against my religious beliefs then I probably would feel more violated or maybe not. We are in an era where non consensual hugging is considered sexual harassment for some, and surely most of us can remember a non consensual hug from someone in our life or could at least imagine how violating it might feel I hope. Consent has been the hot topic since the #metoo and Aziz Ansari scandal of late, so i started to think about all the friends I knew who had been forced to drink or drug when they clearly didn’t want to. The phenomenon of non consensual drugging of drinks at bars which would lead to sexual or other petty theft crimes is a thing but what if it didn’t lead to these things? Is drugging itself assault? Apparently, it is. One of my sister’s friends was drugged to the point that he was vomiting and throwing up on himself for hours but for what gain did that give the perpetrator? We really couldn’t figure it out as my friends asshole and wallet were not touched by anyone while he was ill. Ansari was doing the classic,”Let me just pour you another drink…(to get the panties off)” move during his sexual coercion date (and I'm going to call it that because at the very least it was coercion if not violence). This had a selfish intention towards fucking Grace even when she said she did not want to have sex or feel forced. Boundaries are boundaries and if you have strong vices you hopefully learn that strong boundaries save lives. Things like clean needles, things like respecting sobriety or hard limits, having a caretaker or a shooting buddy to get high with you or someone more experienced who can guide you through your trip when it goes bad. Most of the drug users I know still using have hard lines because they’ve crossed them close to death and have learned from their mistakes or their friend’s deaths. This is why the idea of putting acid in my friend’s drink was probably not even a funny joke, but perhaps it was a funny joke to me because I knew it was something I wouldn’t do, and this particular friend was pretty naive so i chose to fuck with him. I think that we are in a climate where we need to assume that everyone has boundaries that we do not understand until we ask, so we need to check in with them and often so that we can proceed with confidence. Hopefully, you wouldn’t be like Ansari and not respecting a certain safe zone for only a few moments until going for the claw down the throat and panties in the next few moments. But I guess it is naive to think that everyone is going to follow these rules for the sake of your safety. People lie and they don’t even think that they’re being malicious for it! Dealers often cut their drugs with other shit and don’t tell you simply because of profit or ignorance of the consequences as we have seen with the Fentanyl opioid crisis. How many people do you know have accidentally snorted meth when they wanted to do coke (and nowadays, they can accidentally snort Fentanyl and DIE)? And yeah, the consequences are on you if you are awake and pacing for hours beyond the high you wanted or if ends up being a worse gateway to a habit that you kicked years ago. But really, just like Grace and Ansari, both are responsible and hopefully will make lots of corrective behavior adjustments so that they make better choices in the future. But this was a huge media blowup and most of these kinds of bad dates are quiet and unseen and often swept out of memory because of shame, never spoken because of self blame. How many of us were bought a bunch of drinks we didn’t want to drink in hopes that we’d be so drunk we’d fuck? We drank them and had to deal with him grabbing and slobbering all night til we ran away or slammed a door. Sometimes it doesn’t even leave the bar, just shot after shot after until you are throwing up in the parking lot and someone “rescues” you with a ride home in pseudo safety. Alcohol, drugs, hugging and chicken all seem wildly different, but when served non consensually all feel like a gross violation and some lead to major trauma and worse. But what seems like minor should not be ignored because the more you are able to see boundaries as boundaries that should be respected in all aspects of your life, the safer you will be for yourself and for those that are around you. Don’t wait for someone to jump out of the closet holding their dick in their hand, it can be as simple as a coercive drink bought when you are already drunk and we all can use this media momentum to reality check in with ourselves.

Tino Fundraising for Strips

Tino,is a harm reduction outreach friend that I met once in person outside of the Sex Worker Cabaret in NYC that I performed at. Since then, we have been Facebook friends following each other for possibly 7 years since that event. Though we never saw each other again in person, I was inspired to chat with him online about his latest project fighting the fentanyl opioid crisis through one on one outreach as far as his feet can travel. He purchases ph testing kits that use the residue of street drugs mixed with water to test for the synthetic opioid fentanyl. The first fentanyl lab, according to Tino was discovered in the mid 90s in Kansas City but he thinks that now much of it comes from Mexico and possibly from China. Indeed, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, illegal drug labs are concocting fentanyl from scratch,and authorities have raided several labs in Mexico that were receiving chemicals from China and Japan to create the drug, according to the DEA. The quantity needed to create a drug that is 50-100x stronger than morphine is much less cargo to smuggle, and someone with basic knowledge of chemistry, pharmaceuticals and the dark net can start a booming business. "Drug dealers are in the business of making money and I've heard it's very easy to make, so that means they can save money [by doing it themselves]," he says. "I wouldn't be surprised if there were real Walter Whites out there. Chemists and pharmacologists can turn to the dark side, just like in Breaking Bad. Tino has traveled to places well known for opioid crisis like Ohio, Philly, and DC, with his strips and naloxone kits. Everything in Ohio tested positive for Fentanyl. Dealers are trying to phase out heroin and bring in Fentanyl. Tino has tested samples of crystal meth, cocaine, and even pressed Xanax pills and found Fentanyl in them. This means that casual recreational drug users that most of us know could also now be affected by overdoses when they thought that they were doing the "safer" drugs. This means most sex workers who party with clients are also at risk! The biggest difference between heroin and fentanyl is that a person can stop breathing within 1 minute and die. That is why the epidemic is what it is exploding to on the news, as well as he said that its affecting a lot of white folks in ways that it hasn't in years before.

Fentanyl was an opioid originally developed for the terminally ill person. It is a quickly administered pain killer, that comes in the form of lollipops, patches and other forms like sprays and lozenges. The formula was discovered as cheaper and easier to make than heroin and it soon became one of the most dangerous and profitable street drugs responsible for more overdosing deaths in 4 states than the U.S had seen in years before. To make matters worse, the war on drugs is being multiplied with Sessions and Trump, who as a team are hell bent on reversing California's newest win of statewide legal marijuana the same as every class of drug. So the hope for new money to help fund harm reduction supplies or safe injection sites is not likely in this administration's mindset, considering that in October Trump declared addiction a "public health emergency" not a "State of emergency" intentionally. Trump's declaration, which will be effective for 90 days and can be renewed, will allow the government to redirect resources in various ways and to expand access to medical services in rural areas. But it won't bring new dollars to fight a scourge that kills nearly 100 people a day. "It's a lot cheaper to have a safe injection house than it is to fund Emergency Room services for an overdose. A safe injection site would supply testing strips, clean needles and help the user access treatment if that's what they wanted. They would be monitored so that they wouldn't overdose and die. Canada has a few and pop up ones.

"Nobody should die because they use drugs. Where at one time it wasn't a white suburban mom's problem, suddenly a loved one dies and now it becomes their problem. Harm reduction like testing strips is not a solution, its just giving someone another day of life."

Tino has reverse overdosed over 100 people, none of whom he knew personally outside of a few that were clients of agencies he had jobs with. "Its about educating people about how to do drugs better...test a small amount for the strength first, get off in pairs; watch each one person for five minutes, have naloxone on hand after getting trained on how to administer the life saving anti-overdose medicine which now comes in a nasal spray that requires no needles at all to use. All it takes 6 to 10 grains, (like a grain of salt)of Fentanyl to kill you. Part of the work that Tino does is educating users about better and safe drugs use. It isn't about prevention or prohibition, to him, it is about saving lives. You can support Tino's work by contributing here.