Well hello
@noobgrow1 
That was a bit rambling, but you know what? We’d rather you fill pages of rambling than stay silent in this room.
Ok, first things first. Mites....so sorry they choose to take over your first grow. Damn! That deserves another hug.
Get yourself some spinosad and spray the plants every three days for a couple weeks. If at all possible, keep the grow with the mites isolated. I worked that tent naked to keep from carrying them out and showered every single time when I finished handling them for any reason. I successfully eliminated them from two separate tents, so sometimes it pays to be unconventional.
Before I start trying to answer your questions....
@Derbybud ......your story moved me to tears remembering that moment when my own daughter took her first hits and her life changed completely.
Ok... I’m back.
That was rather convoluted but there were a couple things I wanted to touch on. To begin, are you using a topical, and if not can you either make your own (preferred) or purchase one? You live with many symptoms that would find relief with a potent topical, including a lightening of the mood. We can speak about the finer points later, for now I’m encouraging you to use one.
If you can’t access one we can talk about overcoming that challenge too.
Back at the beginning of the thread you’ll find a recipe for an essential oil topical - not made with cannabis - to relieve leg spasms. A cannabis topical with lavender oil will be most helpful as well, and drops of lavender oil on a cloth set under your pillow may help you fall asleep easier.
Stepping beyond topicals, there’s no reason I know of that you can’t attempt to taper using cannabis, when you’re ready to try again. Don’t beat yourself up for hesitating, the pain is very real.
Pain.... why would cannabis cause you to feel more pain? Well, cannabis is a biphasic medication, meaning that you can overshoot the optimal therapeutic dose and create the very thing you were treating.
Opioids increase the pain by perverting your body’s ability to modulate pain, actively increasing pain perception. With cannabis the answer is to back off the dose, in fact back way off and restart the titration. In almost every case the dose the endocannabinoid system responds best to is much lower than anyone thought.
For most chronic pain patients a balanced ratio of THC to CBD brings the most consistent relief. Unfortunately, prohibition screwed up genetics and many chemovars being grown are very high THC and negligible CBD.
Well, turns out the increase in CBD makes a big difference, and we shouldn’t be so surprised by that. In the wild cannabis typically expresses a more balanced cannabinoid ratio, or one slightly higher in CBD. Who’d of thought that Mother Nature might know what she was doing. Lol!
You can easily balance out the ratios these days by adding CBD isolate. I don’t often recommend an isolate, since the major cannabinoids work so well as a partnership, but that’s what we’re doing here - using the isolate to lift the CBD levels.
When you get the ratios to 1:5 THC:CBD you pretty much eliminate psychoactivity, and at that point you can raise the volume levels of both cannabinoids in balance to find the pain relief your body needs.
Your recounting of your history of agitation and paranoia when using cannabis suggests a need to be cautious about the terpene profiles.
Practical applications:
* I’d suggest you find a way to increase your CBD levels to 1:3 or 1:5 and then increase them together to find a point where you have enough pain management that you’re ready to taper off the opioids.
* The taper is laid out pretty concisely in the initial post of this thread. The team will work with you to adapt it to you. To be honest, every member that’s tried this has gone about it in an individual way.
We’re a pretty supportive team, and we’ve learned that the most important part of this work is simply to be there. You won’t find a more responsive team to help you than this room attracts.
* Get a topical and use it every time something goes “Ouch!”
* If I were going to grow something for chronic pain it’d be an even ratio chemovar. From the sound of it you’d be well-advised to stick to indicas. It’s the sativas that most often cause mind games. I’d be thinking about my sensitivity and trying to figure out which terpenes were doing this to my system.
Critical Mass springs to mind as a balanced ratio chemovar. By now there are many others and more being bred as we speak.
You’re correct about the convoluted gene pool for cannabis, and that’ll only get more exciting as we go. Lol!
I’m gonna stop there because by God, that’s a lot to take in at a single sitting.
Hey... let’s accept that we’ll have lots of these conversations and you’ll eventually give the taper a go. No one’s gonna push you to do that until you’re ready. Getting your pain levels under control first increases your chances for success.
We’re gonna introduce you to some fun concepts like hug therapy and laughter, but let’s let you find a comfy seat first and decide you can trust us. We have lots of time and we’re not going anywhere.
Oh yeah, when we get to know one another better we can have the conversation about how suppositories can be a godsend for deep, chronic pain that nothing else touches.
And maybe another conversation about increasing bioavailability so this expensive medicine goes further.
Good to meet you.
In time the thoughts change, but you can add a deliberate edge to their evolution.