So I'm listening to Mara Gordon speaking on dosing. She just made a comment about working with patients to the effect that it's easier to work with someone who has little if any experience with cannabis. They'll have no difficulty separating the cannabis use from the social experience
"...because your medicine isn't your social life, it's your life."
That statement made me uneasy, and I'm not sure yet why. Mara often makes me uneasy. I admire the woman's drive and excellent business sense. She's a fierce advocate for her patients and their families, and I believe she's a driving force in getting cannabis to be taken seriously by the mainstream medical community.
There's this disdain for the cannabis culture, for lack of a better explaination. I listen to her deride the naming of a cultivar Gorilla Glue, and demean what she perceives to be stereotypes. Such derision! She has a hard edge. Maybe that's what it is that rubs me wrong. I feel like she'd be so much happier if we'd all stop "playing" with cannabis and take the medical cannabis seriously, like she does. I'm not here to make anyone happy except me, and I'm old enough to understand that there's no one right way to do this.
It's subtle cannabis shame that serves none of us well.
I have such a different view of the plant and the therapies that I sometimes wonder....... It's a plant. For thousands of years it was used holistically to help the body heal. I see no real gain in suddenly insisting that the administration of this plant I can grow in my closet and make into a healing oil on my stove in my unsanitary kitchen where I also cook my food be restricted to measured doses. I work on a principal of find the optimal therapeutic dose, split the daily into 4-5 doses a day and let the body get back to healing mode. Creating a more even Endocannabinoid tone over time by supplying a constant and consistent dose, but not so tied up in keeping close track of the cannabinoid count.
After all, let's be honest. No one yet knows what's really going on. Patterns may emerge, but every patient has the potential to be totally different in the way they process phytocannabinoids. Every case has to be handled the same way - start low and go slow.
Which reminds me:
According to a poster in the community at Green Flower Media CB1 receptors are biphasic, but
not CB2 receptors. This was new information for me. The study she linked was published in Neuropsychopharmacology, November of 2012.
Biphasic Effects of Cannabinoids in Anxiety Responses: CB1 and GABAB Receptors in the Balance of GABAergic and Glutamatergic Neurotransmission
I haven't had the chance to look through it yet.
It's a plant. A plant that interacts in some miraculous way we have yet to understand with the system that regulates all other body systems. It's really best thought of as a food, a nutraceutical. All this push to make it a legitimate medicine, dosed like a pharmaceutical, is undermining the foundations of cannabis medicines. There's so much potential. I refuse to be frustrated.
Tolerance. Acceptance. Patience. Joy. Insight.
You know, I'm beginning to believe that the most effective approach is to eat the plant raw. I keep coming back to the idea of a sea of green made of budcicles in solo cups, designed to be harvested one a day. One of these days I'll buy a lemongrass juicer...........
Good grief, I need to stop for the night. 1 AM. Time to pull out the Chem Dawg.
I'm going to repost this over at the FHO thread. 
This from the doctor who wrote "Stoned; A Doctor's Case For Medical Marijuana" nonetheless. A man who professes to have educated himself in cannabinoid therapies, at least as how practiced by doctors with the courage to do so. 
