Jim Finnel
Fallen Cannabis Warrior & Ex News Moderator
Establishing the role of retail medical marijuana outlets in our lives may not be what the doctor ordered, but is definitely a important part of the healing process many Californians are making the choice to incorporate.
It was the Autumn of 2002, as I was being diagnosed with Crohn's disease, that the experience of Medical Marijuana I am writing to you from began.
There were five plants in my closet under four hundred watts of sodium light and I was six weeks into an intense chemotherapy regimen when I made my first appointment with a doctor who specializes in determining cannabis necessity; as a rule primary care providers and internal medicine practitioners rarely write recommendations for marijuana based on the concept that it would be malpractice for them to prescribe anything they have no experience education or reference material for treating people with, and inversely the Cannabis Specialists are rarely seen by their patients for anything other than the matter of having permission to legally possess marijuana.
Very few of us receive our medical exemptions from the physicians we see everyday for treatment. Through observation of these places taking on various roles I've been gaining a working real-life understanding of who's buying at dispensaries since first stepping into one in late 2002. There is as much to learn as a teenager scrambling to stay alive enough to make enough hour at the grocery store to keep his HMO benefits as there is introducing a 28-year-old patient from out of town who was growing forty-two-hundred-dollar pounds of organic to the founder of a local collective mediating the two parties.
Most of the grass coming out of the dispensaries is used in a social context, the people serving the patients of these collectives will offer descriptions of which hash is better to smoke at a concert versus what's best for sex before they'll ever come close to telling people what to smoke to get out of bed and keep my pills down. They offer the information that everyone comes in wanting to know. Buying pot in fancy packaging from a retail outlet for the most a person can spend on it also seems to enhance the experience, especially among working people. The availability from multiple sources is one of many other draws the storefronts have.
These people stay in the dispensary system pretty much the same way anyone does: by establishing a medical history of acute back pain, trouble sleeping, asthma etc. with their primary care providers, then seeing one of the local cannabis specialists with the medical documentation they've secured from their regular doctors, fulfilling the requirements of any convincingly comprehensive medical practice.
That's not to say that this isn't medically acceptable usage or any kind of sham, but should go some distance in illustrating how the dispensaries have transitioned from the image of Brownie Mary and the AIDS crisis to serving the masses of seemingly healthy-young people we are now working with.
The actual nature of what's happening is far more hopeful than the poster images of mmj popularized by self-appointed figureheads such as Montel Williams and Angel Raich. People from all ages and walks of life are universally substituting cannabis as an alternative to over-the-counter drugs, eliminating an immense portion of lifetimes spent consuming toxic byproducts of a commercial society. Medical Marijuana is playing a large part in circumventing environmental illness manifesting that's itself as debilitating illnesses like Multiple Sclerosis Cancer and Crohn's Disease occurring epidemically among the people of today's world.
In the realms of replacement narcotic therapy and reviving a trend of interest for alternative therapy: what these people have available to them meets every need they bring in the stores, it is an extremely hopeful position to have found themselves in.
For those of us choosing to use cannabis for the treatment of chronic conditions with limited income the hands of the current dispensation model are tied. Sadly, the segment of the population most left in the dark are those seeking to discover the relief of marijuana for the last stages of life: medical cannabis usually doesn't come with any instructions.
There is no easy way for the truly sick to attain the image of relief popularized by the media of today, and for those who are waiting for quality grass to be available on a basis of social welfare: the only marijuana like that is the 400 watts of it growing in your closet.
News Hawk- User 420 MAGAZINE ® - Medical Marijuana Publication & Social Networking
Source: IndieBAy
Author: Seth Matrisciano
Contact: livingganja@gmail.com
Copyright: 2007 San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center
Website: The State of Medical Marijuana Dispensaries : Indybay
It was the Autumn of 2002, as I was being diagnosed with Crohn's disease, that the experience of Medical Marijuana I am writing to you from began.
There were five plants in my closet under four hundred watts of sodium light and I was six weeks into an intense chemotherapy regimen when I made my first appointment with a doctor who specializes in determining cannabis necessity; as a rule primary care providers and internal medicine practitioners rarely write recommendations for marijuana based on the concept that it would be malpractice for them to prescribe anything they have no experience education or reference material for treating people with, and inversely the Cannabis Specialists are rarely seen by their patients for anything other than the matter of having permission to legally possess marijuana.
Very few of us receive our medical exemptions from the physicians we see everyday for treatment. Through observation of these places taking on various roles I've been gaining a working real-life understanding of who's buying at dispensaries since first stepping into one in late 2002. There is as much to learn as a teenager scrambling to stay alive enough to make enough hour at the grocery store to keep his HMO benefits as there is introducing a 28-year-old patient from out of town who was growing forty-two-hundred-dollar pounds of organic to the founder of a local collective mediating the two parties.
Most of the grass coming out of the dispensaries is used in a social context, the people serving the patients of these collectives will offer descriptions of which hash is better to smoke at a concert versus what's best for sex before they'll ever come close to telling people what to smoke to get out of bed and keep my pills down. They offer the information that everyone comes in wanting to know. Buying pot in fancy packaging from a retail outlet for the most a person can spend on it also seems to enhance the experience, especially among working people. The availability from multiple sources is one of many other draws the storefronts have.
These people stay in the dispensary system pretty much the same way anyone does: by establishing a medical history of acute back pain, trouble sleeping, asthma etc. with their primary care providers, then seeing one of the local cannabis specialists with the medical documentation they've secured from their regular doctors, fulfilling the requirements of any convincingly comprehensive medical practice.
That's not to say that this isn't medically acceptable usage or any kind of sham, but should go some distance in illustrating how the dispensaries have transitioned from the image of Brownie Mary and the AIDS crisis to serving the masses of seemingly healthy-young people we are now working with.
The actual nature of what's happening is far more hopeful than the poster images of mmj popularized by self-appointed figureheads such as Montel Williams and Angel Raich. People from all ages and walks of life are universally substituting cannabis as an alternative to over-the-counter drugs, eliminating an immense portion of lifetimes spent consuming toxic byproducts of a commercial society. Medical Marijuana is playing a large part in circumventing environmental illness manifesting that's itself as debilitating illnesses like Multiple Sclerosis Cancer and Crohn's Disease occurring epidemically among the people of today's world.
In the realms of replacement narcotic therapy and reviving a trend of interest for alternative therapy: what these people have available to them meets every need they bring in the stores, it is an extremely hopeful position to have found themselves in.
For those of us choosing to use cannabis for the treatment of chronic conditions with limited income the hands of the current dispensation model are tied. Sadly, the segment of the population most left in the dark are those seeking to discover the relief of marijuana for the last stages of life: medical cannabis usually doesn't come with any instructions.
There is no easy way for the truly sick to attain the image of relief popularized by the media of today, and for those who are waiting for quality grass to be available on a basis of social welfare: the only marijuana like that is the 400 watts of it growing in your closet.
News Hawk- User 420 MAGAZINE ® - Medical Marijuana Publication & Social Networking
Source: IndieBAy
Author: Seth Matrisciano
Contact: livingganja@gmail.com
Copyright: 2007 San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center
Website: The State of Medical Marijuana Dispensaries : Indybay
