Huh? Where's the content?

For that matter, doesn't the design seem rather... 'minimalist' all of a sudden?

I'm in the process of a major overhaul of all my sites. All content will be back as soon as possible. If you want something to read, my other blog is also coming back online a bit faster. Check it out: http://www.100wordsforsnow.com/

(And www.naomidevlin.com is on target to come back online by the end of the week! W00T!)

Certain Biphasic Drugs

I am on a medley of different medications that do all sorts of things. Without getting too much into my particular Dxs, let's just say that I probably have more dopamine and serotonin receptors in my brain than Mickey Mouse. Two weeks ago I had hip surgery. The pain sucked. The pain-killers had side effects that sucked. The pain killers adversely interacted with my other medications, and that sucked. The medications I took to alleviate said adverse reactions gave me different side effects. Oh, and I was still in pain.

A friend of mine who had a total hip replacement a couple of years ago asked me if I had tried herbal remedies. And for the first time ever, I began to seriously contemplate medical marijuana (MMJ), which was legalised in the State of California via Prop 215 in 1996. A few days later I'm sitting in a doctor's office with a physician who is going to sign a prescription for Medical Marijuana Use.

But backing up a little bit:

My college days were the 90s, and yes, I inhaled. Okay, I inhaled in the 80s, but being jettisoned across the world and ending up in a high school in the middle of Maine was traumatic: it was self-medication. When I first went to college I found myself feeling at ease around my peers for the first time in my entire life. I didn't really do much drinking or any recreational drugs in my Freshman year. In my sophomore year I did a lot of theatre. Then I transferred to a University of California school for my Junior year and left theatre, along with the pot pipe, in the past. I 'inhaled' only twice after that, and once I left college, I never thought of going back.

Over the years many people have tried to persuade me to "share the experience" as it were. I wasn't interested. Then in 2007 I decided, "what the Hell? Let's see what it feels like now!" What it felt like was awful. Whilst I have no doubts about the quality of what was smoked this was not your father's cannabis. I have no idea how much more potent it was, only that I spent the rest of the evening lying very, very still on the floor telling myself over and over again that this vertigo and overall Hell would pass eventually.

And it did eventually pass. And I wasn't interested in going through that door again! My "hippy" friend, as he refers to himself post hip-replacement gave me some edibles to try. And I did. A tiny little amount of chocolate stuff. The first time I experienced some euphoria (correlative, not necessarily causative), and then that night I had awful semi-lucid nightmares. For the next attempt I took even less, and I felt pretty mellow. I certainly had pain relief. But I didn't feel exactly "right" either. I knew I wanted the therapeutic effects of cannabis, but in no way did I want to get high. I started to read a little bit more about MMJ and was immediately intrigued by the potential use of  Cannabidiol, which has the obvious abbreviation CBD and less obvious pronunciation of : 

ˌkan-ə-bə-ˈdī-ˌȯl    (or:    kə-ˈnab-ə-, -ˌōl).

[I don't know how to input proper IPA symbols into blogger's WYSIWYG editor. You might want to clean your computer screen before trying to identify the diacritics!]

I went into this somewhat pitiful excuse for a doctor's office with a very old friend of mine and her closest friend. The three of us stated that we understood the HIPAA implications, but because it was my first time and they were just renewing, we wanted to be there for each other. And I began a fascinating discussion with this doctor about everything from down-regulation of benzodiazepines, to the latent CNS effects of opioids, to what can and can't cross the blood brain barrier. Yes, he was a "real physician"! And clearly he was passionate about the many ways in which certain cannabinoid isomers can be more effective than traditional Western medicine, without all those unwanted side effects. (No one to date has died from an overdose of Marijuana.)

After I had my signed piece of paper we went to what I have to say is a Whole Foods of distribution: Elemental Wellness. I joined their cooperative, and because of my gimp status, was immediately proffered a chair and a clerk to chat about their many products. I simply loved the wooden walls, the orchids, the tasteful art, and the extremely knowledgeable staff. Although I was completely overwhelmed by the extensive array of their offerings. I knew I wasn't interested in smoking 'flowers'. (Smoking anything is bad for you, so I prefer to save this deliberate act of self-harm to the occasional good cigar.) I didn't want to invest in vapor equipment. So that left me with tinctures, sprays, and a large assortment of edibles that ran the gamut from lemonade to fruit gums. I left with an oral spray, a glycerin-based tincture, a sugary chew with Indica THC, a bar of chocolate that was a blend of THC and CBD, and a free piece of CBD candy. Yes, altogether it was pricey. But it's Whole Foods, remember? I'm paying for that ambiance and the fact that everyone in that spacious and professional environment looked like your average 30-50-year-old white collar worker. Not that I have anything against people who are older, younger, or work in manual labour. But this was a somewhat stressful experience that I didn't want compounded by going into some Head Shop and emerging with a contact high for three days with some indeterminate weed that had never even heard the phrase "quality control."

At home I started to try a little here and there, and I tracked what the responses (if any) were. And then I remembered, I'm a data nerd. Oh, and I have a side hobby of learning as much psychopharmacology as possible. After the obligatory reading of the Wikipedia pages for THC, Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), Cannabidiol (CBD), Cannabis Sativa, and Cannabis Indica, I came across this article published in March 2005 in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. Finally! Some real info about the psychological effects produced by Δ9-THC and CBD as well as the actual pharmacokinetics. I'm barely able to entertain the possibility of human treatment with cannabinoids, but this 'Canna for Pets' webpage was pretty useful for the science it provides.

Could it possibly be the case that we have been overlooking such an important area of research into a medicine with unprecedented therapeutic effects? Sure! From the 2012 ICRS conference. (I'll leave it to the reader to decode what the correct expansion of the acronym is.

As you can tell, this story is just beginning.

Right where this blog post ends.

Stay tuned....

..............................

Political Post Script:

Do you think MMJ won't get traction in the US because there's no way for Big Pharma to make money in that game?

I urge you to challenge your assumptions!

Of course, Big Pharma can't do squat without the permission of the government on a federal level anyway. And the FDA has repeatedly reviewed the data and kept marijuana as a Schedule I drug! (Yeah, in January of this year they started to review it again. I wouldn't hold your breath. <Pun intended>)

Oh, but wait...