The first time I ever felt the effect of the cannabis plant in my veins was in high school. I was camping with some friends in one of those three sided trail shelters that are common in the mountains of the eastern United States. It was a rainy night in the Adirondacks so we ended up sharing the shelter with a couple fellow hikers. Sometime during the night a joint was lit and passed around, and just like that I was a druggy. To be fair I was already pretty buzzed from a bottle of whiskey that our group contributed to the evening prior to the hippie lettuce hitting my lungs. Remember that I was in high school, which was twenty years ago and that was the first and last time I sparked up. But go ahead and judge, I know you need this.
Its been about three and a half year since the people of Colorado voted to legalize the use of ye old dizzy spinach. Since then pot shops have sprung up all across our fair city, and the coffers of state and local governments have filled with tax dollars from weed sales. It feels like folks who don't call our fair city home imagine that Denver is perpetually under a cloud of Mary-Jane smoke so thick that all we citizens do is watch skateboarding videos and eat a lot of Chipotle. They are right about the Chipotle consumption, but unemployment is at around 3% and people are moving here at the rate of 100,000 a year. In fact the legalization of marijuana has had no affect on the life of the average citizen beyond the school system's improved budget. I recommend that you start picketing for your state to legalize as well. Legal dope means less costing money spent on jailing pot heads and more cash, cash for kids. Ohio recently voted against legalization which makes sense since its Ohio after all...Indiana thinks Ohio is backwards. This piece, however wasn't intended to sell you on the positive impact that ganja can have on the economy. It's supposed to be about yours truly experimenting with the softer side of the herb as a pain reliever. So lets get back to that. Sorry Ohio!
About seven years ago I was having some health issues including chronic lethargy, stomach issues and knee pain. I jumped through the expected medical hoops for those issues and by luck ended up talking to an arthritis specialist who sent me to a doctor at The University of Kentucky, who in turn diagnosed me with Celiacs Disease. Getting off the gluten turned out to be God-send for me physically! However as time has gone on it's become clear that my left knee took the brunt of the gluten ravages. Basically it hurts most of the time. I was Googling around on the web about it one day when I saw a couple posts from fellow Celiac sufferers that mentioned marijuana helped their symptoms. It made sense. There is a lot of chatter about the Chronic and its health benefits. I have read several stories about cannabis oil and canna-butter as treatment for pain, seizures, cancer, etc. The industry loves to pimp weed as a miracle drug for just about everything. If you have it, pot can make it all better. So I figured what can I lose from giving it a try?
I must admit, it's weird walking into a storefront on a normal American street to purchase something that has been a great evil since the Reagan days. The foyer is a narrow hallway with a round bullet proof window at one end that you slide your ID through. Once the guy behind the glass has determined that your eligible to enter, a door buzzes open for you. Turns out that just gets you into the waiting room where you have to wait for someone to welcome you behind a sliding glass door to the real store. Of course I blew by that slider and had to be escorted out and asked to sit and wait for someone to come out and bring me in. Who knew. And who knew how great the customer service was going to be at my local cannabis outlet.
I learned a lot about weed that day from the very helpful staff that's probably important to share with you at this point. The Cannabis plant contains some 500 different compounds. The most well known is THC, the psychoactive part of the plant that makes you high, and crave Cheetos. Most of the health benefits (allegedly) of weed come from the CBD, or Cannabinoids part of the plant. Or CBG, which is renowned for its relief of glaucoma symptoms. If your 21 or older you can walk in off the street and purchase pot products that range from the actual bud, to cookies, oils, pain relief patches and gummy bears. The state charges 26 percent sales tax on those gummy bears which translates to more then 50 million in one year alone.
After my crash course with the friendly (and normal-looking) sales clerk I explained that I wanted something to help with pain without the high. What I ended up walking out with in my special kid proof bag was a bottle of pain relief lotion called Apothecanna, and something that looked like a Tootsie Roll. When I left I couldn't help wondering what people on the street thought of me as a headed for my truck with a bright green bag in my hand that screamed pot head.
To be continued...
beautiful...
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