My immediate impression of the slight, beautiful woman and the tall, thin boy with her was that their mother/child bond was extraordinary, a far different relationship than you generally see between a parent and an adolescent. I was soon to learn that bond had come at great cost to both Randi and her son, Jacob.
Jacob’s father died when he was 10 years old after a vicious bout with cancer, and the tics that had plagued him when he was younger came back. Jacob had always been a complicated kid, diagnosed with both Asperger syndrome and Tourette syndrome. But the anxiety and stress of the trauma of watching his father die, as well as the onset of puberty eventually made his symptoms unmanageable, and his mother had to pull him out of school. While pharmaceuticals helped for a bit, the effects soon wore off and she was loathe to put her son on the anti-seizure meds the neurologist prescribed because she’d read so much about their negative side effects.
After seeing a documentary about a young man with a tic disorder who found relief with cannabis, they began their journey by investigating cannabis and coming to see me. Jacob was fourteen by then and his mother said his body shook the car when he had tics.
He began using CBD oil with a CBD:THC ratio of 24:1 and saw immediate results. His vocal and motor tics improved, as did his tremors and self-injurious behaviors. The frequent headaches that he’d experienced also disappeared and for a period of six weeks he was tic-free. When some of his behaviors and tics started up again, we began tinkering with the dosage, and now we’re experimenting with different products.
Overall, Randi believes that Jacob has seen an 80% improvement and while Jacob finds it difficult to describe the effects of cannabis on his mental health, he says he just “feels better.” He’s had no meltdowns and is managing life. In fact, Randi says she has her son back. “Cannabis is the something out there that has given my son his life back without turning him into a zombie. He would have lost it otherwise.”