Through love all pain will turn to medicine.
—Rumi, a thirteenth-century Persian poet, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic (1207–1273)
What brought you to this book? Maybe you or someone close to you is suffering with the misery—the pure agony—of relentless, severe pain. As you well know, such pain can completely overwhelm your life, to the point where relief from it becomes an all-consuming, single-minded focus. When chronic pain flares and becomes acute, it can immediately extinguish your capacity to enjoy almost anything.
There’s no way to soften the blow, rationalize, or negotiate your way around it. Chronic pain is debilitating. When it’s severe, it can control our body and mind to the extent that we are totally at its mercy, powerless to stop it.
I know chronic pain. As a physician I have treated chronic pain patients for decades, and as a patient I have been humbled and devastated by the shingles virus.
There is hope, however, for you and others who suffer from chronic pain. With this book, you now have a guide to overcome pain and revitalize your life. There is the very real possibility of feeling better than you ever have. I am offering you the medicine of empowerment—the power to regain control and the joy of life that chronic pain has stripped away. And medical marijuana plays a vital role in this self-healing process.
Chronic pain affects approximately 100 million people, nearly one-third of our population. More Americans suffer with chronic pain than with diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer combined. By necessity (when there is no recognized cure), we are forced to live with painful conditions such as arthritis; low back, knee, neck, or shoulder problems; migraine headaches; irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), acid reflux (GERD), or fibromyalgia; and a host of other uncomfortable problems that never completely resolve. Pain is the number one reason people visit a doctor’s office. As a chronic pain sufferer, know that you are not alone.
In addition, it is estimated that nearly 80 percent of our population is plagued with the emotional pain of anxiety and depression, often associated with chronic physical pain.
Whether it is physical or emotional, or it is persistent, recurrent, or incapacitating, chronic pain is humanity’s most debilitating disease.
How does today’s mainstream medical industry deal with chronic pain? In a word: opioids. And with opioids come very real risks, oftentimes leading to tragedy.
Opioids are narcotic analgesics found in prescription pain relievers such as oxycodone (Oxycontin, Percocet), tramadol, hydrocodone (Vicodin), methadone, fentanyl, meperidine (Demerol), morphine, and codeine. These drugs were developed with the best of intentions, and the vast majority of doctors who prescribe them do so with the best interests of their patients in mind.
But, sadly, the overprescribing, misuse, and abuse of opioids have led to a public health crisis in America. Drug overdose is currently the leading cause of accidental death in the U.S., and opioid addiction is driving this epidemic. In 2014, there were fifty-two deaths every day from opioid overdose.
I realize you might be feeling desperate, and opioids may seem like your only option for pain relief. But as many of us know all too well, these drugs can often be minimally effective and highly addictive, and they nearly always cause unpleasant side effects, such as constipation, nausea, drowsiness, and dizziness. And if that’s not enough of a deterrent, a study published in June 2016 found that narcotics (specifically morphine) may actually prolong chronic pain. There has to be a better way for treating the condition. And this book will provide you with one.
I know exactly what it is like to be in your position. As a patient, when I was suffering from a severe case of shingles, medical marijuana allowed me to gain some control over a seemingly overwhelming situation. While all of my pain did not disappear, marijuana reduced the pain to such an extent that I was not only able to function and work, but could even enjoy my life.
Since 2011, when I opened my current practice, Fully Alive Medicine in Boulder, Colorado, the primary reason patients have come to me is to relieve chronic pain. The vast majority of patients had already been prescribed an opioid, which they were eager to stop taking. After they saw me and began using medical marijuana, I consistently observed a dramatic reduction in their pain, to a point where they were able to either discontinue or, at the very least, substantially reduce their dosage of the prescription narcotics. The same has also been true of the anti-anxiety and antidepressant medications, as well as the sleeping pills often prescribed to chronic pain patients.
Regardless of how long these patients have had their pain, the results of medical marijuana have been remarkable, and in some cases miraculous. When used appropriately it is highly effective, quick, safe, and without any unpleasant side effects.
I promise you, help is on the way. Just as medical marijuana has accompanied me, and thousands of others, on our journey of overcoming chronic pain, and of self-discovery, I now want to share the healing benefits of this wondrous medicinal herb. In the proceeding chapters, I will provide you with all the information you’ll need, in addition to serving as your guide for initiating and fully implementing a pain-relieving, transformational, and re-creational healing process.
Pain relief is fast and easy, but to heal your life you’ll need to address the multiple causes of your ongoing pain—physical, emotional, and spiritual. I’ll assist you with this, but it will require your time, persistence, and especially, your commitment. The upside is that you may find it to be the most rewarding work you’ll have ever done. I’m here to help you with whatever path you choose for relieving your pain.
This book is intended as a guide to using cannabis for:
• Quickly relieving your physical pain
• Creating a treatment program for long-lasting pain relief and for healing your chronic dis-ease (mental, emotional, and spiritual pain)
• Providing a path toward optimal health
You might be thinking, “All I really care about is getting rid of this !*?!* pain!” Or you might ask yourself, “Isn’t health the absence of illness? If I’m pain-free, then I’m healthy. Correct?” Not necessarily. The words health, heal, and holy, are all derived from the Anglo-Saxon haelen, meaning “to make whole.” Health is actually a condition of fullness, balance, and wholeness—a sense of being fully alive!
The American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine (ABIHM) defines holistic or optimal health as the unlimited and unimpeded free flow of life force energy through your body, mind, and spirit. It is a state of well-being encompassing physical vitality, mental inspiration, emotional intelligence, an opened heart, and an awakened soul.
The only problem with this definition is that most of us are uncertain about the meaning of the term life force energy. “What is it? Have I ever experienced it? How can I consciously create it? What does it feel like?”
The concept of life force energy has been well known for at least five thousand years. It serves as the foundation for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and is known as chi. In Ayurveda, the traditional medicine of India, it is called prana. In Hebrew, life force is chai; in Japanese, ki; and it is the tao in Taoism. The term used by the ABIHM that most closely equates to the feeling generated by this healing energy is unconditional love. The primary objective of each of these ancient traditions and disciplines, as well as the practice of holistic medicine, is to strengthen and allow for the free flow of this energy through every aspect of your being. This in turn produces a heightened state of self-awareness and self-love, while greatly enhancing health and a sense of well-being.
I’ll be presenting several options for strengthening chi and self-love throughout the book, especially in Part III. But the primary focus will be on utilizing the one method that has been highly effective throughout recorded history—the holistic medicinal herb cannabis.
• • •
Our current use of medical marijuana comes with a long legacy of healing. Cannabis has been widely accepted in civilization throughout human history. We find documented use of it in five-thousand-year-old Chinese pharmacology treatises and three-thousand-year-old Ayurveda texts from India, and it is even mentioned in the Bible. In the U.S. it dates back in recorded history to George Washington, who grew hemp at Mount Vernon.
Marijuana, known only as cannabis, was legal for most of American history and was a primary ingredient of the most effective natural remedies for many common ailments, including migraine headache, rheumatism (arthritis), epilepsy, neuralgia (nerve pain), dysmenorrhea (painful menstruation), asthma, depression, insomnia, gastric ulcer, and morphine addiction. Cannabis was introduced into modern medicine in 1839, and shortly thereafter admitted to the U.S. Pharmacopeia (USP) in 1851, though for sociopolitical reasons (it had nothing to do with its efficacy or safety), it was de-listed in 1937, against the advice of the American Medical Association.
After nearly eighty years of illegality in the U.S., based on specious arguments and inaccurate perceptions, I am pleased to see the progress being made with the re-legalization of cannabis as medicine. It began in 1996 with California, and following the 2016 election, there are now twenty-eight states plus the District of Columbia in which citizens have chosen to legalize medical marijuana. Cannabis is currently ranked fourth among the world’s most frequently used substances, behind caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol—all of which are legal, but not one of them has the medicinal properties of cannabis, and except for caffeine, they have significantly greater health risks.
It certainly appears likely that it will not be long before medical marijuana becomes legal in every state. From my perspective as a physician and scientist, there is not and has never been a pharmaceutical drug that possesses its breadth of therapeutic properties.
In those patients choosing to integrate medical marijuana into a holistic medical treatment program, the long-lasting and life-changing results have been extremely impressive. The combination of cannabis and holistic medicine is by far the most consistently successful treatment for a variety of chronic pain conditions I’ve seen in nearly a half century of practicing the art and science of medicine. I’ll present many of these treatment programs in Part II.
I’ve been a holistic family doctor in Colorado since 1972. My practice grew rapidly during its first decade, but especially after I opened Columbine Medical Center, the first combination family practice/minor emergency center in Colorado (similar to today’s urgent care centers). This new model, open thirteen hours a day, seven days a week, quickly became the busiest family practice in the Denver metro area.
This innovative concept was considered a great success. In spite of hiring four other family doctors, I found that the heavy workload took its toll on my health. Seeing a high volume of patients, pressuring myself to stay on time while maintaining quality care and serving as the owner and medical director, literally made me sick. I developed chronic sinusitis.
The word chronic is a medical euphemism for incurable, but that latter word is rarely used when speaking to a patient. Rather, most patients are given the dismal prognosis, as I was by my ENT (ears, nose, throat) consultant, “You’ll have to learn to live with it.”
As a patient who’d just been told that I’d have to suffer with the misery of sinus disease for the rest of my life, I instantly felt a combination of hopelessness, grief, fear, and anger. But by the time I got home after leaving my doctor’s office, I had transmuted the intense energy of those emotions into a firm commitment to cure the condition: “Whatever is required to do the job of healing my inflamed mucous membrane, I will do it.” In spite of not knowing anyone who had been able to do it, I strongly believed I would eventually free myself from the plague of sinus suffering. And eventually, I did!
It took several years and the reclaiming of my holistic medical roots (embedded in osteopathic medicine) before I cured the chronic sinusitis. My holistic treatment program began with dietary changes, and progressed to the daily practice of nasal hygiene and utilizing high-tech indoor-air modification. These changes helped considerably. But it wasn’t until I had spent a year working diligently on my mental, emotional, and spiritual health that I achieved my goal. There was no longer any evidence of a sinus problem.
Using marijuana, specifically with the intention of healing my life—i.e., mind (modifying my beliefs and behavior), emotions (identifying, experiencing, and accepting all of my feelings), heart and soul (expanding my capacity to give and receive love and practice forgiveness)—was a key component in this final aspect of my self-healing program.
Having successfully implemented a nonsurgical holistic treatment program to cure the world’s most common respiratory condition, I soon realized that a very similar approach (minus the nasal hygiene and air cleaners) could also be applied to any other common chronic condition, from diabetes and heart disease to a wide variety of chronic pain conditions, including arthritis and back pain.
Utilizing all that I had learned during my own healing process, from my holistic colleagues, and from the thousands of patients I had treated as a family doctor, I set out on a new mission—to transform health care, while attempting to fulfill my greatest potential as a healer and teacher (doctor = Latin for teacher). I had regained my passion for medicine and was inspired by the healing power of love—the basis of holistic medicine.
In 1987, at the ripe old age of forty, I walked away from conventional medicine and the practice I had birthed and nurtured, leaving what I had once considered the job of my dreams, along with a lifetime of financial security, and started over. My physician father thought I’d lost my mind. With considerable anger, he asked, “You’re going to practice what?!”
At the time, I had a strong sense of knowing, a certainty, that the mainstream health care system would inevitably move in this direction, since the holistic approach was far superior to conventional medicine for treating chronic disease. My new job would be training physicians, teaching the public, and helping to establish standards for the art, science, and practice of holistic medicine, based on exceptional self-care and self-love.
Self-love doesn’t cost anything. We have access to an infinite supply within each of us (once the mental and emotional obstacles are diminished or removed), and we are the most qualified practitioners to provide this remarkably effective medicine to ourselves. It would have been a no-brainer, but just as with the lack of science regarding the medicinal use of cannabis, the medical community insisted on seeing an abundance of studies that proved the effectiveness of holistic medicine, specifically on the therapeutic benefits of love. Unfortunately there were very few. They needed proof. Fair enough. “In that case,” I thought, “heed the advice of Hippocrates: Physician heal thyself.”
Rather than waiting decades for sufficient convincing documentation of its value, while depriving patients of optimal health care, why not see how a daily megadose of self-nurturing makes you feel and changes your life.
I’m thrilled to be writing this book and sharing with you what I’ve learned during the past three decades about using cannabis as a holistic medicine for relieving chronic pain and healing your life. The legalization of medical marijuana has helped significantly to facilitate my teaching of holistic medicine. Although it may not be a quick-fix for eliminating all of the causes of your dis-ease, it can certainly help in identifying the multiple factors contributing to your chronic pain. And, most important, it works extremely well for quickly reducing pain, and providing you the space for practicing optimal self-care.
I’m grateful for the opportunity to present what I’ve found to be the most effective self-healing practices, while imparting the wisdom of Hippocrates. As I continue my thirty-year journey from family doctor to holistic healer, it feels as if I’ve found the job I’ve been training for my entire life.
As many of you will find as you read this book, you don’t have to be a physician to heal yourself. With good instruction, the implementation of a self-care program along with medical marijuana can be a highly successful strategy for healing, and potentially curing, many common chronic pain conditions. With Cannabis for Chronic Pain, you’ll learn that you do not have to live with this misery. Hopefully you’ll also discover a new you in the following pages.