Have you tried or thought about coming off pharmaceutical prescription drugs in place of cannabis? Read the personal account of a Brighton Cannabis Club member who has managed to come off of all pharmaceutical medications including prescribed opiates to treat the pain associated with scoliosis and fibromyalgia.

So you’ve got MS, or Arthritis, or may be Osteo Perosis, Fibromyalgia, Necrosis, Chronic fatigue with chronic pain every day. Me…I have always had Scoliosis, and lower lumber spinal damage. I also went onto contract Fibromyalgia and Costochondritis of the ribs, severe migraines with very dangerous Cyclical Vomiting Syndrome I suffered for many years and it melted away my four front teeth and caused a partial stroke which still makes my right eye close slightly. So with the burning fire all over my skin from Fibromyalgia flaring up, exhausted by chronic fatigue and finding it hard to breath without chronic rib pain, I went to the doctor. He put me on Codeine Phosphate which is the strongest form of Codiene and it did nothing. He went onto prescribe Tramadol Hydrochloride, dodgy anti spasmodics, and worse anti depressants. After a few months of relief you think “maybe this is the best way to treat my condition”, but like most pharmaceuticals there’s a honeymoon effect in that for a few weeks or months your daily dose is great, but then starts to have less and less effect, and so your doctor says “well, you can take as required”.

After a while you realise that you have two problems, your existing condition and now a pain killer addiction.

You now wake up with not just your existing conditions of pain but also pain killer withdrawal pain on top. To combat this at first, I had to set up a 6 hourly timer, 6am, 12pm, 6pm, 12am, if I missed these times it was pain times ten on top of my Fibromyalgia.

So after a while, I looked further into cannabis oil and found that it’s a concentrated extract and strong enough to knock out pain killer withdrawal symptoms and at the same time ease my Fibromyalgia symptoms. I invested in an oil vaping product called the Maud Dib as it was portable and I could set it up next to my bed for night time and emergency use. Medically, it was risky for me coming off Tramadol after 10 years on those things, but I was determined to get off them some how. It was really effecting my quality of life.

Becoming a member of my local Cannabis Social Club, Brighton, has allowed me to have a greater access to a larger selection of good quality medicines, made by people that grow with love and make their medical and therapeutic products with care – purposefully for people in situations like myself. The compassionate nature and good will of the community has been instrumental in helping me transition from a full time pharma zombie to a productive and proactive member of the reform movement in the South East.

How I Beat Pharma Addiction

First I had to cut out all inflammatory foods like Palm Oil, MonoSodium Glutamate now rebranded Yeast Extract, and anything with “modified” in the ingredients as they were triggering certain aspects of my conditions for the worse. I now go for organic foods as much as possible. When it came to weaning myself off the prescribed medication, I had to reduce my dosage of opiates slowly using tiny ball bearings worth of cannabis oil at a time, similar to a large pin head, dropped on the Maud dib to help through inhaling the vapors. Then came the time to finally bite the bullet and cut them out completely! I knew I was in for a rough ride, the withdrawal can be worse than coming off heroin. From day one the uncontrollable shakes, pain, and sweats kicked in, that night it stopping me from sleeping.

I remember having six dabs on the Maud Dib in a row, it worked. It was still painful, but it was just enough with all my other pain treatments like Epsom Salts baths, cannabalms, and Devils Claw Gel to get off that Tramadol rubbish.

It was cannabis oil that really got the job done for the chronic deep muscle pain I still get now. I thank mother nature for her healing herbs. I have grown to respect and use cannabis as a medicine mostly by ingesting minimal 100mg cannacap dosages and 400mg for very bad pain days. I do not use tobacco and drink very rarely and minimally. We have been lied to about this miracle herb. My doctor is fully supportive of my use of cannabis and says my dosages are so low he won’t even note them down. So when the odd person critisizes my use of cannabis I have to educate them as they know very little about cannabis and how to use it orally as a medicine.

I hope to be at Parliament openly vaping cannabis medicine on the 10th of Oct along with Paul Flynn MP. Join us! – Dominic.

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