- Amos: My name is Amos Harvest McDonald.
I was born in colorado but I consider myself from Virginia,
consider meant spent most of my childhood here.
I don't remember much of Colorado so I'm from Virginia
- interviewer: I see, I see.
Could you tell us a little bit about your experiences that we were talking about earlier.
- Amos: Well I noticed that when I got burned when I was about 17 years old pretty severely.
This whole part of my arm was seized up and the skin was hanging off
and I was hospitalized for about 18 days.
And even with the morphine that I was constantly being given every hour I was still in a great deal of pain
and I wasn't eating which was the main thing.
Beause all those, you know hard painkillers was just turning my stomach upside down.
And one of the really cool nurses in the hospital was noticing that I wasn't eating
and noticing that I was losing a lot of weight in that time
and he came to me and suggested that I smoke cannabis.
And he said if you have any friends that that can get you some and bring it in here.
I can show you where to go and and and smoke it or whatever way you can take it.
There was a bathroom as a matter of fact, on the fifth floor of the hospital that had a air suction
so great that you could smoke in there and it would vent out in seconds.
So I guess that's where he would go and he told me to go there.
And so I'd carry my little you know IV thing with me to go down there and I would smoke
and come back up and eat like nobody's business.
And whole attitude, my anxieties from that situation where were dealt with and I...
They noticed that I stopped actually wanting to receive morphine.
Which they were surprised because most people are like more and more and more and more and more.
And due to that I've managed to make what would have been much more miserable,
be much more doable or you know able to deal with it.
And that was just the beginning of me noticing how cannabis helped me in many different things.
Obviously the pain thing is, is what most people tend to use it for or talk about down.
But one of the things that I noticed was a mental health issue that I've been dealing with since I was
about around that time I was more or less about 19 I guess.
I come from a family that suffer from severe depression, anxiety, suicidal tendencies and so on.
And I grew up watching my mother being very upset and very depressed and suicidal
and she made many attempts In trying to kill herself in front of me.
And it pretty much in turn gave me an anxiety attack to where it could come and go,
i could just be a party hanging out having a good time
and suddenly have to leave because I was having a complete total panic attack,
I turned white, start breathing too hard.
So I started going to doctors and said this is killing me you know, I can't function in Ithe world like this.
And they first said okay well I'm going to put you on, I think the first drug I was on was called Imipramine.
Which is a dinosaur of psychotropic or whatever drugs to treat this kind of thing
and it made me feel like my skin was crawling.
I mean it was so difficult, I took it for one day and got of that.
I came back, they gave me another one, which was Paxil
and that stuff made me feel even worse.
But I did stay on that for 2 weeks to try to give it, what the doc said, stay on it.
You know, you got to be on it for a certain time before it starst working
and I was having severe anxiety on that.
So then an addition to paxil they gave me Clonidine.
Which I've had many terrible experiences with that granted.
Yes I could take Clonidine and it would help calm me down.
But if I didn't have it, I mean my anxiety would be 3 times worse.
The withdraw from it, the side effects from not having it
and not to mention the side effects from actually being on it where traumatic.
And so I ended up getting off that in it and this isn't over years of time with me
Bouncing back and forth from convincing myself that there's a doctor out there that can help me,
western medicines has got to be able to help me.
And then to people going, hey man it's not going to work you know try cannabis.
and potentially I realized it but my brain was going nuts
and I started feel like I was gonna have a panic attack, I could smoke pot
and I would feel complete calm, complete normal
and eat, go to work even, worked perfectly fine as a carpenter.
And I've done some of my best, most creative work.
And a lot of people say, when I smoke and go to work, I can't even function.
Well I just feel normal whereas some people that don't need it perhaps
they just use it for recreational fun, it's a different story
Really, I don't go out because I can't socialize.
For me it just makes me normal
and if it wasn't for that I really don't even want to think about where I could have gone from that you know.
With the Western medicine end of it you know, mental hospital for all I know, so...
- Interviewer: Have you ever talked to your doctor, any of your doctors about your cannabis use?
Well they always ask me, do you use you know marijuana? blah blah... i know
I always say yes, I smoke pot you know
and they're like well if it doesn't seem to causing you problems don't worry about most of them say.
But they don't ever like promote it, you know?
They say, if it helps you've got do it, do it.
But a lot of times they're like here I'm going to give you this first before you do that, you know?
It's a matter of paying a lot of money, a lot more money.
A lot of times al these new drugs are just ridicolous in prizes
and you've got to a doctor and pay them first just to get the prescriptions so you can get this drug
and it's, it just didn't really work out for me.
- Interviewer: Are you taking any medication, any prescription drugs right now?
-Amos: I haven't taken any prescription medications in the last 3 years.
I did break down and try to stop smoking and stop drinking, stop doing anything.
And I wanted to just see what it was like, you know?
See if, see if this it was true that this was actually benefiting me
or if I was just trying to fool myself into thinking that
hey you know this is medicine when actually I'm just addicted to pot or something.
Well I was able to stop smoking, no problem
and the only side effect that I had was a little bit lak of appetite for the first few days.
But after that I didn't go through severe you know withdraw
or sitting there thinking about robbing a bank so I could go buy pot you know what I mean it wasn't like that.
It was just that my head started swimming
and going like this noise in my head started getting louder and louder without it
and it's the same nose I had before I ever smoked it.
So I convinced myself there it's not because I'm not without it that I'm experiencing this
This is what I've dealt with and why I ended up trying it to begin with.
Because I had this, like when I say by noise, it's a anxiety type thing.
It's the depression, is a lack of ambition to do anything.
Because you're feeling so nervous about being public and talking to people all the time
and I literally be contemplating suicide in my mind at these times.
Not just doing when I'm talking about now but way in the past.
And I don't, have no desire to actually kill myself.
But when you're feeling anxiety so intensely, killing yourself it's inviting, it is.
It's like well if I could just not feel this anymore, no matter what it takes to do that, then you'll do it
and so instead I would always run to a friend's house and be like, hey give me, do you have any cannabis?
and they would say, sure here you go and I would take a couple tokes
and suddenly wonder why I ever thought that before.
I'm just, my brain would click right back to normal.
and I would just be like, it literally like bring tears to my eyes.
Because I was thinking straight at the time after smoking
and going man I can't believe I actually was plotting how I was going to do it, you know?
Like what method of committing suicide was actually being plotted in my head hours earlier.
Now I'm totally fine looking forward to going to work in the morning, you know?
And that to me is a no-brainer, you know?
And not to mention it's a plant and that it's been used for you know so many, so many years.
That there was anything that's going to come up that's bad about it would have come up already
And then they're giving me drugs that just came out, they have no idea what's going to happen to me.
They may say, here this one may cause you to feel more suicidal for the first couple of weeks that you try it
but you got to get through that.
I tell the doctor right in the face, in front of him, even a fragment more suicidal than I am right now
and you're going to hear about me in the paper you know?
and those were times where I just couldn't get my hands on my medication.
Because of the, you know, the fact it's illegal, it makes it incredibly difficult
and the paranoia growing, I used to grow myself and the paranoia there that you get from having a growing
and wondering if you're going to get in trouble for just growing this simple plant defeats the whole purpose.
So I'd have it growing but then I always been kind of nervous.
So I stopped doing that because it just didn't work.
It's, you know, knowing that I can have it without having to be criminalized by it was a good thing.
In Hawaii where I just came from its, it's pretty lean you know?
There's not decriminalized 100% but you know they catch you with it,
they're just like no, don't do that again or I'll slap on the hand.
So I didn't really feel nervous walking around with my medication
and taking my medication, you know, on the beach or something like that.
Or whereas here I'm super paranoid
because the government here is much more different much more strict on it.
So...
- Interviewer: Actually I think, I think you do a great job.
I think, you know, you have answered all the questions I was going to ask.
- Amos: oh yeah?
Cannabis Patient Network
Cannabispatientnetwork.org
Be part of the network schedule your interview today
markpendersen.cpn@gmail.com & reginanelson.cpn@gmail.com
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét