Opioids just don’t seem to have the same effect on me as they apparently do on others. They make me itchy, and that’s about it. However, the strongest ones combined with ibuprofen did help me after surgery.
Gabapentin hasn’t really shown me much, either. I’m supposed to take 2400mg a day, but I just haven’t seen any benefit from it- I still have severe diabetic neuropathy.
I really really hate pills. Just wish this crap would have held off until after the holidays, ya know?
@Wuachuma I don’t mean to get personal but. I have very similar damage. Had my 1st run in with life-long back treatments before I could drive. I’m 65. Been dealing with it off and on since. Chronic pain with a last ruptured disc ending me working in 2016. No back surgeries. Most invasive treatment were 2 essentially useless steroid injection series.
If I am awake, I am in pain. End of story. No expectations of a big change. I agree with most of your recommendations and comments. My big question is do you still have chronic pain? Acute pain? I can deal with the nerve shit mostly with cannabis. Heavy smoker. Heavy edibles usage. Where I’m at, I believe is dealing with increased arthritis. Waiting on an MRI approval now.
But right now. I’m waiting for a 10-325 to kick in so I don’t think bad thoughts behind pain. I’ve got some nasty tinnitus and a lot of decent anti-inflammatory stuff makes it worse. More bad thoughts. Being awake in the dark in pain is no bueno. The days are manageable, but options for distraction are reduced at night.
Old dope fiend trick. I put the Norcos in my coffee for quicker effect. My primary confirmed it works. Finally found one who is fine with all things cannabis, providing no issues are created. Respiratory issues mainly.
Rotation of strains is as key to me as a specific strain. Main reasons I grow are control of what I consume. I don’t honestly know if I get true pain relief, or just brain relief where I get stoned enough not to care. Smoke myself into a stupor on the living room floor.
Great advice !!!
Yes to the chronic pain.
Acute pain isnt constant after that chiropractor session, but once in a while yeah my whole day is shot.
Broke my neck in 2016 (for the 3rd time). It was on a scissor lift. And thats the real mofo these days. If I cant crack my next the right way, i get wicked migraines and need to go sleep for a while to reset my neck.
My mid-lower and lower back I get most pain from the discs, DDD, and arthritis. Usually a good crack resets it for a while.
I need to do yoga and core workout, its just hard to start without a shitton of meds. And being in NY, its impossible to find clean, quality meds for cheap. My last grow was a late-season bumper crop for seeds. I may have to buy some FECO from some Cali people to start working out again.
Having Lyme on top of it all makes one think about an easy way out, but I keep going. Though, I often wonder what I will be like at your age. So, Im looking at sourcing some poppy seeds and starting that path.
Every once in a while I will do MDMA and/or ketamine for a nice reset so I know what its like to be pain-free for a while and to be in a body that works.
My last DMT trip (last year on my birthday) showed me how important dancing is, so, once I get medicated adequately, I’ll start doing that.
The chronic pain does something wicked to the mind that is unexplainable to the uninitiated.
I highly recommend a good reset.
MDMA and Ketamine are hard to find pure since covid. So LSD and mushrooms are a safer bet.
Get a whole bunch of comfy stuff and good music, and then dance. Move. Find a love for your body again. Gotta reset the brain to break those thought-loops the pain creates. Think of it as a self-love session.
Growing san pedro is a good idea too.
The tea (brew) from it is real good medicine, but you need about 1-2 feet of it and it can be expensive if you’re not growing it. And it grows kinda slow (faster than peyote, though)
MAPS has some great research on psychedelics and chronic pain. And Ive learned medicine men / shamans are those who use these compounds to heal themselves and then they go on to heal their community. So I see them as a birth-rite.
With the ginger gene, opiates activate our histamine response. So take an antihistamine with them. No more itch.
2400mg of Gabapentin, that Dr is just trying to slow your brain to the point you only notice some of the pain, and notice very little of life.
Id rather someone take dilaudid everyday than lyrica or gabapentin.
20+ year RA patient here, diagnosed at 27 years old plus a boat load of OA issues already primed from a decade of combat sports and living off grid prior to that. I would suggest a look at Omuerta (webuildsoldiers.com) and La Plata Labs for heavy hitters. Omuerta has taken some very nice selections of Gage Green cultivars to F4 and bred some absolute heat of his own to treat his own PTSD and pain issues. La Plata has done well with Bubba and Alien genetics, also bred Flubber, aptly named as it has no ceiling for many folks. I have found that to be a good one to break up tolerance used in rotation.
Still, my go to typically is a landrace purple Afghani sourced from a Army Ranger and enthusiastic stoner. My guy fully understood the assignment and was pheno hunting isolated farms during patrols and counterinsurgency efforts in the border hash region. What he brought back is essentially Grape Alien Tech. I plan on crossing it with the Puck Bc3 I recently picked up. It’ll be a bit before I have F1 stock to share, but my intentions are to spread that love
RLTW
In my research, Ive found cannabis has sterols - a powerful anti inflammatory. But it doesnt translate to most concentrates.
It is in FECO but also can be consumed by eating raw leaves or eating leaves in a juicer/smoothie.
I absolutely agree that chronic pain does bad things to the mind. It has invaded my life and taken over, it’s this invisible force that has affected everything, every single aspect. I can’t even think straight because I hurt constantly.
The worst part is how much this exhausts and isolates you. Friends tend to drop off by the wayside when you no longer are fun, when you can’t do anything anymore. I am estranged from my family (except my mom, whose 88th birthday I missed because of this) so I’m battling it basically alone.
I won’t lie, this holiday season was rough. I’ve eyeballed my little .38 more than I care to admit, but that’s not the way. Hopefully the next month will bring some answers.
Happy New Year to all of you, bright blessings of peace, happiness and prosperity to one and all 
My buddy was a POW for 8 months in a cave, mostly in a tiny box. The whole time with a gunshot wound, shattered arm.
I was pretty sad-sack when he and I started hanging out. I had just broken my neck and suffering a lot from a TBI that took all my memories and thoughts.
Anyway, I learned something important from him - never give up the fight, always win the fight.
He’s back home because he never gave up.
And its interesting because I had wanted to ask my uncle who was a veteran that suffered 3rd degree burns to most of his body how he never gave up and never let it affect him. But he died by the time I needed to ask him that (fuck the VA). So a couple years later the Universe introduced me to another veteran who would go on to teach me the same lesson my uncle would have.
Psychedelics will help bring that spark back.
You’ve got this
Current medical research would suggest this is an accurate statement. I get the “marijuana moment” newsletter with all drug headlines/medical studies every morning. Basically every study on psychedelics say “it works shockingly well”.
I’ve only had one experience with shrooms and it was not pleasant, but it was entirely my own fault.
I grew oyster mushrooms and built a fruiting chamber, so growing some cubensis shouldn’t be too difficult. Maybe once my body calms down I’ll give them another shot.
Shrooms can be tricky, theyre one of the less forgiving entheogens.
The trip is very sensitive to your diet and set/setting.
Whereas LSD will allow you to eat right up until you trip,
Mushrooms require a fast if about 6-8hrs to stop the MAO enzyme in your stomach. Further, any junk food or alcohol the previous few days will make your trip heavy.
Also, I like to microdose (0.001-0.2g) a couple times before doing a standard dose (1.3-2.5g) and definitely being doing a large dose (3-7g).
The gentlest entheogen is Wachuma (san pedro or peyote)
Instant tranquility and peace.
DMT is very nice too, especially when vaped. It will last only 10 minutes.
But, if taken with an MAOi, it can last up to 6hrs.
As for the overwhelming energy that can come with any entheogen, its helpful to dance, sing, or chant that energy out of your body.
When I go deep with mushrooms or salvia, I like Krishna Das or Bhagavan Das. Ajeet Kauer and Snatam Kauer are great too. Deva Premal.
Lol, one trip on LSd woth my friends, a buddy put on the Trinity test (nuclear bombs) and I started ranting and speaking in tongues, freaking out one buddy before I curled in a ball. So a friend put on Overdrive by Lazerhawk and I just levitated off the couch with a big smile on my face.
Now I want to clean my house and do some mushies
Much Love
I once heard that Bruce Lee was into eating hash to help control inflamation. I have a pile of hemp flower i thought about making dry sift or bubble from to add to drink or food. Do you see any benefits from this?
I want to share this research paper that addresses a lot of the medicinal properties of cannabis leaves and roots, as many have said there are health benefits to eating the plant that we are only now starting to study:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-60172-6
s41598-020-60172-6.pdf (3.7 MB)
Oh this was a neat paper!
Some things to note:
Roots contained between 0.001% and
0.004% cannabinoids in all three chemovars (Supplementary Table 10), which agrees with the minuscule amounts reported by other studies (0% and 0.03%)5,29.
Stem barks contained between 0.005% and 0.008% cannabinoids in all three chemovars and was found to be less than the amounts previously reported (0.02% and 0.1–0.3%)5,29.
Total cannabinoids quantified in leaves were between 1.10% and 2.10%, which agreed with the
previously-reported amounts (1–2% and 1.40–1.75%)29,53 but not others (0.05%).
Mono- and sesquiterpenoids were not detected in stem barks or roots.
Total mono- and sesquiterpenoids ranged from 0.125% to 0.278% in leaf and 1.283% to 2.141% in inforescence in the three chemovars (Supplementary Table 12), which were less than the 4% reported in unfertilized fowers in a previous study, 5.
Total sesquiterpenoid content was higher than total monoterpenoids in fan leaves in Chemovar I and Chemovar II but was comparable in Chemovar III. This observation was clearer when contents were expressed as ratios: sesquiterpenoids comprised approximately 90% of total terpenoids in Chemovar I and II and comprised 53% of the total terpenoids in Chemovar III.
- Russo, E. B. & Marcu, J. Cannabis Pharmacology: Te Usual Suspects and a Few Promising Leads. in Cannabinoid Pharmacology
67–134 Elsevier, Redirecting 2017
- Upton, R. et al. Cannabis inflorescence: cannabis spp.; standards of identity, analysis, and quality control. (American Herbal
Pharmacopoeia., 2014).
- Flores-Sanchez, I. J. & Verpoorte, R. Secondary metabolism in cannabis. Phytochemistry Reviews 7, 615–639 (2008).
So it looks like stems and roots are basically worthless… Missing half the terpenoids and all flavanoids and the overall content is so low as to make extraction likely not worth the effort. Leaves however seem worth it as you still get the sterols and triterpenoids that you’d get in the root/stembark but at a higher percentage 
This was also neat!
Several chemotaxonomic studies utilized this method to discriminate “Sativa” and “Indica” varieties and found that terpenoid profles are uniquely retained from their respective landrace ancestors48–50,56,58,59. The presence of more hydroxylated terpenoids in Chemovar III does not ft its reported classifcation as C. indica ssp. indica (NLD, vernacular “Sativa”), but more closely aligns with C. indica ssp. afghanica (WLD, vernacular “Indica”). Similarly, although the Chemovar I and II were reported as “Indica,” their terpenoid profles were characteristic of “Sativa” chemovars. One study found that the reported ancestry percentages of “Sativa” vs. “Indica” for 81 drug-type chemovars are only moderately correlated with the calculated genetic structure68, indicating that the vernacular classifcations do not reliably communicate genetic identity. For medicinal research and applications, cannabis chemovars should be identifed by their chemical fngerprints, which are more reliable than their names48,49,56.
- Hazekamp, A. & Fischedick, J. T. Cannabis - from cultivar to chemovar. Drug Testing and Analysis 4, 660–667 (2012).
- Fischedick, J. T. Identifcation of Terpenoid Chemotypes Among High (-)-trans-Δ9-Tetrahydrocannabinol-Producing Cannabis
sativa L. Cultivars. Cannabis and cannabinoid research 2, 34–47 (2017)
- McPartland, J. M. & Guy, G. W. Models of Cannabis Taxonomy, Cultural Bias, and Conficts between Scientifc and Vernacular
Names. Te Botanical Review 4, 327–381 (2017).
- Hillig, K. W. Genetic evidence for speciation in Cannabis (Cannabaceae). Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution 52, 161–180
(2005).
- Fischedick, J. T., Hazekamp, A., Erkelens, T., Choi, Y. H. & Verpoorte, R. Metabolic fingerprinting of Cannabis sativa L.,
cannabinoids and terpenoids for chemotaxonomic and drug standardization purposes. Phytochemistry 71, 2058–2073 (2010).
Wow! Thank you for digesting that, part of why I post this stuff is that I have a hard time actually stopping and going into the material when I see so many connections to other things I keep following them and don’t always make it back. This is a great summary!
I guess I’d add to this that some of the most interesting contemporary research I’m finding on some of the more medicinal uses of cannabis are coming from Chinese scientists, which makes sense given the millennia of cultural experience with cannabis and hemp for food, fiber, and medicine. I know that in Traditional Chinese Medicine hemp seed, leaf, and root is used in addition to the flowers, so I imagine these folks are doing something similar to the Indian scientists doing interesting work looking into why some ancient Ayurvedic medical treatments are effective, especially the aspects of it that say diet and herbs/spices are so important.
