Holding Back the Greenest Spring
Cannabis, Legalization, and New Hampshire (Part 1): Back to the Roots
March 10, 2019
High in the New Hampshire hills
Sunday morning by the woodstove, watching the snowfall here at 2000’ in the hills of New Hampshire. It’s been a long cold winter to this point. The snow fell early this year — before Thanksgiving — giving us a classic white Christmas. The cold came early as well, and stayed mainly throughout the entire winter save a couple weeks in January when temperatures moderated. The long, cold winter.
Today, I’ll let the stove burn hot (get the house a little sweaty even) with Sunday jazz drifting room to room and whiskey in the morning coffee. I will count snowflakes and enjoy some time with my wife.
Good things to do on a snowy Sunday.
Like this day and this winter, the national relationship with cannabis has been in the midst of a long cold period. As the musician Tom Waits croons out, “you can never hold back spring”; you can also never hold back basic human rights when the populous finally gets that it’s been lied to about all sides of the issue — in essence this has been what has happened with the federal prohibition on cannabis since the early 20th century. People have been had, lied to, truth covered up, imprisoned, lives ruined and ended all over cannabis.
Here at 2000’ on this Sunday as I write this piece, I puff on a nice joint of a high CBD content hemp flower (as opposed to THC in marijuana, CBD does not produce any “high”, but offers other positive benefits), watch the snow, and think about how it will be over 50 degrees by later this week.
Yes, you never can hold back spring, and the legislators up at the State House and our Governor Chris Sununu should be advised — as well the naysayers — you also can’t hold back cannabis legalization.
I walked through the door of the newly opened dispensary, one of the four legal medical cannabis dispensaries in the state of New Hampshire. It was pleasant, the staff were gracious, and the showroom was impressive. I stood in awe. Never in my 40-odd years did I think, in real terms, that I would one day stand in a legal pot shop inside the USA.
So I was there — had the prescription — but what did that mean? How did I get there?
My journey to that dispensary started back in 1991, in Fairfield County CT, on a small property in Newtown CT, off Hattertown road. I was just 21 years old. I was employed as a landscaper on a mowing and maintenance crew, working all over Fairfield County, at homes of the rich and famous: a French sculptor, Paul Newman’s neighbor, a certain rich female Seventies adult film star, the local oil baron, and so forth.
I had stopped my mower beside a small shady brook, delighting in the shade and the escape from the blistering heat and humidity of Connecticut in August it allowed. Damselflies were coming and going from the cool mud of the stream bed. I looked down at my right arm and noticed a strange brown flake on my skin, which was not unusual as all sort of debris landed on me while working. I tried to flick it off, but it didn’t budge. It was in fact burrowed into me, into my arm, dining on my blood. It was a small Black Legged or “Deer” tick.
This same brand of shallow thinking — the factless and presumptive — also affects the permutations of the fight for legalized access to cannabis, both at the federal and state level here in New Hampshire. Arguments are used by its detractors are all but made up, certainly without basis in fact.
I sought treatment for the tick bite immediately; in fact, I left the tick in my arm and had the doctor’s office take it out of me. They chose not to test the tick for Lyme, but to treat me as if I was infected with Borrelia Burgdorferi, the bacteria which causes Lyme disease. The only hitch in this is that we’re talking about 1991. Lyme was not well understood — shit, it’s not well understood now . . . and I was given an ineffective antibiotic, for an ineffective period of time (even if it was an effective antibiotic).
Honestly, among the medical community here in the United States what’s effective or not is still up for debate near to 45 years after the bacteria was identified. This highlights both the complexity of Lyme disease, but also the medical community’s failings at achieving a good working consensus on a course of therapy that is effective.
This same brand of shallow thinking — the factless and presumptive — also affects the permutations of the fight for legalized access to cannabis, both at the federal and state level here in New Hampshire. Arguments are used by its detractors are all but made up, certainly without basis in fact. In fact some of the arguments against legal access are so misplaced, I find myself wondering if some of these folks — the mouthpieces and policy makers, are on the real drugs. But you and I know the answer to that: of course they are — money being the greatest drug of all time.
And so it goes with Lyme Disease: misinformation, lack of access to proper treatment, lack of access to doctors who know what Lyme Disease even is — I’ve had arguments with doctors over whether it is REAL — and lack of research into the multiple aspects to treating, curing, and preventing Borrelia infection. (See author’s note at end).
This conundrum, the argument, the lack of accepting empirical knowledge in both cases is disheartening. It is a disservice to the public health. It is an outrage and is preventable through more understanding . . . but oh so slowly it trickles in, like the melt water drops running down the length of an icicle.
You can never hold back spring.
I had never thought too much of “medical marijuana” before the early nineties. The modern roots go back to the early Eighties. “Brownie” Mary Rathburn — whose full name ironically was actually Mary Jane Rathburn — was giving pot laced brownies to AIDS patients in The San Francisco Bay. She was curing wasting syndrome, which was occurring in HIV patients due to nausea from taking the copious amounts of drugs required to treat the new disease. This relief from wasting was tangible, and real, but it wasn’t just giving them the munchies, it was alleviating the nausea, andmuch of their discomfort and pain as well.
Flash forward a few years and cannabis is being used to treat epilepsy. It’s not only effective, it’s a near knock out punch for many, including children plagued with a specifically intense form of the disease. What a gift for all those kids. I hope to touch further on this topic in a later piece.
Beyond that, little was known of any greater usages medicinally of cannabis, in the modern world at least.
But spring was upon us. Change was coming.
As cannabis over the years slowly became known to more and more people, both young and “oldering” alike, stories were shared about this person or that person getting some kind of relief from cannabis. For me it kept a kind of general anxiety at bay that normally would make me a quiet sort around people. When I had smoked I was . . . well downright outgoing. Though, it me took years to think of this as a kind of real life medicinal use of cannabis — anxiety management.
Nothing was helping — until I tried CBD.
Flash forward again to the middle 2000’s. I had been (finally) diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease in ’08 and had been on several different antibiotics for months at a time with antimicrobials, anti inflammatories, nutritional therapy, pain management, treatment for insomnia. I was hurting, I was debilitated. I was going downhill fast.
Nothing was helping — until I tried CBD.
My youngest son recommended I try it, my oldest son got some for me. It changed my life.
Nothing had helped me battle Lyme, nothing. Taking CBD for two weeks took me from being a near cripple with constant pain and difficulty with the most basic movements, to walking 2 miles on a beach on the Gulf Coast of Florida, under a full moon, with my lovely wife. It took me from being in constant shivers and chills, to feeling — at least kind of — normal. CBD. Wow. Small miracles.
About a year after my success with CBD, an employee of mine suggested I should try getting myself off of the benzos I was using for the insomnia that I’d been cursed with my entire adult life. I was already awaiting my medical cannabis card from the state of New Hampshire Therapeutic Cannabis Program. As soon as I got my card I went up to the dispensary and got what I needed to make the concentrated cannabis capsules I would need to sleep, I easily made my capsules, took them, and without any obvious detox symptoms, went from 10+ years of Klonopin daily, to none, in one week. Now please, I don’t recommend this method to anyone — I was fortunate not to detox. (Always consult your doctor before cutting back on opiates, benzos, antidepressants, and many other regularly ingested pharmaceuticals.)
Another [personal] victory for medical marijuana.
I’m not alone either.
It’s just after dinner now. The house up here at 2000 ft. is still warm, maybe even still a bit sweaty. Jazz has been replaced by Wilco screaming “I wanna be your kingpin . . . ”
The snow has ceased, ending as a brief wet mist, just enough to slick up the mix.
I didn’t even scratch the surface of my . . . contempt . . . dissatisfaction . . . suspicion . . . disappointment with the states “cannabis program”. But that’s ok, there’s more time left here on this rock, between you and I, more time to delve into this subject. After all I’ve never yet mentioned eating cannabis oil on the Gulf Coast at midnight, or riding along on bootlegging runs to the great state of Maine with a crazy old green warrior fighting the good fight; at high speed; music blaring; voice booming; smoke flowing freely — laughing all the way.
No, those are tales for another time, another day, another piece.
For now, I gotta reload the woodstove and get back to this reality: it’s still wintaaaaah out theaaaaah.
But spring is right around the corner.
Author's note: In regards to Lyme disease and tick bites. This is not to be taken lightly people. If you get bit get tested. If you think you’ve been bit, get tested. If you feel sick at an unusual time, or have persistent or unusual symptoms . . . get tested! It does seem that the primary infection can be stopped in its tracks with the appropriate and rapid treatment (typically Doxycycline for 21 to 28 days per ILADS). Beyond the primary infection Lyme can be near to impossible to cure. So the key is vigilance on the front end, for you and your loved ones — parents be aware of your children coming in from play, and pets too. Ticks will hitch a ride however they can. — WJM