Good, thankee. Very, very good.
Well…“well,” to be grammatically precise.
As some will recall, a few days ago I took it into my furry little head that I should try a little MaryJane to treat the endless goddamn insomnia and the crazy-making tingling in the hands and feet — the latter a condition known as peripheral neuropathy, whose possible causes range from the benign to the horrific. We now know, after still more time thrown annoyingly into the Bottomless Pit of Medical Science, that I do not have Parkinson’s, Lou Gehrig’s Disease, or multiple sclerosis. Still could have Guillaine-Barré syndrome. Still could have a type of leukemia. And we have no idea whether the whole mess could be a reaction to the titanium post that was driven into my upper jaw.
So I’ve tried “edible” cannabis items — cannabis-laced gumdrops known in the trade, cleverly, as “gummies,” but I have chosen not to ingest the CBD oil that I use to relieve the frantic tingling. Apparently you can…but…hmmm. Not to say eewwww!
The gummies take about 45 to 90 minutes before they kick in — so we’re told. I have not found that to be altogether true: they seem to work fairly quickly.
They do take the edge off the pain. When I’m not aggravating things by typing, they cut the hand & foot tingle by about 90% to 95%. Banging on the keyboard, as I’m doing now, brings it right back, but if I would just stay away from the computer, the PN in the hands would be pretty much under control.
Do they help you sleep? Do they help to stifle the Old-Folks’-Wee-Hours Jamboree?
mmmmhhh…. Maybe.
At this point, I’d guess it helps about 80%, give or take. It sure doesn’t keep you asleep all night long.
Normally I wake up at 2:30, toss and turn for an hour or more, then wake up again about 4:00 or 4:30 and am awake for the duration. This means that no matter what time you go to bed, you are NOT gonna feel rested in the morning. Even if you manage to force yourself to go to sleep at, say, 9 p.m., at 2:30 you’ve had all of five and a half hours’ sleep.
The first night I tried fine weed product, a week ago, I slept a good eight or nine hours. Awoke briefly about 3:30 but fell right back to sleep. Nevertheless, I still felt exhausted most of the day, so tired that all I wanted to do was crawl back in the sack. That, however, was out of the question. In addition to fatigue, I also found the old-lady memory issue was much aggravated. I couldn’t remember physical therapy routines, and things the PT said to me would literally go in one ear and out the other…at about the speed of light.
So that was alarming, to say the least.
Then I found that I did seem to be sleeping a little better — once, even eight hours during the night! That hasn’t happened in the recent memory of humankind…
So, with a brief preliminary experience, I’d say that for symptoms of peripheral neuropathy, topical application of products such as CBD oil, CBD cream, and Vick’s Vaporub works considerably better than ingesting small amounts of CBD. It’s not perfect — often the neuropathy overwhelms the calming effect, especially if the fingers dare to dance across a computer’s keyboard.
One study I found reported that patients’ peripheral neuropathy was helped better by vaping a cannabis product than by eating it or by smoking it. My friend VickyC did give me a vape pen. But I haven’t quite figured out to use it. And….well…no.
No, don’t think so.
My mother died — hideously — of lung cancer brought on by smoking tobacco. Seems to me that it doesn’t much matter what you’re smoking; it’s THAT you’re smoking. How does it escape a person that sucking foreign particles into your lungs cannot be good for you? To my mind it doesn’t matter what product you’re puffing in: it’s that you’re puffing in. Same applies to vaping: that London fog you puff out can’t be doing your innards any good.
At any rate, I managed to acquire some edible gummies, and also to peruse the marketing strategies of the local purveyers. Cannabis products are legal in Arizona, and so it’s possible to buy — legally — any number of “therapeutic” party products. And the stuff is sold at various levels: to buy some products, you have to show a medical marijuana card. But, irrationally, other items require nothing more than proof of age. The latter– the gummies, the topical oils, creams, and ointments and the liquid vape product — are available over the counter, no fake “prescription” card required.
So. I gaze upon this remarkable scene and think… uhmmmm…. WHY, again, am I paying you $28 for a bag of 15 cannabis-spiked gumballs?
No kidding! That bag of “ingestibles” contained fifteen small gumballs, to the tune of about two bucks a candy. I’ve been slicing them into halves or quarters and rationing them out, so the truth is, I have no idea what a full dose of the stuff would do.
So it goes…
Forthwith as I contemplate this state of affairs, it strikes me that when a person has a nice, sunny backyard with built-in irrigation and sprinklers on a timer, one has…well. Yes. A farm. If it appears that the stuff really works — and at this moment I think it may — then the desired strategy, obviously, is to grow one’s own!
Indeed. Thereby saving untold numbers of dollars and, to boot, having a real good grip on quality control…
So there’s a store over on the Westside that sells all sorts of innaresting stuff. Among this stuff is marijuana plants. These go on sale each Tuesday morning.
Unfortunately, they sell out within about two hours.
So next Tuesday VickyC and I will be at the establishment’s door when it opens. My plan is to buy at least one but maybe two or three marijuana plants, which will be extraordinarily happy in the Funny Farm’s back yard.
Heh! When we say “Funny Farm,” we ain’t kiddin’!