[exDemMom]

My question about that was twofold, not just this, but more so a reference to the last thread about opioids where I was still a little bent about your minimizing response and then non response... all I can say beyond the anecdotal evidence I provided in that thread that you ignored, is it must be nice to not have a clue what dealing with chronic pain is like. I have had back pain since my teen years, my mom would come in and ask why I was sleeping on the floor.

I would love to know what a life without chronic pain would be like, but I do not have that luxury. At this moment, my back hurts, my right arm and shoulder hurt, and my feet are aching in the bones. Pain is a constant for me. I have arthritis, and I have broken a few bones which remain forever painful. And I take nothing. For the most part, I use exercises that I learned in physical therapy, to strengthen the muscles around the joints so that there is less strain in the joints. Only when the pain is really bad do I take anything--ibuprofen. That's all. I've taken opiates, such as when I broke my arm. The opiates barely touched the pain, and the side effects--including a headache that felt like a railroad tie was being pounded into my head--are enough to dissuade me from ever taking opiates again.

As far as where you say your opinions have been formed, to have a real conversation, I would have to know how you feel about a couple other legal drugs that are proven to cause harm and kill thousands of Americans every year and let me know if you are or were a cigarette smoker or drink any form of alcohol. Personally I would put Marijuana in the classification of another legal harmless drug that also comes from a plant... called Caffine... Are you a coffee drinker?? I am not, lets ban that too!

You can't lump every substance together. I have yet to hear of anyone ever causing an automobile accident because they were under the influence of tobacco or caffeine. No one has ever become mean and violent because they imbibed a little too much coffee. I know that a favorite tact of pro-marijuana users is to say, "But what about [insert other substance of choice here]?" with the intent of trying to make marijuana look safe by comparison. The problem is, though, that marijuana is not safe. The more medical research is done on it, the more the dangers of use are being revealed and documented. Marijuana causes certain neurological cell types to die. Marijuana causes damage to certain structures in the brain. Marijuana reduces peoples' initiative and ambition, so that they do not feel motivated to do much at all beyond seek their next high. People who use marijuana before their brains are fully developed (i.e. before age 25) can become psychotic. And so on. On top of that, the psychoactive compounds in marijuana are fat soluble and are metabolized only very slowly, meaning that the exposure to these compounds is prolonged--which is problematic when considering questions of toxicity and carcinogenicity. In contrast, alcohol is rapidly metabolized by the body, at a rate of about one drink per hour (the rate is affected by body size). That means that if you have a glass of wine with dinner, it is metabolized by the time you go to bed. And so on.

Finally, your story about your experiences with mind-altering substances tells me that it really would not have mattered which mind-altering substance you used first. You happened to use alcohol first, so that was your gateway. If you had used marijuana first, that would have been your gateway. Some people are genetically predisposed to become addicted. I read about a man who was told that he had genes that are associated with addiction, and his response was to avoid ever engaging in behavior that might cause him to become addicted. No alcohol, no opioid pain killers, nothing. He didn't want to become an addict.

[AzNASCARfan]

Yeah maybe, my parents had recently divorced, I moved from a little country town to a big city then on to a whole new culture shock with California... I was shy and never made friends easily like my sister, at 9 or 10, None of those were my choices.

This Christmas eve my father got taken to a psych hospital and sometime this next week will probably be picked up and taken away and locked up for good, he is now 80 years old. After his divorce with my mom, he literally broke. He got remarried within the first year, and still married to the same woman, but she finally reached her DONE point, she is half his size and he has started getting aggressive and violent.

I spent every other weekend there until we moved to California, the first couple years he built another huge house for his new family and I helped every weekend, but as an adult, I have heard stories of him locking himself in the basement with his shotgun and going to kill himself within a few years of the divorce. I knew his guns were gone before I went to California. From that point on, been under a doctors treatment of some sort and heavy drugs, lithium etc... I don't even know how many times he has tried and failed, or threatened or whatever, I know the closest was 15 minutes in the car with exhaust being pumped in and he said he woke up face down beside the car with a headache for a week, this was within the past few years. That how his brothers son (a couple years older than I was) went while I was in tech school...

We have not been very close at all, his choice since about the time I got married 31 years ago. We have tried to patch things up numerous times and I am there for him as much as he wants me there... 15 years ago, he was up to 4 heavy drugs prescribed and went to a new doctor. Diagnosed untreatable manic depressive and added two more pills to the mix. Now has some dementia and recently diagnosed with lewy body disease too. I blame the doctors and all the drugs for frying his brain over 40 years but not sure what the alternative was either, sure makes me wonder though, maybe a natural plant like Marijuana??

My younger sister has followed with many of the same treatments and similar mental health problems he had. Sure is down on my smoking weed but no problem with hundreds of prescriptions over the years. Hers started with anorexia, about 12, she would not go with me, because our step mom made her eat, she would, then go throw it up... I could only guess, but she has had to have spent hundreds of thousands, probably millions actually of dollars on medical care, in her lifetime.

I gave you just a small piece of my story in what I have accomplished to show you it does not have do what you are claiming it is proven to do reduces peoples' initiative and ambition Some how I have managed without being a burden on society in any way, getting by with nothing more than smoking a natural plant god put on this earth for me to use... (btw, eating it is MUCH better now that I know, both for you and how it works and nobody smells it either) The people that are lazy after smoking it are just lazy people, sorry. I never sit still, everybody would guess my drug of choice was speed. There is a reason, for that, I sit for work, I want to get up and do something or I will die from non movement.

Seems like the fact I don't need to smoke more of it for desired effect, should be proof of something too, I guess just because I am not smoking it to get high, but I smoke FAR less that I used too, was probably an ounce a week for very long period of time back when I was working 80+ hours a week trying to start a business and work a full time job too. That's when the work relationship started with my main client now that I just did 2 buildings with 14 mil in construction costs for. My drawings helped him build a company that employed 40 people a few years later.

That architect I was working for at the time then, knew I smoked and how much, because he smoked with us on the sailing trip he took us on after he got paid when we finishing the F-16 hangar at Luke air force base, One of my first AutoCAD jobs. I only mention that because he is dead and gone long ago, he was an old man then that LOVED his ouzo, he was Greek. The weed the next morning was curing our hangover from the bar the night before watching a world series game...

I would have a real hard time believing this long time client does not also know, I went into his office from 2000-2008 but back in the early days when it was an ounce a week habit, he brought work to my door many times late night, after we had just smoked, maybe he thought it was just my wife, but?? He is very hardcore conservative and strong roman catholic.

I cant begin to count the number of peoples minds I have changed about marijuana and it was not by saying one word... It was by getting to know them for 5 or 10 years and then accidentally have them find out I smoke it and they have to re-evaluate everything they thought they knew.

Actually you have motivated me to write a book and tell my whole story... because now I believe at this point in my life that marijuana literally has saved my life... not so much as saved it, but gave me one. If it was not illegal and I could have grown it myself and had that money back in my pocket, well that's sad too, but for us that was our entertainment budget. We did not go out to eat, we did not go to the movies... hell we never even hired a babysitter. I did not have family close, that means we stayed home, I worked most of the time anyway, hence our marriage problems, I was a work-a-holic.

Thing is, I had all that depression shit as a teenager too. My girlfriend came out to visit after I started school, two nights before she went home, she broke up with me, and that night she was on the other side of the divider in our studio apartment with my first room mate... I left on my motorcycle and made a pretty high speed pass down a fairly busy main street and blew through whatever red lights were there for a few miles... another lucky to be alive story that nobody besides that girl even knows about... until now.

Funny thing is looking back, I have not had a suicidal thought in 25 years and my marriage was not always smooth and one point she got an apartment for a few months, if it was going to fail, I was ending the marriage and taking the kids, not killing myself! Not only has it allowed me ignore the physical pain I have been in, without harmful side effects of man made shit, but reduced my stress by being able to let me put things behind me and move on.

I guess it will be an autobiography, I never did fill in a profile here and I was going to add a little history to what I wrote you and put it up there... because I think it is very important to know the government line is a big lie.

I learned from grandparents that went through the great depression how to be frugal... How else do you think my wife and I could live on 10K a year for a few years, in this day and age. They were strong Baptists and I will tell you, Jesus Christ is my personal savior, I have had the Christian upbringing and prayed about this a lot. My grandfather told me the answer to all our questions are in the bible... He talked about Jesus to anybody he met, I felt like I was related to one of Gods modern day apostles. He related pieces of every day life back to the bible all the time, and brought thousands of people to know Jesus. Every time we went to the mall he disappeared, Made my grandma so mad! We would go looking and finally learned all you had to do was look for the crowd (a lot of time women) there he was, giving his testimony. I was a teenager before I followed him and realized what he was doing, as much as I knew he was right and trying to serve God, I was embarrassed at times... but he would talk to somebody, and get them to ask him about it, then he would tell them, people would overhear and move closer, pretty soon there was 40 people standing around listening to him talk. I was no longer embarrassed, They were there because they wanted to be. As I said, I was very shy and thought wow I could Never do that...

Fast forward 35 years, I have come out of my shell a little, I mean I can chat with somebody in line at the store or whatever, but still could never do what grandpa did, until recently when I started on the keyboard, first online arguing with atheists and other non believers that comment on stuff they don't understand... Then I spent hours upon hours banging away to get trump elected and feel a duty to tell conservatives they look foolish in their stance on marijuana to a large swath of our electorate... I have voted in every national election... some of the locals that I did not know one guy from the other, I blew them off... Now on to the one thing I disagree with the administration I worked to put into office... I believed Trump when he said it is a states rights issue, I hope Sessions latest move is Trumps way to get congress to get off their ass and do what their constituents have been begging for, get the federal government back to what they are tasked to do by our constitution.

Yes, I know the potential for abuse and would never advocate for school age kids to use it, Maybe that's why it worked for me, because I waited until I was 20 before I smoked much, but I did tell my children at drinking age, I would rather see them smoking weed than drinking alcohol when they started heading that direction. But you know kids, they certainly don't want to follow mom and dad's footsteps. It is not a comparison to ask is it worse than alcohol? Tobacco?? Both those that we know take lives daily??? I simply want you to think about why?? Then follow the money...

Well I know it's benefits first hand, that nobody ever has reported, really because its been illegal for 80 years now and there was no research being done. Cannabis was being used by the Chinese as herbs in their food how many centuries before the bible was written and yet the bible does not say anything at all about it, why, when it tells me not to drink hard liquor?? I tried to grow it a few times in the past way back with no luck whatsoever... I got my card a few years after my lifelong farmer grandfather passed away and the first time I tried to grow, it went crazy and grew literally like a weed.

When I started, I had 8 pages very fast when I checked and said well guess that's not going to work. I have been saving bits and pieces of writing over the years anyway, just for posterity because it was all electronic and I could. I wrote a race report after every race I ran and about half way through decided I should be saving stuff I wrote so don't even have all those, but I decided I am going to compile a book and fill in a few pieces and maybe I can get lucky enough to have a hit and be able to quit drawing and go prospecting for gold which is what I want to be doing with my time.

Funny, I hated English and History in school, last thing I ever thought about was writing a book. I think if I sit down and put things in order a little more than just typing something off the top of my head it can be a little more readable and not jumping around so much but I have a lot of anecdotal evidence and those memories or thoughts just pop into my head. The main side affect I see personally, is short term memory loss, but my long term memory is better than most... Funny thing is everybody I know that is aging along with me and has never used it in any way seems to have same short term memory problem I associated with smoking it. I would put my book title up but afraid somebody will steal it before I finish... Thanks!