Ask my friend about his medical cannabis recommendation.

[tongodeon]

An friend recently sent a small group of us this story about his experience obtaining medical marijuana, partly in response to my own experience. Looks like not a lot has changed in the last two years. I post this here with his permission:

The past week or so i've had constant pain in my side from what I thought was a gastrointestinal issue (

Comments

[kat89]

Very interesting.

[chemicalpilate]

I think you over-estimate how much most people analyze the "regular" pharmaceuticals they're given. Doctor says take this, they take it, but they don't understand half-lives, dosing, etc.

[tongodeon]

...nor do they have to, which is perhaps the greater point.

The fact that the regular doctor/pharmacist works as well and as simply as it does ("take two of these and call me in the morning") is that the system encapsulates (pun intended) the principles I've described. It's understood what "these" are and what "two of them" contain. Without quantities and standardization to provide a foundation for basic directions everyone's just shooting in the dark.

Patients don't need to understand half-lives any more than car owners need to be familiar with metric conversions or understand oil viscosity, but if those standards and figures aren't part of the process somewhere the whole practice of modern auto mechanics pretty much breaks down.

[chemicalpilate]

See, that's where you're wrong. How often do people go on an SSRI only to have to change it a few times (compound, dose, etc) before they find something that works?

My business idea, if it weren't so legally risky in San Diego, would be to start an actual marijuana pharmacy: standardize doses based on measurement of THC content.

[tongodeon]

How often do people go on an SSRI only to have to change it a few times (compound, dose, etc) before they find something that works?

Obviously it's better when patients understand half-lives and dosing. My point is that nobody - not the doctor, not the pharmacist, not the patient - can get to that point ("changing compounds and doses") without these medications being standardized to contain known compounds or metered to known dosages.

My business idea, if it weren't so legally risky in San Diego, would be to start an actual marijuana pharmacy: standardize doses based on measurement of THC content.If anyone were to do this it would completely demolish my argument against the current MCD system, and I would welcome this. My objection is not with medical cannabis generally, but the way it's being handled in California specifically

[tongodeon]

This week, especially. I've been trying to write a rant but the idiocy is making me incoherent.

[spiritualmonkey]

All the petro-industrial drugs you put your faith in have LD50s. That's the lethal dose that kills 50% of the test subjects. Re: cannabis-According to the Merck Index, 12th edition, THC has a LD50 (dose killing half of the research subjects) value of 1270 mg/kg (male rats) and 730 mg/kg (female rats) administered orally dissolved in sesame oil.[17] The LD50 value for rats by inhalation of THC is 42 mg/kg of body weight.[17] One estimate of cannabis's LD50 for humans indicates that about 1500 pounds (680 kilograms) of cannabis would have to be smoked within 14 minutes.[18] This estimate is supported by studies which indicate that the effective dose of THC is at least 1000 times lower than the estimated lethal dose (a "safety ratio" of 1000:1).
Not even addressing the fact that most drugs work as advertised (expensively, and directly to the consumer) in somewhere of 30-50% of patients who take then as prescribed, cannabis is monumentally safer than just about any drug in the pharmacopoeia, and in particular when they are taken in

[tongodeon]

Did you even read my post? My friend did have an overdose!. Not a fatal overdose, but he had a seriously terrible time because he took, without direction, an unknown amount of a substance that wasn't standardized. The fact that he didn't die from overdose (and that it would have been difficult for him to do so) is completely irrelevant to the discussion. Of course it's also possible to have seriously terrible times by overdosing on conventional medicines, but responsible people minimize that problem by knowing what and we're taking and how much we're taking. If we want to call marijuana a "medicine" we should probably start treating it like medicine, especially when it's being used to treat sick people.

Seriously, this islike pointing to the article about TSA employees harassing passengers by saying "yeah but flying is still safer than driving". That's true, but also completely irrelevant.

[matrygg]

It seems to me that tongodeon is addressing the social aspects surrounding the grey area that medical marijuana is in California, not its effacacy versus drug x, y, or z.

I'm not sure just because something is from a plant means it's totally awesome, either. Digitalins with measured doses, from the pharmacy, work a hell of a lot better than drinking foxglove tea, after all.

Research?

[spiritualmonkey]

It seems that while your friend was doing "research" on how easy it might be to obtain the substances, he did not, by his own admission, perform due diligence on dosages. Just because it's not written on the pack is no excuse. Again, by his own admission, he made an assumption that the lozenge would be low potency. They folks running the dispensaries have a good idea about the potency of the products and may have been able to steer your friend in a better direction or suggest actual low dosage products if your friend had talked to them and described his past usage pattern. Hindsight is 20/20. If an individual has a low tolerance for marijuana it's likely that a large dosage of THC will result in unpleasantness.

[hwrnmnbsol]

This post totally harshes my mellow.

[ikkyu2]

The comments on this post totally harsh my mellow, man. Where'd you hide the dronabinol?