Sunday, March 24, 2019

146 CBD - THE GREAT EXPERIMENT


As you all know, my body is pretty screwed up due to my near fatal bout of sepsis in 2017.  All the details from that are available earlier in this Blog.  I have experienced so lasting and permanent side-effects from it.  I cannot feel my feet which makes balance difficult, but at the same time, they hurt deep inside.  Also, my right ankle, which I sprained prior to this whole episode starting has never healed properly.  In addition to other aches and pains, my hands have lost strength, I have very poor fine motor skills and they hurt a lot.

For months, I have been inundated with suggestions from my kids, friends, neighbours and various other associates, that I try cannabis.  I’ve never been a smoker and I’m not about to start now.  Even the media got involved.  Every week or so a supplementary newspaper about cannabis arrived at my home.

After a career spent fighting drugs and crime, I just did not want to go down that road.  Plus, I’ve never been a big fan of even legal drugs.  In the hospital when I was in agony, after a few injections of Hydromorphone I started refusing it and opting for Tylenol 3 and then stepping that down to just regular Tylenol.

So, I was not about to start using drugs, no matter how screwed up my body is.  Finally, it was more properly explained to me.  The cannabis they were suggesting, is not the psychoactive drug called THC in marijuana, but instead a completely different drug called CBD.  It’s got a long name that I can’t remember, cannabidiol or something.

So, I started researching it online and reading those newspaper supplements.  After reassuring myself that I was not going to become a raving pothead, I tentatively agreed to try it.  For anyone reading this outside Canada, cannabis is now legal here.  My son-in-law went to a dispensary and bought CBD drops while my son purchased a CBD infused topical cream.

They were extolling its virtues and promises of magical healing powers.  The research I did online was making the same type of promises.  Miracle cure for pretty much everything is what the research claimed.  I’m not even sure it’s proper double-blind scientific research studies, but who knows.  I remained extremely sceptical, because you know the old saying, “If something appears too good to be true, it is”.

Anyway, we booked a date, March 23, yesterday as it turns out.  The kids were coming over to assemble my new patio furniture and at the same time, I wanted someone with me before I took the CBD for the first time.  Just in case of side effects.  You know how in the medication ads where they talk about how less than half of 1% of people experience side effects?  I’m that half of 1%.  If there is a bad side effect to be had, I will have it.

Finally, it was time.  They gave me three little drops under my tongue.  I was expecting some wicked-awful taste, but there was no taste to it at all.  Backing up a little, I woke up in the morning with a “mild” migraine.  I still had vestiges of it, when I took the CBD.  I was also hurting pretty good all over my body.

After about 20 minutes, I felt something.  I can’t put my finger on it.  I just felt, strange.  Not unpleasantly, but I was not in any way intoxicated.  I didn’t really feel any improvement in my pain levels, although to be fair, it’s hard to quantify pain.  What for me would be annoying (I have a very high pain threshold) would be devastating to someone else.

Where I did notice something, is my hands had been sore before, seemed just a little less sore after.  I was having real difficulty bending down and picking things up, it seemed to be slightly easier after. So, at this point the jury is still out.  It certainly isn’t the amazing recovery that was touted in the newspaper, but I can’t definitively say it had no effect.  I can’t say for certain that it did either.

I may need a higher dosage, but I will build up to that.  It may also take awhile to build up in my system to the point that it produces therapeutic results.  At this point I can’t completely endorse it, but I can’t completely rule out any good effects yet.  I also rubbed some of the cream into my hands.  It didn’t appear to have any effect on them, other than to make my hands feel greasy.

I took a second dose just about 45 minutes ago.  This time, I did not experience the strange feeling that I did yesterday.  But, again, I feel like something is happening.  It’s by no means profound.  Just very subtle.  We shall see what happens.  I’ll continue to take it until I leave for San Diego, but I don’t dare take it across the border with me.

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