In case you were wondering, the government does indeed care about the reason you medicate with cannabis. In Colorado, for instance, there are 8 conditions for which a person may receive a prescription for medical marijuana: cancer, AIDS, chronic wasting diseases, glaucoma, seizures, persistent muscle spasms, severe pain and severe nausea. Not listed? Post Traumatic Stress Disorder aka PTSD. But a drug that has been OK’d by Colorado to treat PTSD: MDMA aka Molly. That’s right, the kid at the rave next to you sucking on a pacifier and undulating to electronic dance music is “healing” his or her brain while you and your joint are doing nothing to cleanse your cerebral cortex or better yourself by society’s standards.
Washington state disagrees with Colorado’s decision; they’re the 11th state to approve cannabis as a method to treat PTSD, specifically for veterans (California is included in that). The biggest concern besides anxiety and physical pain in vets is flashbacks, which can be triggered by anything specific to any person. According to veteransformedicalmarijuana.org, giving vets pills to pop for the rest of their lives isn’t as effective as prescribing cannabis to effectively “wipe” their bad memories as opposed to doping them into forgetting their issues. Dr. Mechoulam is the Israeli scientist who identified THC as the psychoactive compound in marijuana and he is pro prescribing marijuana to vets: “By aiding in memory extinction, marijuana could help patients reduce their association between stimuli (perhaps loud noises or stress) and the traumatic situations in their past.
Basically, bad thoughts plague people with PTSD and anything and everything can be a trigger. Cannabis steps in to aid in ridding the brain of unwanted images and memories, and allowing the user to reprocess their memories and give them the potential to respond to stimuli more normally. As a person who suffers from PTSD (no, I’m not a veteran) I can tell you that cannabis has greatly reduced my insane reactions to people and things that remind me of terrible occurrences in my life. I smoke to forget, and I smoke to forgive. I hope the government gets on board with this soon because a whole bunch of vets are out of work because coping with daily life without medicine, or with too much “pill-popping”, is affecting our economy and the way we treat our veterans.