Author: Ashley

Both my sister and my father have severe kidney disease.

They get kidney stones monthly and often have to get surgery for impacted stones when they’re not able to pass them like a normal person.

That’s because the stones that form in their kidneys are sometimes as large as 7mm or bigger. That’s nearly the entire diameter of the urethra itself, which is a nastily big rock to have going through your urinary tract. Naturally, these stones produce absolutely insane levels of pain for both my sister and my father. While my father absolutely refuses to take opiate pain medication these days after problems with dependency in the past, my sister still readily takes them when they’re offered to her. It’s a dangerous affair, but I can’t judge her for using them. My personal doctor told me that he’s watching a lot of people give up their prescription pain medications after they start using strong cannabis products. It’s not a matter of microdosing THC to replace opiates—typically you need a strong dose of marijuana to replicate the effects of an opiate narcotic. Surely this doesn’t work for everyone, but I can imagine there are large numbers of people who are able to make the transition and quit taking narcotics in favor of cannabis instead. It also depends on what exact kind of pain you’re trying to treat as well. Although cannabis can be phenomenal at treating emotional pain and digestive pain, it’s not always suited for subsing the tenderness that comes from having a kidney stone. It’s a whole different issue altogether.

 

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When my friend told me that his wife was diagnosed with cancer recently, I couldn’t believe my ears.

I grew up with them both and knew his wife almost as long as I knew him, and that was the last thing I expected him to tell me when he mentioned that he wanted to meet at a local bar to get a beer at 3 oclock in the afternoon.

While I am usually not a day drinker, I was happy to oblige when I detected a tinge of seriousness in his tone and demeanor when he asked me out of the blue one day. I could do nothing but express my utmost sympathies and compassion when he finally explained to me what had happened. She was set to undergo chemotherapy, but they were naturally paranoid that it wouldn’t actually help her with all of her health problems. I told her to be patient and to supplement her prescribed cancer drugs and treatments with high THC cannabis products. I have read increasing anecdotal reports of people undergoing tumor reduction after just a year of heavy cannabis consumption. Luckily she was a fan of cannabis and it wasn’t hard for her to fall back into using the plant again. We’re all hoping that between the THC consumption and the chemotherapy, she’ll be able to kick cancer for good and live a long and happy life. I’m praying for her with nothing but the utmost concern for her livelihood moving forward. I can’t imagine what it would do to my friend if something happened to his wife, but I’m staying as positive as I possibly can be.

 

 

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Even though my brother and I are only a year apart in age, we couldn’t be more different from one another in manner and disposition.

I’m more athletic and extroverted while my brother is a studious introvert.

It’s naturally a lot harder for my brother to form friendships and maintain them than it is for me by contrast. We rarely shared friends because we both chose to hang out with drastically different crowds at school and out of school. I tried on a number of occasions, but he was always judgmental towards my friends because they weren’t interested in talking about school or academic subjects. I always got the impression that my brother harshly judged myself and my friends, but I was given the confirmation of this when he found out in high school that I had started smoking marijuana with my friends on the weekends. He didn’t even drink alcohol, but he was especially critical of anyone who touched cannabis regardless of the reason. In his mind it was the ultimate gateway drug and had no medicinal value, regardless of what the multitudes of medical experts say. I thought that hell would freeze over long before my brother would ever support cannabis legalization, let alone try the drug in the first place and like it. But he started dating a girl that was in his friend group who also happened to smoke weed on the weekends like I do. In a matter of two years, my brother had changed completely and his stance on marijuana took a 180 degree turn. Now he’s a proponent of marijuana legalization and no longer harshly judges those who use the plant regularly.
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Before my state legalized cannabis in 2016, I was forced to get all of my weed off the black market.

There was a short span of time that lasted for a year when I had a friend who was getting it directly from a dispensary in California and then shipped it to himself during business trips.

But when that pot connection dried up like the others, I was left to fend for myself again with the various sketchy weed dealers in my city. It wasn’t easy, and I remember trying to spark up conversations with random people at work with the hopes of finding someone else who used marijuana daily and had a good connection that they’d be willing to share. Right when I was about to give up, I became eligible for a medical marijuana card and jumped on the opportunity. When I finally went inside a legal cannabis dispensary for the first time, I couldn’t believe my eyes. When I walked out with that bag full of cannabis products, I was still in shock from the whole ordeal. I didn’t really know what to expect, but I was amazed and impressed by their selection. They had everything from cannabis oils and edibles all the way up to cannabis flower products and concentrates like hashish and shatter. I will never have to fend for my life on the drug black market again, and that’s thanks to marijuana legalization in my home state. It was a huge improvement for this state’s stance on cannabis use and the people who use it daily. I’m thrilled we have the opportunity at last to purchase safe cannabis products from a licensed store.

Space cake

I started going on a lot of airplane trips with my family during my childhood.

My grandparents live in Europe and we would file onto planes twice a year to visit them in their home country.

It was a good experience for my siblings and I because we were exposed to my family’s culture and never lost sight of where we were all from before my father immigrated to the United States. Unlike many of my friends in the States who had never even stepped foot out of their home state, I had an active passport by the time I started kindergarten. I think this was a formative time in my life because it fortified me toward traveling. My job requires me to travel all over the country on planes every month and I think it would have frustrated most people who aren’t already used to this. It would take a lot more traveling than this to burn me out or give me trepidation. Not to mention, it makes it a lot easier to deal with the stressors that come with constant airline travel if you can take your cannabis vaporizer cartridges with you on the plane. Since many cannabis vaporizer cartridges resemble their nicotine counterparts, there are TSA agents who just don’t care if they see you empty out a pen vaporizer into the dish that goes through the x-ray machine. As long as you walk with a sense of purpose and don’t give off any airs of suspicious uncertainty, you should run into issues traveling with your cannabis vaporizer cartridges.

 

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