Pubdate: Tue, 12 Jun 2001
Source: Style Weekly (VA)
Section: "Back Page"
Copyright: 2001 Style Weekly Inc.
Contact:  http://www.richmond.com/index.cfm?from=style
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/430
Author: Dan Shapiro
Note: Dan Shapiro is a physician who wrote this essay for the online 
magazine Salon (Tue, 05 Jun 2001)

IF YOU THINK WEED IS BAD, TRY CANCER

Chemo nausea isn't like any other kind. It's relentless. It's driving. I 
tried my chemo regimen without weed. Once.

Thirty minutes after my chemo infusions, the surges and swells would start 
and grow until the whole sky was gray and the waves were capped with a 
vicious silver. Chemo nausea isn't like any other kind. It's relentless. 
It's driving. Every flu is packed together into a hurricane.

A body that knows it's been poisoned fights back. It's willing to expunge 
- --by all means necessary -- every ounce of toxin to survive.

I learned this the hard way. I tried chemotherapy without weed the first 
time around, even though a friend who'd had the same chemotherapy said I 
shouldn't go it alone. "Chemo's grim, man," he muttered into the phone. 
"Get weed." I tried my chemo regimen without weed. Once.

 From then on, I didn't captain a chemo boat without smoking a pinch of the 
magic herb immediately after. And it was magic. It steadied the seas on 
contact. Cleared the sky. From that first pull of smoke through my lungs I 
was back to a glassy sea, the same glassy sea most people take for granted.

I'm sure Clarence Thomas takes it for granted.

Through five years of treatment for Hodgkin's disease I relapsed twice, had 
the maximum dosage of mantle radiation one person should be allowed to 
enjoy in a lifetime, absorbed 12 chemotherapy agents in a variety of colors 
and means of infusion, and had surgery nine times. Medications were 
responsible for rashes, mouth sores, warts, headaches, nausea, vomiting, 
dry heaves, bone pain, gut pain and shingles. My temperature climbed as 
high as 106.5 and I had rigors, which are violent, full-body shakes of 
Victorian proportions.

I peed blue from the dyes I drank to go under scanners; once all the hair 
on one side of my leg stopped growing. The medications made me manic and 
agitated, depressed and somnolent. I was an insomniac and at other times 
unable to stay awake. I had a voracious appetite and anorexia. I was unable 
to think and at other times felt every sensation so vividly, so clearly, 
that I thought someone had turned up the volume on the world.

I had Adriamycin, Bleomycin, Cytoxan, DTIC, nitrogen mustard, prednisone, 
procarbazine, vincritstine, vinblastine and VP-16. I've taken Percocet, 
Demerol, morphine, Ativan, Restoril, Dalmane and Halcion.

Oh yeah, and marijuana.

Weed was one of the few drugs that offered relief. It didn't knock me out 
or speed me up, it didn't destroy my heart muscle or take out my hair, it 
didn't slow my thinking or slur my speech. It didn't attack my bowels or 
make my fingers numb.

It did give me some peace.

It did settle my stomach.

It did revive my appetite.

It did not lead to an addiction.

It did not cost a lot of money. (Partly because my mom grew it for me in 
her backyard.)

It worked.

Clarence Thomas thinks I'm wrong, or depraved, or faking it. Writing for 
the court, he said, "In the case of the Controlled Substances Act, the 
statute reflects a determination that marijuana has no medical benefits 
worthy of an exception." He noted that the act is based on the assumption 
that marijuana has "no currently accepted medical use."

By that definition, I'm a crazy drug addict. In fact, I'm a doctor. Hell, 
I'm even a faculty member at a respected medical school. But hey, you don't 
have to take my word for it. Just up the street from Clarence Thomas' 
office there's a group of scientists who've taken a careful look at my 
magic weed.

In 1998, under pressure from the public to investigate the medical use of 
marijuana, the Office of National Drug Control Policy funded a study by the 
Institute of Medicine, which appointed an independent review panel. The 
Institute of Medicine asked 11 scientists to review the evidence for the 
effectiveness of marijuana as a medicine.

In the process of preparing a report, the panel used scientific reviews, 
public hearings and reports from other agencies, and enlisted the 
assistance of numerous advisors and reviewers. In March 1999, it concluded 
that marijuana is effective in four circumstances: for reducing nausea and 
vomiting from chemotherapy, for reducing rapid weight loss from AIDS, for 
alleviating some types of pain and for treating muscle spasms associated 
with multiple sclerosis.

The Institute of Medicine also found that in 1996 roughly one-third of the 
U.S. population had tried marijuana but only one-twentieth of the 
population used it regularly. Of the regular users, very few developed a 
dependence or abuse problem in which their lives were interrupted by the 
drug. Few smoked pot after age 34. The study also found that people who do 
try harder drugs tend to have a co-occurring psychiatric disorder or a 
family history of psychopathology including alcoholism, and that marijuana 
usage is not a significant cause of harder drug use.

As a doctor, and a cancer patient, I find this information to be extremely 
relevant, if not crucial. I would have thought that a judge in Mr. Thomas' 
robes might also find it useful.

How about this: A lot of people argue that medical use of marijuana will 
lead to a perception that marijuana is safe. In the 1920s and 1950s there 
was a similar concern that physicians' increased prescription of opiates 
would lead to high rates of addiction. In fact, despite the much greater 
potential for biological addiction to opiates, there's been no black market 
swell in opiate use. People still accurately perceive, despite the legal 
prescription use of opiates, that they are not safe or harmless.

In fact, what we do know -- particularly those of us who are doctors -- is 
that too many people suffer needlessly out of fear of addiction when they 
need these drugs the most.

The folks at the Institute of Medicine have written that "few people begin 
their drug addiction problems with misuse of drugs that have been 
prescribed for medical use." A careful look at states and countries that 
have decriminalized marijuana shows that there is no evidence that such 
actions lead to increased use.

I learned this privately, without benefit of distance or government 
funding, in that dark little room where I fought the side effects of 
chemotherapy.

May you, Justice Thomas, never have to find out the hard way.
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MAP posted-by: Beth