Tiny Little Mother MInd™ Report

Sophie walked down the street today -- nearly the whole block -- and back to our house, leaning only lightly on my arm. She hasn't walked that far in months, and I'm going to say that it's because she has been taking CBDA for over a month (since her last hospitalization), and I've reduced her Onfi again. She's now down about 50% from the amount she was taking last year at this time, and we're going to keep on going.

The backdrop to this is, of course, the recent roll-back of Obama-era marijuana rules, a "return to the rule of law" according to Attorney General of the Disunited States of America Jeff Sessions who is, in my tiny little mother mind,™ one of the biggest PsOS now running the country. He is correct that the federal rule of law maintains that marijuana is classified as a Schedule 1 substance and is of no medicinal benefit with that designation. Reader, I'm not going to write about this all over again. You can put medical marijuana or cannabis into the search engine over there on my righthand side-bar and pull up dozens of posts that I've written over the last five years or so.

What I am going to tell you about tonight is the SIT-U-AH-SI-ON we here in California face now that our state has passed a bill legalizing recreational marijuana.

Check this out:

Here's the thing. Sophie's medicine will be taxed at 34.5%. We will save 9.5% in taxes on her medicine if we make a trip to the Medical Marijuana Program in Baldwin Park, CA to get her a Medical Marijuana Identification Card (as opposed to just the regular doctor's recommendation), but we'll still be paying a 20% tax on her medicine each time we make a purchase. To put that into perspective, consider that the pharmaceuticals that have poisoned her for more than two decades are tax-free purchases. With legalization in California, cannabis is now subject to so many regulations involving licensing and shipping that we're sort of scrambling with shortages and access to products.

What does this mean? I imagine you're wondering, isn't making marijuana legal a good thing? Isn't that what we've been fighting for and working our asses off to get? Won't it be a wonderful thing to fill up the California coffers with cash?

Sigh.

Honestly, I don't think the California legislators or the general population that voted to make recreational marijuana legal give a flying foo-foo about cannabis as medicine. I imagine that most don't even believe the claims of medical cannabis patients or even experts. I had sort of a PTSD response to that tax chart the other day, when Dr. Bonni showed it to me. It reminded me of this drug Sophie was on back in the clueless days of the 20th century when I was desperate enough to try anything that The Neurologists suggested. The drug was called Topamax, approved for migraines in adult patients in late 1996,  but we gave it a whirl. Sophie quickly became, literally, anorexic as well as that neurologist-generated euphemism called irritable (meaning psychotic screaming all hours of the day). I'm only telling you this story because I can't tell you how many times I heard about people with migraines using it successfully and staying on it for extended periods of time because they loved the weight loss factor! Maybe only the seizure folks out there reading this will get what I'm saying, understand why I kind of broke out into a sweat when I looked at that tax chart. The tiny little mother mind™ is disturbed as well that after giving one mighty fine speech last night at an awards show, Oprah Winfrey is being extolled as a presidential contender.

Holy moley. This is where we are now?

Many do care, I guess, about cannabis medicine being affordable and accessible to everyone, but many don't. I imagine those legislators, with a few exceptions, just buckled to the Powers That Be, with dollar signs lighting their asses, and that's not a cynical thought. It's borne of experience. The whole shebang is a clusterfuck of gargantuan proportion.

Honestly, my tiny little mother mind™ is stumped.

The Broken Record of THC, Baby

I think ya'll are in need of a Sophalofa update,  no? Let's all knock on wood three times, on the ceiling like you mean it. We've gotten through another minuscule wean of the benzo, and Sophie is sitting up, eating and drinking and walking and humming and not-sleeping and not-seizing like a champ. The THC is helping her.

The benzo, legally prescribed and given to her over much of her twenty-two years on the planet, damaging her brain and causing Benzo Withdrawal Syndrome does not work. It harms her.

The THC and CBD are helping her.

Let me type that again: The THC is helping her. 

Did you hear that Jim Sessions, Tom Price and all the rest of you goons on the cabinet and in the legislature of the Disunited States of Amerikkka, Inc.? Canada is moving right along with federal policy. You can read about that here. If the country didn't discriminate against those with disabilities immigrating there, I'd be putting on my tiny mother mind™ thinking hat right over that pink pussy one that I'd need anyway given Canada's chilly climate.

Anyhoo.

THC, baby. CBD. Whole plant cannabis medicine.

Sigh.

Did you read this?

A pharma company that spent $500,000 trying to keep pot illegal just got DEA approval for synthetic marijuana

Don't peel yourself off the floor or anything. You've heard it all right here for years. I've walked by Insys' tables at epilepsy conventions and "brain" summits, walked by their smiling reps and picked up and perused their glossy brochures. I have probably benefitted from their underwriting of epilepsy projects. In the words of Ron Woodroof in Dallas Buyers Club (watch the whole thing, please, because his final line is what I'm saying):



















This has been a Public Service Announcement.

If you want to learn more about cannabis medicine, I highly recommend you purchase Dr. Bonni Goldstein's book Cannabis Revealed. I helped her to tell the stories of many people who are seeing amazing results for various diseases and conditions, and you can read about them as well as learn about the history of the plant, how it works, what the latest research tells us, how to dose and other invaluable information. Because of my contributions, I do make a small amount for every copy sold, so this is also my disclosure, but even if I didn't, I'd tout the book as it's the best one out there about a subject that we still, evidently, can't convince the Powers That Be to get their heads out of their fannies, look past the cold, hard cash and start helping people like Sophie with it. Send a copy to Sessions et al, if you're so inclined, to help their view. It's dark and stinks up there.

Cannabis Revealed