“Imagine jumping off a table and landing with one foot on a three-inch nail sticking out of a piece of wood.” Now imagine that you feel this pain over and over all throughout your day without any real sense of relief. This is how one sufferer has described his chronic nerve pain.
In order to combat this level of pain, high doses of opiate painkillers are usually required, which often leave patients feeling like the walking dead.
However, opiates don’t always work at a constant lower level; therefore, the required dosage steadily increases. This way of life can lead to dangerous tolerance levels, overdose or death.
Now imagine that using medical marijuana could alleviate this pain without the fog of opiates.
New studies are revealing that marijuana can work to help keep those who suffer from chronic pain from becoming addicted to opioids. Scientific literature also shows that marijuana can decrease the chance of overdose through supplementing opioid painkillers with marijuana. These results have even been replicated by government research studies.
Studies that confirm marijuana’s value in reducing opiod use:
- http://norml.org/news/2016/02/25/study-long-term-cannabis-use-mitigates-pain-reduces-opioid-use
- http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/23622-medical-marijuana-reduces-use-of-opioid-pain-meds-decreases-risk-for-some-with-chronic-pain
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22048225
The problem is that U.S. doctors still feel hesitant about medical marijuana—either as a supplement or as a course of treatment. Marijuana’s Schedule I drug status is largely to blame and will need to change if we want to reduce the epidemic of opioid abuse.
