When you’ve got a lot on your mind a quick hit or two can make those worries disappear for a little while,
It’s no secret that we live in a state of perpetual war. Label it however you want, but when you have troops stationed around the globe ‘supporting’ various different governments and ‘protecting’ foreign investments, oil pipelines and the like we are not living in peaceful times. Every day we are drip-fed controlled information which helps to shape our emotions and ensures that we support the alleged causes our governments choose to champion, yet the true extent of these operations will never be known to the common man (or at least not until it is deemed as ‘safe’ to admit the truth).
For every skirmish, uprising, attack or incident that takes place, we see the impact of combat in its various forms on soldiers and civilians alike and every single day there are countless individuals risking their lives in the fight for the greater good. Some will pay the ultimate price for their commitment, but many others will return home with scars of their own, both physical and mental, and these soldiers are often forgotten once they return to civilian life. Perhaps the longest lasting impact of war remains in the minds of those who experience it first-hand – you can train someone to follow orders and pull the trigger when the time is right, but you can’t prepare someone for the realities of war. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is estimated to affect almost 20% of those who have served in recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, although the realistic estimate should be higher than this as there are countless individuals who are unable to admit their issues and therefore do not seek help. Veteran suicide is becoming increasingly frequent and without professional guidance, medication and the support of a close group of family and friends, it is predicted that PTSD could be a silent epidemic of epic proportions. So what is the solution to this problem? Well, aside from and to all kinds of conflict, some sources indicate that marijuana could play a pivotal role in providing sufferers with a better life.
We’ve all enjoyed the stress relief and relaxed high of certain strains. When you’ve got a lot on your mind a quick hit or two can make those worries disappear for a little while, so you can get your head back on track and figure things out at a slower pace. Sometimes it’s that slight separation from the pitfalls of our existence that helps us keep it together in the harder times, despite the fact that many of us only have to worry about: work, money, relationships, kids, family, friends, what to do when we’ve watched the last episode of our favorite series etc. etc. We all have First World problems, but imagine how hard it would be to cope with flashbacks of explosions, nightmares about your wounded and dying friends or pouring over followed orders which took the lives of innocent people as collateral damage.
We’ve all enjoyed the stress relief and relaxed high of certain strains. When you’ve got a lot on your mind a quick hit or two can make those worries disappear for a little while, so you can get your head back on track and figure things out at a slower pace. Sometimes it’s that slight separation from the pitfalls of our existence that helps us keep it together in the harder times, despite the fact that many of us only have to worry about: work, money, relationships, kids, family, friends, what to do when we’ve watched the last episode of our favorite series etc. etc. We all have First World problems, but imagine how hard it would be to cope with flashbacks of explosions, nightmares about your wounded and dying friends or pouring over followed orders which took the lives of innocent people as collateral damage.
Over a decade ago, Dr. Sue Sisley began to notice a trend in many of her PTSD patients which was at once alarming and surprising: for every symptom of PTSD which a sufferer displayed, their physician would prescribe a different pharmaceutical that targeted the specific ailment. Numerous sufferers complained of a multitude of issues and found that the vast quantities of tablets caused innumerate side effects that drastically impacted on their standard of living. This was something she had become accustomed to and many people deemed that this was the only way of ‘helping’ injured soldiers read just to normal life. What surprised her was the sheer number of patients who began to inform her that they had stopped using their chemistry cocktail and replaced it with a single ‘treat-all’ substitute: marijuana.
As a stalwart Republican, Sisley was quick to dismiss these claims at first, but the positive reports continued to pour in and she saw a genuine change in the lives of the men and women she treated. Her professional judgment was that there had to be some other explanation and she was well aware that marijuana was not allowed to be discussed in the upper echelons of veteran treatment circles. American officials didn’t like the idea of their walking wounded using illicit substances to make life ‘easier to cope with’ and their view of marijuana is similar to their opinion of heroin use following the Vietnam War. Heroin and marijuana went hand in hand during the conflict, with returning soldiers regularly using both substances as part of their everyday lifestyles. We don’t need to remind you of the devastating impact that heroin had on thousands of veterans, but the wounds of Vietnam have not yet fully healed. Regardless of the potential professional suicide, Dr, Sisley documented her findings over 10 years and has now come to her own conclusion.
Sisley now believes that marijuana is a viable alternative to the myriad of medicines which many veterans rely on every day. The main issue she now faces is to convince everybody else of her ‘theories’. For years she has been trying to gain momentum in the first ever FDA-approved trial of marijuana’s effects on PTSD, much to the dissatisfaction of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) who do not support the idea that marijuana is a suitable method of treatment. Instead of supporting forward thinking people like Sisley, some people are more concerned with maintaining their outdated ideals than making life better for the people who risked everything to fight for someone else’s goals. Red tape has caused her studies to be slower than hoped as she has been forced to wait for specific supply chains to provide her with what she needs and she estimates that almost 25,000 veterans died during a specific 3 year period when she was waiting for approval from the Public Health Service. Despite all this opposition, she is still fighting the good fight and refuses to let the veterans down. We wish her well and thank her for her service to those who served their country.
Sources: http://www.ibtimes.com/marijuanalegalization-2015-ptsd-cannabis-canresearchers-cut-through-politics-find-1993297
Image: Amber Clay
Published Originally in Weed World Magazine issue 118
