About a year ago, I was talking to the guy behind herbclub.org and one of his supportive friends, Herbies, about how they came to build a site dedicated to connecting cannabis enthusiasts and he mentioned his personal experiences with cannabis as medicine in the treatment of your brain injury.
Back in 2010, Herbies Trismegistus was viciously attacked and hospitalized with a fractured skull which required three plates. Initially, he was told that he should make a full recovery in two years but he quickly came to feel that nothing he was being offered was actually helping him. Courtesy of countless cancelled appointments, ever-changing prescriptions and Herbies generally being given the run-around, it took almost seven years for the doctors to finally identify that his brain injury was likely to be permanent.
The initial diagnosis of the injury being temporary meant that he was not given the relevant support to ensure that he could effectively adapt to his new life. Over the course of this period, various aspects of his life seemed to be falling apart around him and he struggled to maintain his relationships. He felt like nothing made sense and it wasn’t until a few years later that he came to realize his perception of situations had been altered by his injury.
Herbies had always been an activist at heart and he found himself fighting for numerous causes on the frontline of protests around the UK. He became increasingly vocal in fighting for others, but lost sight of fighting his personal battles. Sadly, he went through a messy divorce that left him separated from his children and this caused him to become increasingly angry and frustrated.
Fathers for Justice helped to pull him out the gutter and fought for his rights as a father which eventually led to him having his children back with him. It’s never easy to manage a breakdown in a civil manner, but add in the issues surrounding his altered thought patterns due to his injuries and the long-term effects of his attack continued to come to the surface. Everything suggested to him by his doctors led him to further complications and over time he became increasingly convinced that the official health industry needed to be treated with a sense of caution.
During his long road to recovery, one of the only effective methods he found to reduce his symptoms and improve his standard of living was through smoking cannabis. In terms of coping with his pain, stress and general discomfort, Herbies wanted to move away from prescription drugs as they left him feeling stressed and overwhelmed by his situation. Unfortunately, living on benefits in the UK has become increasingly complicated in recent years, with benefits claimants being treated with derision by those who are supposed to help them, and he found himself constantly having to deal with the reality of his money being cut with increasing frequency. As you would expect, any reduction in money has an impact on the ability of an individual to survive and when he came to realize that he was unable to realistically continue buying his cannabis he chose the only viable option: to grow.
Government legislation does not go far enough to help the individual, but instead favors corporations and those who have connections in high places. With this in mind, Herbies decided to go guerrilla and worked on setting up his own grow. Starting off with a budget of basically zero, he started looking for cheap second-hand lights online and bought a set with a CFL 300 light and a cheap tent to get himself up and running.
Despite his limited resources and some poor quality purchases he made, the grow had some success and he has been constantly learning ever since and reinvesting any money he has made when he can to upscale and develop his room. Now he has two tents set up with a decent ventilation system and finds that major problems come from either trying to grow to many plants at once or becoming impatient and wanting to crop early and cure quickly. He knows he shouldn’t, but sometimes we all give in to temptation. Over the last few years he has thrown himself headfirst into developing his skill set and has come to appreciate the craftsmanship involved in cultivation, curing, pressing, hash making and everything else which comes under the cannabis umbrella.
Earlier this year, Herbies stumbled upon a discovery which would change everything. After hearing a speech about the need for people to think outside the box if they wanted to make sense of the world, an opportunity to explore a new potential route of employment led him to trying L-Tryptophan,one of the nine essential amino acids which our body cannot produce by itslef, that produces melatonin and serotonin.
Despite the initial surprise at the unpleasant taste, the amino acids brought out a sense of balance almost immediately, he said that it felt like a moment of clarity and he was amazed by how good he felt. For the first time in years he felt ‘normal’ and his sleep improved almost immediately. What surprised him even more was that the following morning he went to light a cigarette, having been addicted for many years, and thought to himself that he didn’t really fancy smoking it. This was obviously something of a surprise. Eventually, he came to the realization that his poor diet had led to severe amino-deficiency and this had caused untold problems which compounded his condition and limited his ability to self-regulate.
What made this discovery even more significant was the way that the amino acids seemed to have similar effects to cannabis and even seemed to increase the effects when he was consuming it as medicine.
From his experiences, he is convinced that it interacts with the endocannabinoid system. He theorizes that this link is something which needs to be explored in greater depth and believes there is the potential for this personal discovery to lead to a wider scale of healing. Herbies firmly believes that it is important to promote the right of the individual to do what they believe is right for themselves and we all have the chance to create our own reality once we recognize that the limits imposed upon us are not always as significant as we may believe.
Moving forward he is looking to spread the message about amino acids and how they can work in conjunction with cannabis to deliver incredible benefits. Currently, he is working on setting up a new website to go alongside his work on his blog The Philosopher’s Stoned and continues to expand his network on herbclub.org, so it’ll be interesting to see what he has to share next.
Published and Written by PSY-23 In Weed World Magazine Issue 148
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