  医療カナビス |
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It was in September, 1995, that I started smoking marihuana. This was after watching a TV documentary made in collaboration with the Dutch Multiple Sclerosis Association, in which Professor Mechoulam from Israel talked about the research he was doing on the effects of marihuana on chronically ill patients I was diagnosed with MS at the beginning of 1989, so that makes me a chronically i patient. Straight after the broadcast, I went to a coffee shop in Groningen to buy marihuana. At home, I smoked it from a water pipe. At first, I only smoked it at the weekends,but on the advice of my acupuncturist, who saw the effect it had on my body, I started smoking during the week as well. I started smoking weed carefully and only smoked it pure, without tobacco. I had used marihuana before, during the 1970s, but that had been for recreational purposes. Back then I had mixed it with tobacco. I hadn't used any marihuana at all between 1980 and 1995. When I'm not using marihuana, my legs are ice cold. Now my legs are warm. When I don't use marihuana I have constant spasms, but that has been reduced considerably. It still happens occasionally during the evening, but almost never during the day. If I don't use marihuana I feel really awful all day long. Now, I have strength and energy and can manage an entire day without sleeping. If I don't use marihuana, I lose my appetite. That situation has improved as well. When I use marihuana I don't have to go to the bathroom so often, and that is great, especially at night. I can sleep longer, so I get more rest. I have been using marihuana throughout the day since 1996. I don't experiment with my body; I can't afford to, anymore. I could do everything when I was young,but those days are over. Now I am a serious person and the effect of marihuana on me is very important. Over the first few years, I smoked through a water pipe and consumed a lot of weed. Since 1997, I have been one of the few fortunate people who get their expenses paid by the Groningen regional Health Service, which compensates patients for up to seven grams a day and that is quite a lot. The Health Service pays for about eighty percent of my marihuana. I get it at the pharmacy, but I also get different kinds through several other channels, because it's important to change the sort of marihuana one uses regularly. When you use one kind of marihuana over time, you start using more and more and that is not the intention. So you have to change the kind you use regularly. I have been taking it through a vaporizer for the past few years, which enables me to get the medicinal components out of the marihuana without inhaling smoke. I just throw the residue away. Once, I underwent medicinal treatment that lasted a week- I had to stay in hospital for this. The medicine they gave me was methylprednisolone. Neurologists also refer to it as the atomic bomb for the human body. They gave me one thousand milliliters a day for five days in a row! People who suffer from cancer oy get one pill a day, 25 or 50 milligrams. It blows your mind completely. If you want to get high, you should use prednisolone. This is the only treatment I had, at the beginning of the 1990s. I have been on a special diet since then, the Evers diet. So I went for alternative treatment and added marihuana to this in 1995.The two go together very well. I have been open about my use of marihuana since the day I started and have sought publicity in the hope that more people would follow my example and that they would be open about their use of medicinal marihuana, too. I noticed that I was one of the few people that dared to admit to the use of marihuana. Most people just see it as a kind of recreational drug, but to us it's a medicine. After years of fighting, the necessary results have been achieved and nowadays people aren't so afraid of coming out anymore. There are many patient associations throughout the country which testify that marihuana has been adopted as a medicine among their members. The number of medicinal marihuana users keeps on growing. Not only MS Associations, but also associations of patients with AIDS/HIV, rheumatism, cancer, haemophilia, glaucoma, asthma, migraine, epilepsy, anorexia and chronic pain are working on this subject. Many people have phoned me because of the battles I have fought over the past years. Many students have asked me questions for their theses. An example of this is that someone graduated from the Academy of Groningen with a dissertation on 'Marihuana and MS' and went on to become a physiotherapist. Marihuana has been accepted in the medical world for much longer than in the political one. A few years ago, a neurologist wrote in the MS magazine: 'If I were to be confronted with MS, the first thing I would do would be to have a scan.'Then he went on to name nine different kinds of medication that he could use. All of them are poison, if you ask me. I am very happy with my one single medicine that has improved the quality of my life immensely. |
