Prohibition and pain meds

[Scuba Steve Tokes]

Tested positive for thc in a urine screen and now my doc is going to ween me off pain meds. I have a medical card and use marijuana in very small amounts- .2g at a time for breakthrough pain relief. I also take low dose edibles a couple times a day to help keep my nerve pain under control. I just stopped taking one of my prescription meds because it was poisoning me but now I’m going to have to start taking it and using a five times as much flower to get nowhere near the pain relief I was getting. That’s going to cost a crap ton of money that I don’t have because I haven’t worked in seven months.

Does anyone have any advice for me or courses of action I could take? I suffer from constant severe nerve pain and because my state is still on prohibition I’m getting kicked around by the medical system that does not recognize any therapeutic benefit from marijuana.

 

[Tranquility]

Tested positive for thc in a urine screen and now my doc is going to ween me off pain meds. I have a medical card and use marijuana in very small amounts- .2g at a time for breakthrough pain relief. I also take low dose edibles a couple times a day to help keep my nerve pain under control. I just stopped taking one of my prescription meds because it was poisoning me but now I’m going to have to start taking it and using a five times as much flower to get nowhere near the pain relief I was getting. That’s going to cost a crap ton of money that I don’t have because I haven’t worked in seven months.

Does anyone have any advice for me or courses of action I could take? I suffer from constant severe nerve pain and because my state is still on prohibition I’m getting kicked around by the medical system that does not recognize any therapeutic benefit from marijuana.

Google "CDC opiate THC" (without the quotes) for a number of articles on why such testing MAY not be the standard of care today. If that testing, without reason, causes a dismissal, the CDC says:
"Clinicians should not dismiss patients from care based on a urine drug test result because this could constitute patient abandonment and could have adverse consequences for patient safety, potentially including the patient obtaining opioids from alternative sources and the clinician missing opportunities to facilitate treatment for substance use disorder."

There is a valid case to make cannabis use reduces the need for opiates. Yet, a lot of doctors still test. While you can't make them change position, you might convince them if you show you're medicating with THC and not just using.

 

[Vaporware]

I don’t need or want opiates or anything for regular pain management, but my asshole doctor told me they would never give me anything like that (or anything real for anxiety) because I took MMJ. If I had just lied (or not volunteered the information) they never would have known without a test, but it’s absolute bullshit that we should have to lie to our doctors to not be treated like junkies.

I’ve taken oxycodone for about a week *total* in my life after multiple surgeries; I never came close to finishing 1 prescription and I am very wary of taking them regularly, but if I ever do need them again or need another option for pain management and they refuse me...

This is one of the things that turns people to buying adulterated and poorly dosed drugs off the street.

I suppose at this point I’d have to consider trying Kratom if I were in your situation. I tried it once and I do think it could help, but with Kratom you have no real controls on quality, effects vary like they do with different cannabis strains, dosing is a lot less accurate than your pharmaceutical stuff, etc.

Since the amounts you’d take would probably be large the variability in potency probably wouldn’t be a huge problem, but if you were going to have problems with it (addiction, side effects, etc.) you’d of course be more likely to have those problems with frequent large doses.

Opiates have been helping (and hurting) people for a very long time and this isn’t the first round of them being touted as safe and non-addictive in whatever new form followed by being demonized, but I think this is the first round in the US where users are treated as criminals and in some ways encouraged to commit crimes and risk their lives just to satisfy the people who want to feel like they’re fixing “the opioid epidemic”.

I would look for a new doctor who doesn’t drug test patients. I’m not sure whether or not I’d tell the doctor about my cannabis use.

One caveat though; I don’t know you, your pain or what you need, but I do know that opiates can cause problems long term and can even end up making people feel worse. If there’s a chance that you really do need to re-evaluate your pain management needs this is a good opportunity to do it. If what you had is really what’s best for you, I hope you can get it back.

 

[Scuba Steve Tokes]

Google "CDC opiate THC" (without the quotes) for a number of articles on why such testing MAY not be the standard of care today. If that testing, without reason, causes a dismissal, the CDC says:
"Clinicians should not dismiss patients from care based on a urine drug test result because this could constitute patient abandonment and could have adverse consequences for patient safety, potentially including the patient obtaining opioids from alternative sources and the clinician missing opportunities to facilitate treatment for substance use disorder."

There is a valid case to make cannabis use reduces the need for opiates. Yet, a lot of doctors still test. While you can't make them change position, you might convince them if you show you're medicating with THC and not just using.

Thank you so much for this! I will look into the CDC guidelines and see if I can provide my doctor with precedents so they can continue to prescribe me pain meds. This will probably mean that I will have to goof some kind of drug counseling but I have a medical marijuana card so I’ll tell the therapist I used marijuana medicinally in therapeutic amounts because my pain was not well controlled by prescription medicine. At which point they will say I don’t need to come to counseling anymore.

I honestly am down to using .4 to .6g of marijuana a day and vaping a couple grams of CBD a day give or take .5G. I have been eating one Ouachita Farms magic brownie throughout the day the last several days and that has helped immensely too. I honestly hate being this messed up all the time and I would love to be able to live my life without pain meds or flower or edibles but with the amount of baseline pain I’m in that just isn’t in the cards right now.

Thanks again for the suggestion I will focus all my efforts into finding reasons that my doctor can continue to prescribe me meds without the state taking away their medical license.

I was using marijuana was because before I went to this pain doctor I was maxed out on Tylenol, and ibuprofen and drinking like a fish and smoking constantly because the pain was so bad. Once I got on pain meds the pain was not well controlled
->I started supplementing the pain meds with marijuana to calm the nerve pain
->doc says I have to stop taking pain meds

So using the transitive property my pain not being well controlled means that now I need to stop taking pain meds. This doesn’t make any sense and just illustrates how prohibition is hurting people, namely me.

Now I’m forced to as you said in the quote try to find pain relief some other way. I’m an Eagle Scout I’m not the guy who goes from doctor to doctor asking for pain meds but this system is making me into that person.

 

[Tranquility]

Now I’m forced to as you said in the quote try to find pain relief some other way. I’m an Eagle Scout I’m not the guy who goes from doctor to doctor asking for pain meds but this system is making me into that person.

I'm glad you have a path where you, at least, have a view of what success looks like. Be careful of this though. Doctor shopping is a crime if the intent is to get more meds than appropriate. (Usually indicated by any falsehood in obtaining the meds.) Shopping for a doctor that fits your particular health situation is completely allowed and a good practice. Be very careful to do the later. With pills, the record is out there...