Profile Project Eng Revised

Olga Isupov Beth Bailey English 2010 February 19, 2019

A Superior Treatment

An intimate glimpse into a medicinal marijuana user I sit in the passenger seat while my friend drives down I-80. The sun has just slipped behind the Oquirrh mountains so its cold and dark out now, and the heater in the car has yet to kick in. The freeway lights illuminate our cabin every few seconds and I can see flashes of his face. I’m afraid to blink in case I miss anything. He explains to me with his customary calmness his relationship with mental illness and medicinal marijuana. Upon first glances my friend James might appear like a “stoner” with his quintessential dreads cascading down his back, a slight ombre to them due to sun exposure. He might look like what you imagine all of Burning Man to look like, sun kissed with hair flying everywhere, which is actually how he looked when we first met. I saw him dancing wildly at one of the SLC Twilight concerts and we’ve been friends ever since. But what you don’t know about this man by just looking at him is that he’s struggled with a myriad of mood disorder diagnoses his whole adult life, for which he was heavily medicated for many years. He was placed on a mixture of Klonopin, Wellbutrin, and Lamotrigine, after receiving a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. In James’s words, “They didn’t care if I was happy, they only cared that I wasn’t crazy”. While the medication did help relieve his anxiety but it also numbed him of joy too. As a student of architecture school, he struggled to come up with creative ideas while on these medications. The meds came with some debilitating side effects; one of which was a sudden onset of vertigo where he found himself completely paralyzed by a loss of balance and he would struggle to stay upright. He also gained weight and felt what he called “mental slowness” where he just didn’t feel as mentally capable as he did before the medications.

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As you can imagine these drugs and doctors visits weren’t cheap, even with his family’s financial assistance, James couldn’t afford to keep up this lifestyle forever. So he started looking into alternatives to the expensive and disruptive psychopharmaceuticals he was on. After going cold turkey from his meds he started experimenting with marijuana. He needed to deal with the anxiety but remain cognizant enough to succeed in school and the workplace and with a microdose of cannabis, James was able to alleviate his symptoms of depression and anxiety without numbing his joy and creativity. He’s been self medicating with a very low dose almost daily for years with no bad side effects. But because marijuana is illegal it is difficult to obtain THC in a controlled amount in place of a daily psychopharmaceutical. By keeping the drug illegal, we’re forcing patients who could benefit from THC to either continue suffering or to engage in illegal and sometimes dangerous activities. When James first heard about Proposition 2 he was completely on board and he signed petitions to get it on the ballot and told friends about how important it is to legalize medicinal marijuana. Prop 2, The Utah Medical Cannabis Act, promised to legalize medicinal marijuana use for patients with specific illnesses and allow said patients to access medical marijuana easily and safely. Long story short, the Utah government nixed Prop 2 and replaced it with a far inferior “compromise bill”. It strips many patients of medicinal marijuana who would have received treatment via Prop 2. So many Utahns like James who are just seeking wellness have lost access to medical cannabis because our government doesn’t trust us to take a medication safely. As for James, he will continue to self medicate regardless of the legality of marijuana because for him it is a superior treatment.

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