Going Green
This week, an article was passed around news circles and social media regarding two new studies published in JAMA Internal Medicine. The studies suggest medical marijuana laws have helped save and could continue to save thousands of lives and billions of dollars now being lost to opioid addiction. I set out to simply share the article with my Facebook circle but as I began posting, I was compelled to share my own experience after suffering a catastrophic injury while skiing two years ago. You can read the referenced article. There are many others here as well.
Here is my original Facebook post:
“This is a huge step. I can tell you first-hand, as my friends and family will attest, medicinal cannabis changed my life and if you want a more cynical outlook, may have saved it.
My daily dose of 48mg Dilaudid was equivalent to more than 160mg of oxycodone and 240mg of Morphine per day. Yikes! That is 2.5x the clinically described “opioid dependent dose.”
“I am a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.”
A few days after coming home from the hospital, my friends came by to see me. I thought it was great, just like old times – they all left TERRIFIED at the state I was in. It seemed too steep a hill to climb. One friend said months later, he felt like he “saw me slipping away” that afternoon.
It has been 2yrs (almost to the day). I am closer than ever to my wife and kids, more focused on my health and fitness than ever, working harder than ever on several projects at the same time…instead of being addicted to opiates.
This is real.
When I started titrating down using cannabis, my whole demeanor changed immediately. I found myself, my family, my friends, my drive and was able to focus on recovery 100%. I started working. I crushed my recovery goals. I read about cannabis research obsessively to understand it. I did not want to get high, I wanted to get better. The whole point was to get off of my back and into the world again. It is time to leave the stoner image behind that does not fit at all with my experience or that of millions of other lucky people who found this option.
I am so passionate about it (perhaps annoyingly at times?!) I recently co-founded a company called Lucid Green. We aim to drive transparency and trust in cannabis supply chain so more people can have access, information, and proper guidance. Stay tuned, more to come on our FB page and other media. Website ~2nd week of April [obviously up now, you are here!].”
As evidenced by the response to my post and the subsequent linking of our brand new Lucid Green Facebook page, this hit close to home for many people. In 8 hours I had over 150 likes and comments on my personal post and over 135 “follows” for Lucid Green – even while I was still uploading basic company information to it. I was inundated with stories of people wishing they had known of this option during their own experiences with opiates. I got over 30 instant message that afternoon asking for guidance on using cannabis as an alternative to anything from their grandma’s bad back, to their friends’ battling debilitating diseases, or their own upcoming surgeries. The rampant confusion in those messages over the fundamental differences between CBD vs THC, how much to take, and how to even get started to try purchase a legal product for their expressed purpose spoke volumes.
The mission of Lucid Green, Enabling Trust and Transparency for Cannabis Through a Direct Connection, resonates because consumers are desperate for an easy way to get proper guidance on usage & potency, safety & testing, and sharing of experience for both medicinal and for recreational purposes. I was lucky, I uncovered the path before opiates became a real problem. But not everyone has 2 months of laying on their back with nothing better to do than research the heck out of all-things-cannabis. That is where Lucid Green and our proud and trailblazing brand, dispensary, and data partners come in. And nothing is more enjoyable than doing something with this kind of purpose and passion behind it.