Marijuana, Gummies, and Finally Getting a Good Night’s Sleep

The Devil’s Lettuce doing angels work

Uncontrollable pain with a taboo remedy

It had humble and honest beginnings.

Meant as a way to relieve chronic pain and sleepless nights, and to taper off the Gabapentin which can turn even the sweetest of men into inconsolable irritable twats.

My father has an undiagnosable degenerative bone disease that wrecked his body and left him 70 pounds lighter and disabled. You know, the way every father and provider wants to exist during the golden years of life. Three spinal fusions, each more invasive than the last with the light at the end of the tunnel appearing further and further away.

A life of pain with no hope of reprieve is a hard one. I’m not sure how you find the will to get up in the morning, spend time doing things you used to love, or even smile. With as much verbosity and description as I can muster: It sucked.

I watched a man fall from the height of masculine physique and hands-on aptitude; chainsaws, trees, oil changes, roofing, and carrying his children like logs up and down wooded glades and open fields, to someone frail and stiff and incapable of wrestling with his 4-year-old and 5-year-old grandkids.

His 40s and his 50s took all of that; his 60s aren’t providing much to hope for.

He was taking 6 to 8 Gabapentin a night just to soften the pain. That wore on him. It tore his body up and left his mind fragmented and split. It’s brutal medication; addictive, controlling, and changing. That is all his doctors and their specialists could offer.

Pain management.

Like every good man born in the 1960s, he had ‘dabbled’ in the curious practices of the midnight arborist. His mother, my Nonna, a first-generation immigrant from Italy, would water those “cute little plants,” and chastise my father for not taking better care of them. She adored that my father, a rowdy and equally mouthy youth, was into something so poetic and well-behaved.

The conversation of that “cute little plant” popped up several times as we spent hours around the dining room table sipping coffee and chewing the implications of paradigms and daily struggles.

Substantial and convincing research in addition to legalization and changing attitudes toward cannabis gave us the push to ‘explore’ new pain management options. It was all very taboo, still, so we kept it hush-hush.

We experimented with grow-tents, feminized seed variants, decarboxylators, blooming cycles, light exposure, soil chemistry, beaker sizes, heaters, and enhanced water mixtures. A few good cooking pots were ruined in the process and, every once in a while, we entered the twilight zone through a rainbow portal of kaleidoscoping bear-squirrels after inhaling too many fumes and sampling too many ratios.

We simply refer to them as ‘Gummies,’ regardless of their form, shape, or consistency. The orange ones are best.

Healing and concealing

Throughout the first year, we developed the family recipe and built up a stockpile of hundreds of gummies. Mason jars of concentrated mixtures with dates and other tidbits of info, lined the walls of the basement.

Two gummies an hour before bed. That’s all he has to take now.

He is entirely off the pain meds, his characteristic humor is back, and he’s able to enjoy many of the same comforts he had years ago, sans the lifting of heavy objects, destroying of earth and wood, and any of the other stupid things men like to do that we shouldn’t.

Two gummies and he can sleep at night. A gummy during the day if the pain creeps up and paralyzes his nerves, his hands, his neck, or his spine. And he’s way funnier now.

We don’t imbibe for the high. We don’t smoke it. We don’t share or sell. We use it for pain management. My father uses it regularly and my wife takes them for her Rheumatoid Arthritis, which she acquired at the ripe age of 28. She’s tapered off the Methotrexate, a fun chemo drug they prescribe to help push RA into remission, with the help of her new ‘bud’-dy.

The worst part about taking the gummies, you might ask?

Keeping the pantry stocked with snacks that provide a certain satisfying crunch. Anything crunchy will do.

Oh, and educating people that we don’t plan to jump into heroin, PCP, or sugar-coated fentanyl once we tire of the boring old green machine.

Gratitude for unconventional

I wish I could convey the level of gratitude I have for something so trivial, hated, and accessible. I had lost my father for years to disease, western medicine, and the impalpability of antiquated thinking and uneducated fear-mongering.

He’s back now, mostly pain-free but always happy. All it took was some unconventional back-alley apothecary alchemy. Black magic stuff, wood to gold, you know? I’m not a Taylor Swift weed fangirl because many do use its curious effects foolishly; so, like all things, engage this world and its many wonders responsibly. But for our family, it opened a door.

An opportunity for a good night’s sleep, finally.

Cheers, folks.

No gimmicks, no hidden fees, just writing. Subscribe to get notified when I publish.

Tony