Reckoning With Our Reliance on the Pharmaceutical Industry: Toward a Complementary Approach

Perhaps you, like me, grew up believing in science, yet also maintained a healthy skepticism of the medical and pharmaceutical industries.

Many of us grew up reliant on a mix of advice from the Western, conventional medical model and folk medicine traditions. It was common knowledge that most people didn’t go to the doctor for the common cold or for mild cuts or bruises. Yet while some of my classmates’ parents were very cautious and made doctor’s appointments for their families at the first signs of physical or mental illness or distress, my mom was cautious in the other direction. She was one who tried to veer toward natural products and folk medicines whenever possible, reserving medical appointments to the routine visits and the absolute emergencies.

Subjectively, my mom could be viewed as having made a wise decision in raising her children to have as little reliance as possible on doctors’ appointments and medications that were extraneous. Conversely, she could be seen as negligent for not making sure my siblings’ and my physical and mental conditions were always treated with professional medical attention. My siblings and I all survived our childhoods, with minor incidents.

I was the child who was most sickly, from colds and allergies, but also as the one plagued by eczema since birth. This dry skin condition was attributed to both genetics — my dad also had eczema — and environment. My mom, in her efforts to tow the line both as a dutiful mother and as someone who trusted medical doctors but also believed in natural remedies, tried little beyond applying both the topical cortisone creams prescribed by doctors and freshly cut aloe to help soothe my skin.

In feeling doubly obliged to entrusting our health to conventional medicine and do what she could naturally, she completely overlooked a holistic approach to addressing my skincare woes. It is not lost on me that the Western medical model is increasingly being recognized as flawed for its Band-aid approach in treating symptoms to systemic illnesses, rather than looking for root causes.

While my mom still tends to veer on the path of visiting the doctor only when strictly necessary, my dad has had the worse fate of passing away after a protracted struggle with Stage 4 colorectal cancer. His aversiveness to see the doctor and negligence toward his health stemmed not so much from a distrust of the medical industry, but more so from his fanatical work ethic and a disconnection between his mental and physical well-being.

While my dad struggled to fight cancer, my siblings, his siblings, those in his personal circle, and a team of medical professionals all provided what support we could to him. He underwent several rounds of chemotherapy, and his cancer even went into remission for awhile. His outcome was looking stunningly positive, if even only briefly so, after a very bleak initial assessment that he was most likely terminal.

That my dad’s cancer was not even diagnosed until it had progressed to the point of being Stage 4 speaks to how much he had normalized his pain and suffered silently. He only begrudgingly and urgently sought medical help once his pains became too great to ignore, landing him first to the emergency room and then to his grim diagnosis. To think, if only he’d gotten routine colonoscopies, his entire diagnosis could have been prevented, or at least treated at a much earlier stage.

My dad suffered the classic nausea from his chemotherapy treatments. He was prescribed Dronabinol (Marinol), the synthetic cannabinoid made specifically to help people combat nausea and poor appetite caused by ailments and treatments such as chemotherapy. Yet, it had little effect on him, and his weight dramatically dropped. When my aunt, his sister, visited, she was able to convince my dad to smoke some cannabis under her watch to help him with this nausea.

My dad believed stoically in sobriety as integral to maintaining his rational capabilities, which were his most prized aspect of his being. In his 60’s, even before he was diagnosed with his illness, my dad had joked that it would soon be time for him to consider retirement, but that he didn’t much feel like he wanted to retire. He was a man who lived for his work and his ambitions, to the extent that it was a spiritual endeavor for him.

That my dad neglected his physical health to be so extraordinarily high-achieving was no surprise. Nor was it a surprise that he eschewed use of cannabis, “marijuana” as we commonly knew it, as the plant has been long-stigmatized and demonized for interfering with people’s productivity and short-term memory. So, while I was pleasantly surprised that my dad had tried cannabis following my aunt’s urging and under her supervision, I remained cautious and skeptical as to whether it would be a complementary medicine that he would continue to utilize.

I’d followed up with my dad to ask him about his nausea and what he was doing to mitigate it and take care of himself. Upon hearing my dad’s noncommittal remarks toward the efficacy of cannabis in combatting his nausea, together with his gripes of the bureaucratic difficulty in obtaining a medical marijuana card, I sent him some maple cannabis candies as part of a care package.

When my dad thanked me for the “chocolates” and said that they appeared to be somewhat helpful, I discerned that not only was he not partaking in the treats (they weren’t chocolates but rather maple candies), but that he was not so open to trying cannabis to help his nausea after all. Long-ingrained and deeply-seated beliefs do not wither away so easily.

So, while my dad continued to battle nausea and left himself in the care of his medical team, I continued to also search for what information I could to help him. My half-sister’s mom, whom he’d maintained a friendship with over the years, advised my dad to really be more careful with his diet. She emphasized the importance of cutting out processed sugar, and the role of sugar in feeding cancer cells. I believe she sent him research to support this assertion, knowing the scientist that my dad was.

Though the research is mixed on whether sugar starves cancer cells, it seems significant that there was research on the topic as far back as 1997, in a research study titled Dietary sugar and colon cancer, published in the American Association for Cancer Research Journals.

There is also some emerging research that cannabis can help shrink cancerous tumors. Here’s one article I found on complementary medicine and colon cancer. And here is one on cannabinoids on colorectal cancer immunotherapy. Though the latter article was published after my dad had passed away, during the time of his protracted battle, I had sent him an article in a similar vein on complementary treatments for colon cancer. He perfunctorily thanked me, this time clear that he would continue to trust the advice of his medical team.

Notably, even my dad’s medical team suggested also being seen by the department of integrative and complementary care. My dad’s decision to continue to rely on medical authority outside of himself, through the lens of conventional Western medicine, speaks to how he allied himself with the conventional medical model and thought complementary or “alternative” medicine approaches were hokey or had minimal effect at best. Sadly, although for a time, my dad’s cancer went into remission, the cancer returned more aggressively, as can tend to happen. He passed away due to complications from an experimental therapy in early 2020.

My dad’s passing has led me to veer away from my professional academic pursuit in lieu of pursuing holistic and transformational health advocacy and coaching. I studied as a Community Health Worker (CHW) and then earned my certification as an integrative nutrition health coach from the Institute of Integrative Nutrition (IIN). Both my studies from these certifications and my own independent research have profoundly altered my lens for understanding health. As society is increasingly recognizing the importance of holding a holistic, trauma-informed lens for both mental and physical health, we are shifting to understand illnesses and well-being as social phenomena, not only isolated individual diagnoses.

In a sick, disconnected, alienated culture that values productivity and financial success as its bottom line, it is with reluctance yet perhaps inevitability that late-stage capitalism is seeing a shift toward embracing substances like cannabis and psychedelics. I believe, as Ricki Lake once powerfully stated, the issue is not so much about cannabis itself as it is about empowering people to heal themselves.

While we are reaching an apex of mental and physical health crises, the medical industry is swiftly leaning in to research, document, and harness the healing properties of substances like cannabis, psilocybin mushrooms, and to harness the healing abilities of such plants and fungi. I believe that, as even the pharmaceutical industry is shifting to recognize that it must work with these natural allies that it has long tried to snuff out, we are entering into a more connected, conscious, and embodied way of living and healing ourselves and each other.

Sources:

Lake, Ricki & Epstein, Abby. (2018). Weed The People [video]. https://www.weedthepeoplemovie.com/

Molassiotis, Alexander et al. (Dec. 2005). “Complementary and alternative medicine use in colorectal cancer patients in seven European countries.” Complement Ther Med. Retrieved from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16338195/

Slattery, M.L. et al. (Sep. 1, 1997). “Dietary sugar and colon cancer.” Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention. American Association for Cancer Research Journals. Retrieved from https://aacrjournals.org/cebp/article/6/9/677/154254/Dietary-sugar-and-colon-cancer

Zaiachuk, Mariia et al. (Sep. 24, 2021). “Cannabinoids, Medical Cannabis, and Colorectal Immunotherapy.” Frontiers in Medicine. Retrieved from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmed.2021.713153/full?fbclid=IwAR2sZ5eGmFjCZ5RvTKh-LjnccIZ0PaVq1khAIYxAEruNVIwWNKqjrvJ43I8

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