Fibromyalgia and Cannabis: Helping My Mother See Green

I recently had dinner with my mother, who is in her late 60’s, and has long suffered from fibromyalgia, a disorder characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain accompanied by fatigue, sleep, memory and mood issues. She was a dentist for many years and the constant hunching over, the repetitive small movements of cleaning thousands of teeth, and a genetic predisposition to the condition made my mother a prime candidate for fibromyalgia.

My mother retired from dentistry early due to her fibromyalgia and was on a private disability insurance to support her. In the spirit of unimaginable magnanimity that is so often associated with insurance companies, once my mother hit 65 (average retirement age) they promptly discontinued her payments. Now she is embroiled in a lawsuit that has stretched on for over two years trying to get coverage for life, which is what she agreed to when she began paying into this insurance long before she retired. They are claiming that because she didn’t properly check a box on the renewal form, she now ineligible for coverage after 65. This is just such a load of shit I can’t even get into it here. My mother is, effectively, disabled. Being awake means she is in pain and has weakened her to such a point that even carrying a bag of groceries in from the car will leave her suffering and exhausted.

Fibromyalgia is a tricky beast in the medical field. It presents with very few physical indicators of a problem, which has led many doctors to assume that it’s not a real condition. They simply blow fibromyalgia off as being “all in your head.” Now, depending on how meta-physical you would like to get, isn’t everything “all in our heads?” There have been studies of schizophrenic people who, as one personality, have a disease full of symptoms and everything; yet, when they are exhibiting another personality, the disease is undetectable and effectively not there. Science is only scratching the surface of brain exploration and much of what we thought we knew is being challenged. For instance, just a few years ago, it was a medical certainty that brain cells did not regenerate. Now we know that to be hogwash.

Anyway, at this dinner with my mother, I got to talking about cannabis for medical reasons. While I do not exhibit any signs of fibromyalgia (it’s much less common in males, anyway), my mother and I both have been longtime insomniacs. My inability to sleep has been basically cured by cannabis and I thought it would be good for my mother too. Knowing what I know about marijuana, I knew that it would be a great help to both her level of perceived pain and to her insomnia, which I believe compounds the issue. When we don’t get proper sleep, our bodies slowly decay and present with symptoms of many diseases.

I think this time, I started to really get through to her. I have been trying to get her to try cannabis for years. She has been staunchly anti-drug my whole life and it has been an uphill struggle to even get her to consider cannabis.

What really helped to bridge that gap was honesty. Since getting my medical authorization, and especially since cannabis was legalized in Washington (my state), I have been emboldened to speak the truth. I opened up to my mom about how often I smoke and said, “Let me be your example, I smoke daily and still remain a good husband and father and an employed, successfully contributing member of society.” She seemed receptive and even said that she’d be willing to try it but didn’t like the idea of smoking it. This is a great start. I told her I would bring her a tincture or something like that, where she could maintain control of the dosage and avoid having to smoke.

The take away message here is that being a paradigm of a productive, happy stoner and sharing that truth with people can help them see, by your own example, that cannabis is not evil or a one-way ticket to rehab.  I’ll write more about my saga to help my mother as more events unfold.

For now, friends, speak your truth! (Just be smart, speak it to people who can’t fire you or some BS like that!)