My response to people who ask, “have you tried X?” is almost always, “my medical care is an enormous undertaking and frankly personal.” No one can possibly comprehend in a single conversation the years of experimentation that go into many people’s medical care, much less additional factors like genetic predispositions.

I get frustrated enough dealing with the medications the government and insurance companies seem to assume I’m using to get high (every time I have to submit another pre-approval, run short because I was out of town the day one ran out, or even just show my ID yet again, I have that little nagging voice of “what if they are right?”), that I wouldn’t want the trouble of convincing my doctor I’m not using pot to get high. I’d also be concerned that it might cast doubt onto my use of other, legal, controlled substances. On the other hand, if I’d tried all the other options I had access to, I would certainly choose it over no relief.

I know someone who uses pot, for example, to control anxiety after going through most/all of the legal pharmacopoeia. It greatly increases hir function in measurable and observable ways. Ze’s had enormous trouble getting doctors to understand that ze isn’t getting baked for fun (eating, rather than smoking, small enough doses that only marginally impair hir functionality, and much less than the anxiety that would otherwise be present.) Ze is using the drug because the legal alternatives are prohibitively expensive, don’t work and have greater side effects for hir, not because ze wants to get high, but because it is illegal ze is instantly labeled as a pleasure seeker by the medical profession.

I have a hard time communicating this one to others. People just don’t want to hear it, and they are SO misinformed about how drugs actually work. And they don’t want to believe that maybe you, as the body’s inhabitant, have tried every god-damned thing you can think of to make the pain stop.

@ Julian—I have seriously had people whisper to me that they doubt my mother’s brain tumor is real, that she made it up to get the meds, and that she has had “a nice long rest now” and should get back to work. There are just no words.

(FWIW, I’ve almost stopped watching House, MD because of how they treat his “addiction.” It’s irresponsible.)

I have a brain tumor, which you would think people would be slightly more understanding about than fibromyalgia (I mean, probably more people know what a tumor is than FM, right?), but I still get this bullshit “miracle cure” “hey, have you heard about ___ herbal supplement that can cure cancer?!”

NO, RLY?!

I don’t know which is worse – that one, or the opposite reaction where people criticize/judge me for my use of prescription pain meds & weed to manage my pain and other symptoms. (One of those symptoms being the endless bullshit healthy people put me through. :P)

I forgot to mention how much I hate when people tell me that If I “just think positive,” everything will be all better…

It can be very frustrating to realize that you are in the Very Special episode of someone else’s TV show.

So, thank you again. Reading things like this normalize my own experiences.

/lurking…

Brandanns last blog post..Thursday Blogwhoring

Do I think it should be legal? Yes. Nobody should have to be sitting in jail because someone found a lid in their closet, that’s ridiculous. But the “everybody must get stoned” crowd really annoys me. It’s not for everyone, and in fact, it intersects badly with some people’s innate mental goings-on (and/or interacts badly with their prescribed meds).

Mostly it exacerbates problems, like you said, rather than actually causing them, but I’ve definitely known my share of people who should NOT be using it, and suffered enough traumatic events at their hands that I instinctively have a negative reaction to someone being stoned in front of me. (I don’t much care if they do it not in front of me, though.)

Meowsers last blog post..My Seat, Your Seat, His Seat, Their Seat

…understand how using drugs can be so exceptionally not fun for somebody who has to rely on drugs to be able to brush hir teeth and get dressed most days, much less anything more involved than that.

Yep. When “drug use” is woven into the very fabric of your life, so to speak, it just isn’t as fun; when the dynamics of the alcoholic family are things that impacted your childhood and adolescence, booze no longer seems like the good-time party enhancer that everyone makes it out to be.

annahams last blog post..Even MORE Epic Privilege Fail, This Time From a Fellow Feminist