A Gift From God

How I love to walk over to my Patients Care Collective and stock up on high quality cannabis to help with pain and infirmity and increase enjoyment of life...

In May of 2005 I walked down a block to a Durant avenue building I had passed a thousand times before. It's a white-painted red-brick building on the corner of Ellsworth and it houses the offices of Dr. Frank, a general practice physician. He had also been a pioneer in recommending marijuana to some patients. He did this only after undertaking studies in the clinical application of cannabis for people with serious illness. He and another Berkeley doctor who has since passed away, were the first in California to make such recommendations. This was in the face of the federal Drug Enforcement Agency threat to revoke licenses of any doctor who so followed the will of the people to enable ill people to access this efficacious and harmless herbal medicine.
I had been diagnosed with chronic illness approximately six months prior and I was in transformation from my old unhealthy behavior into a new way of life. I had long been accustomed to regular light use of marijuana. In countless ways have I felt its benefits.
The only unintended side effect I can think of is a restless or insomniac mood following on from sudden unavailability.
The two most widely-known and unarguable propensities of one who ingests this plants active ingredient are appetite and enjoyment of food, and a tendency to sleep deeply and soundly after its use. Nutrition and sleep are the two fundamental ways the body heals and endures, what benefits to person, what a disaster when either is disturbed or lacking for any length of time.
The inclination toward dreaminess, toward over-imaginativeness--I say, so what? Not your cup of tea? Fine but deny or ridicule others this beneficent state. he experience is not like many people's memories of it from college--smoking in groups and acting somewhat silly. When you are older it is more like, you feel better and life is more interesting.
I see endless cupidity in the media concerning how many issues are reported. Many people who disagree with prevailing philosophies of so called vital national interest are usually characterized as extreme outsiders in blatant ideological biased language. The "far left" is one term often used. Another such cliche that one sees even in a paper such as the Onion that endorses stoner movies and music, that runs many cannabis-related ads and so forth, is "pot-addled" for anyone who has ingested any amount of marijuana. This is the very regrettable stereotype that people who should and do know much better gleefully perpetuate that allows the willfully ignorant to corn-plaster their lack of conscience for the many people who are persecuted, fleeced and jailed for possession of a bountiful and beneficial plant. For me the image popularized by Cheech and Chong is as unwanted a legacy as the ones popularized by Amos and Andy.

Reputedly, in the wake of Dr Frank and others like him who took substantial risk in first recommending cannabis, some doctors have arrived who are less strict about a patient's need. That has never been the case when I go to see him for a yearly examination. On my first visit, a careful examination of my medical records, was followed by a physical exam, and in-depth conversation that lasted for 45 minutes--unlike the usual 10 to 15 minutes my regular clinic visits generally last--I left with a letter from him recommending medical marijuana for my condition. This signed, dated and stamped document legally entitled me to purchase, possess, or grow marijuana for my personal use for the following year.

Next, I followed what I thought was the route as planned and went next to downtown Oakland to obtain an ID card. I had read that a few blocks that had just come to be called Oaksterdam in honor of the city that has led the world in normalization of marijuana use by adults-- Amsterdam. Downtown Oakland can be daunting to an infrequent visitor on a bland day--let alone that day as I conducted such heady business. A few street cats were around, inevitably drawn to any action spot with any potential for them no doubt. Without much bother I obtained a Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative card at the address I had been given by the doctor's receptionist. There was a solicitous headshop concern out front and a rather more taciturn office scene around back where you were photographed and laminated. I saw others delighted by their felicitous fate--some middle-aged, some quite young. If some were not really seriously ill, it matters not in the larger picture--there's no harm in its use--but it did make me wonder how long the forces of repression can be held off if they can make that case effectively.
I think anyone over the age of 16 healthy or not should be able to enjoy marijuana if they so desire.
Recent studies have proven that young folks who smoked pot in high school had better grades and better social adjustment, rather the opposite results that the bugaboos would have you swallow. Smart young people tend to love marijuana--hence the indelible association it has with college education. And as everyone has seen countless times young stoned people love to socialize-- passing the smoking vessel about and laughing, listening to music together, munching food together, kissing on and on.
Sure troubled loners and others who may be seeking self-obliteration in intoxication made add marijuana to their menu, but marijuana alone is the slowest boat to oblivion that there is. The fastest and most widely destructive vehicles are meanwhile available at every convenience store, it seems--tobacco and alcohol. You can get a tank of gas at the same time.

The Oaksterdam trip seemed to be geared to funnel you into their dispensary around the corner--I think it was in that great blue tile Art Deco building that I recall as a florist shop. I am certain that it is not an unrewarding place to buy leafy materials now either--but I beat it back toward Berkeley. When I do transact, I usually buy enough stash to last a while and, for my thinking, neither cash nor stash mix well with public transportation in jolly old Oakland.
I had in fact seen a one-time ad in a San Francisco alternative newspaper for a place boasting eighty varieties of high quality buds all priced at a mere $40 per eighth ounce. At long last, a legal, dependable supply of affordable high-quality herb, in my lifetime: it appeared a dream had come to pass. I had taped the clipping in my address book at the time. This was where I was determined I would investigate the next day--the fabulous and storied treasury of herbs, The Green Cross, already glowing.

The tale told by this column will continue soon.