What is so damn difficult??

“Pain specialist Dr Marc Russo said his clinic in Newcastle treats about 2,000 new patients with chronic pain every year.

“And I’m very worried, and as many of us in the faculty of pain medicine are very worried, that ultimately it will lead to the prescription of more opioids as a sort of back-stop measure and we know that this carries significant risk and often very little benefit,” he said.”

So opioids continue to get a bad name, and cause more deaths by overdose than car accidents per year in the US because people take so many to try to stop their pain.

And yet CBD oil, which would earn the Government tax dollars instead of costing them by subsidising prescriptions and paying for opioid patients using hospital beds.

It is such a simple, straight forward decision with SO many benefits, why are we not following 40 other countries and giving chronically ill people the ability to buy it??

As usual in our society in the last ten years, in many areas, it makes no damn sense.

Reference here.

Internal dizziness driving me crazy!

For about seven weeks now my brain has felt as though it is a spinning top.

Some days it is bearable, others are filled with headaches, migraines, nausea and very little sleep as it worsens when I lie down. To be honest it is incredibly difficult to live with and I wish someone would put me in a coma until it was over. It is that bad.

It began when I was taking yet another approved drug for my condition and lasted several weeks, so I stopped taking that drug. My doctor, a wonderful woman, during my last visit said it could take a while to wear off. That was a month ago.

Since then I started another drug to help my chronic illness symptoms of complete body pain, incredibly sensitive and painful skin (every square millimetre), horrendous headaches, zero energy, the dizziness (I have had it off and on for nearly three years now) and general complete lack of quality of life.

It is, by my count, the eighth or ninth drug I have tried, perhaps more. Each time you have to build the dose slowly over time, then if it doesn’t work or you suffer a side effect (I’m good at those, there are dozens to choose from) you have to slowly reduce the dose to get off it. So months are spent doing this just to feel worse.

Why? Because they are all so incredibly dangerous. Eaxh one is highly addictive, has extensive withdrawal symptoms and can cause other significant damage if used too quickly, or just too much. All very dangerous to those who get fed up with feeling ill and so just keep increasing the dose, until they die. Opioid based drug (which the vast majority are) overdoses kill more people in the US now than car crashes.

Cannabis oil doesn’t kill anyone.

Placed on the skin and without any THC there is no high, are no side effects and no awful reactions if you increase or decrease the dose.

But it is illegal here in Australia without paperwork a mile high and a ‘luck of the draw’ response to your application. Less than a few hundred have been successful in over a year. You then need to resubmit more paperwork after six months.

You also need a letter of recommendation from a specialist, most of whom somehow choose not to believe over thirty years of pure and incredibly extensive scientific research into the positive effects of CBD (cannabis) oil.

Why? Perhaps because it is not backed by a big pharmaceutical company so it doesn’t come with trips to Hawaii for ‘education purposes’ or first class tickets to highly desired travel spots (‘conferences’) if you prescribe a set amount.

The only people who can make money out of it are governments, in 40 countries, who have legalised it and tax it. Some States in the US have completely paid off their debt and still have money left over for housing homeless people because the allow and tax this huge industry.

In Australia we do nothing. There is no financially backed lobby group that can take you to a conference at an exotic location to educate people of its benefits, just several hundred thousand sufferers (probably many more) who know it works yet are criminals if they use it.

Yet who are the criminals here? Those who choose to use a naturally occurring herb to take away their immense pain and suffering, or those who prevent the hundreds of thousands of others from doing the same because there is no patent and therefore no money to be made, no ‘promotions’ to offer.

The big pharmaceutical companies would make nothing from CBD oil and it is banned. Coincidence?

When will our governments, State and Federal, realise the amount of tax dollars they can make, the hundreds and hundreds of jobs that can be created, and most importantly the people whose suffering they can ease just by legalising a herb? It has more scientific research behind it than most of all the other drugs I have taken, combined, that cause emergency trips to hospitals and help overload our stretched system. Cannabis oil doesn’t.

It is such a clear decision, yet has not been made, that money must be the answer. Whose pockets would be lighter if people started to take something with no side effects or addictive properties instead of extensively promoted prescription drugs?

Pharmaceutical companies.

Wonderful to know what their main motivation for being is. In fact just read the Executive Summary of the recent interim report into our financial industry here in Australia and the same applies. Greed.

In the meantime I’ll just keep spinning. If you thought your last hangover was bad, try one that has lasted six weeks and counting.

I know what can help me, CBD oil, but greed and institutions with their aged heads in the sand prevent me from accessing it.

Aren’t we meant to be a humane society, where the sick are allowed to be treated with what makes them better, no matter who benefits?

Since when is it a crime to want to get better?

I share a chronic illness with millions of people worldwide.

It gives me, on an almost daily basis, more pain than I have had in my life in total, until now.

All of the drugs that are recommended for us have significant, serious and irreversible side affects.

Alzheimer’s, migraines, nausea, liver issues, high cholesterol and on and on and on.

So why are they recommended? Because big pharmaceutical companies make them, doctors (who are too tired, overworked, disinterested or just don’t care) prescribe them, and they make billions of dollars. For Research and Development we are told. Or maybe bonuses and conferences.

Why, in 2018, can I not get access to the one medicinal supplement that has more than thirty years of extensive, proven, large sample size research? Because it is illegal to do so here in Australia.

In the US it is legal in many States and Canada will be making it legal nationally this month. The US has reaped massive taxation benefits and Canada will follow.

We could have been manufacturing this by now, and collecting taxes I would be more than happy to pay.

Even if South Australia went ahead and completely legalised it’s distribution but controlled it’s growth, the tax benefit would pay for the new South Road within ten years.

So why not here? Why is Australia yet again at the bottom of the pile of innovation and acceptance of irrefutable evidence from over a dozen countries?

Perhaps if our Federal politicians popped their collective heads out of the sand, followed by the presently archaic national president of the AMA (Australian Medical Association), instead of fighting over who has the biggest office, we might actually move forward.

So tens of millions of us worldwide, and approximately two million Australians, suffer excruciating pain every day of our lives because the very people who are meant to have our best interests at heart cannot see past their own reflection.

Wake up. Eminent scientific researchers worldwide agree that Cannabis Oil eases our pain, does not have any side affects and is not addictive. And we will pay taxes on it.

Not addictive? Well then no long term money in it for the pharmaceutical companies to produce it, and so overdoses of OxyContin (the leading recommend drug) kill more Americans than car crashes each year, and we are following closely behind.

A stroke of a pen would give us back our lives, yet it is more important to get a spot on a shock-jocks radio program or to discuss who gets what Ministry.

I think I might join the exodus and move to Canada.

Exactly like the flu virus, only completely different

The flu virus changes every year, making it difficult to treat and meaning a different vaccine is needed yearly.

With ME/CFS and Fibromyalgia the treatment changes almost for every person, so different treatments and drugs have to be tried for every person to find one that helps.

And you get better from the flu, you don’t get better from what we have.

So in fact it’s completely different from the flu virus – my bad.

So how do you find a cure for something that affects those who suffer it so differently? There are so many stories of different drugs that ‘gave me my life back’ that it is impossible to engineer one cure for us all.

Of course I hope I am completely wrong.

There is of course one supplement that actually works for over ninety percent of us – cannabis oil. No THC so no high and therefore no possibility of addiction, but because of the word ‘cannabis’ it has more opposition than an Australian Prime Minister.

There is more than thirty years of science that proves it works, has no side affects and is not addictive. Had it been developed by a large pharmaceutical company it would already be on the shelf.

Unfortunately for the pharmaceutical companies they have no money invested in cannabis (to my knowledge) so they help form the ‘against’ argument – no profit, no health.

If I won the lottery I would start a business here in Australia producing cannabis oil and I would pay taxes, making the government a fortune and a few hundred thousand people feel human again.

Why is it so difficult?

What’s in a name? Everything!

The world renowned scientists in Israel have 30+ years of verifiable studies showing that CBD oil significantly reduces (and in some cases erases) chronic pain with no side-affects, and it is not addictive.

Other studies around the world have had the same results. Even medical studies here in Australia.

Yet we (those of us who suffer daily, with no or very little quality of life) are not allowed to access it because ‘wowsers’ hear the letters CBD and react with, “That’s cannabis! You just want to get high! Just like those 60s hippies!”

CBD (cannabis oil) contains NO THC, the stuff that gives you the high, so NO we CANNOT get high, we just want our chronic, debilitating pain gone. Oh, and to live a life approaching normal would be a huge bonus, thanks.

So if it’s the name that is causing all this resistance, why not change it? Call it something in Latin, people seem to love that. Or just something unpronounceable and therefore important-sounding like all the other drugs on the market, that are addictive and have a list of side-affects that take fifteen minutes to read and over two hours to understand. Then there would be no overreaction.

If they changed the name to simply ‘vitamin oil’ there would be no problem. Vitamins are easily imported, advertised and sold with claims that they ‘may’ assist every sickness known to man. I am sure it would be government approved within days, if government approval was even required.

But it currently has the name ‘cannabis’ in it so I must be a strungout hippie, chasing a high.

It’s all in the name.

People cannot get past the image that pops into their head when you say ‘cannabis’, of smoke filled rooms and people rolling around in their own psychedelic world. Yes, it should be their problem and not mine, but I have been in constant pain for over two years now because people cannot let go of their deep-seated biases.

I must admit that, until I became chronically ill, I probably would have thought the same – hippies out to legalise their highs from smoking weed.

It is a very deep-seated stereotype.

So I cannot blame anyone or get angry, there isn’t any point. I will, however, continue to write about it here and to my local politicians because chronic full body pain, with not a second of rest in over two years, can really get you down.

Then there is the massive financial saving.

I read daily of people with my condition, or worse, calling ambulances and going to hospital so they can be placed on higher pain medication for a while. Each visit costs you, the Australian taxpayer, thousands of dollars and clogs up an already stretched health system.

Personally, over the next few years I could save you all tens of thousands of dollars if I was allowed to buy what I know helps my condition.

Yes I can try jumping through hoops and attempt to navigate a mountain of red tape (and I really mean a mountain because I have seen it), but that costs a fortune in time and money (a medical professional has to fill it out, paid by Medicare out of our tax dollars) and I don’t think I would survive the stress.

Red Tape. If only we could grow cannabis oil as quickly as Red Tape, everyone in pain would find instant relief.

The money we sufferers would save the government in unnecessary ambulance callouts, hospital stays and subsidised (addictive) painkillers would be in the millions. Money I am sure you would rather the government spent on other things, or even better returned to your pocket.

Which leads me to my final point. With dozens (closer to hundreds now) of studies over decades as proof that CBD oil is safe, not addictive, not capable of giving anyone a high and yet people are stopping us from accessing it, can we sue these people for the pain and suffering we go through every day?

It is criminal, in my pain-filled opinion, that I know what helps my chronic pain, I’m prepared to pay for it myself and save the government thousands in subsidised medicine, but I cannot buy it because the government here disallows anyone to import it, or sell it without a pathetic initial prescription that lasts just two months.

Alas it is all in a name. How about we call the oil Fred? Fred oil sounds pretty harmless to me.

Understanding is nearly non-existent in a world that doesn’t believe

Horrendous full body pain, from head to toe, for years on end. You either come to terms with it, or it destroys you.

I have read research papers (yes published in A Class Journals for those of you who don’t listen to anything else and are therefore, to some extent, blinkered) that state the pain that fellow sufferers and I endure is very similar to the pain a cancer patient suffers during their final three months.

I even read an online post from the family of a woman who died suddenly. She had suffered our dreaded invisible Fibromyalgia and ME/CFS for many years but her sudden death was a mystery. After her autopsy it was revealed she was riddled with cancer, cancer that started many years after her Fibromyalgia and ME/CFS.

Her pain was so bad she did not even realise she had cancer, and died oblivious.

Why do we have to come out with these stories? Israeli medical research (and US, UK etc) has 30 years of proof that cannabis oil can and does ease our suffering, yet very little action is taken.

Our Federal politicians would say they are taking action, but progressing as slowly as possible is not action. It is only minutely better than nothing.

If cannabis oil had the same amount of research showing it helped cancer patients, it would have been widely available years ago. The hue and cry demanding it be made available would have been thunderous.

And yet because our illness is not visible, it has words that make people question it’s validity (Chronic Fatigue, really? Are you sure you don’t just need a good night’s sleep and some exercise??), and the oil that can help us is called ‘cannabis’, everyone in authority seems to not believe us. Or not want to.

I wish they could experience what we go through every day, but just for twenty-four hours. I wouldn’t want anyone to suffer more than that, I am not cruel by nature.

Then we would see access to what helps us open up in record time.

If they will not believe dozens and dozens of papers published over the past thirty plus years then perhaps they would believe their own pain receptors.

In the meantime we, their fellow human beings, continue in agony for years. The heads of medical associations do not believe these trials have conclusively proved the benefits of cannabis oil.

If that is the case, then perhaps they should learn how to read. But don’t ask me to teach them, because when you’re in this much pain, patience is very thin if non-existent.

In twenty years they will all be seen as fools. Which means I have to suffer for another twenty years?

Heaven help us all.