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Iedical marijuana helps patients with opioid addiction-CNN https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/29/health/medical-marijuana-opioids/in.
<br /> Health + Live TV U.S. Edition +
<br /> After 32 times in and out of rehabilitation, he finally found a way to stop using opioids. "I have no cravings. I
<br /> have no desire. I do not have any thought about it at all," he told Gupta.
<br /> Dr. Mark Wallace, a pain management specialist and head of the University of California, San Diego Health's
<br /> Center for Pain Medicine, is seeing similar results in his patients. Wallace began investigating cannabis in
<br /> 1999, when he received a grant from the state of California. He looked at the literature and realized that pot
<br /> had a long history of therapeutic use for many disorders including leprosy, epilepsy and pain.
<br /> Within a decade,there were enough studies to convince him that marijuana was a real alternative to use in
<br /> his practice. He estimates that hundreds of his patients, like Marc Schechter, have been weaned off pills
<br /> through pot.
<br /> 40,000 pills over 10 years
<br /> In the past 10 years, Schechter estimates, he took almost 40,000 opioid pills, all prescribed to him by his
<br /> doctors. Percocet, fentanyl and OxyContin --they all worked, but when the dosage wore off, he needed
<br /> more.
<br /> Schechter had a rare condition that flared up while he was playing golf in 2007. At the 17th hole, pain began
<br /> radiating from his back. By the time he got back to his room, he couldn't move his left leg at all.
<br /> Schechter was diagnosed with idiopathic transverse myelitis, an inflammation of the spine. He was
<br /> eventually able to walk again, but the pain persisted.
<br /> Without the drugs, it felt like his leg was burning with pins and needles, as if it had fallen asleep. "It's like that
<br /> 24/7. Not a second of relief," he said. He needed the drugs just to live.
<br /> ,..k. „ ��•� I "Were you addicted to them?” Gupta asked.
<br /> �
<br /> Px �'. i
<br /> "` '= ,',�' "Physically, yeah," Schechter said.
<br /> The drugs never interfered with his work as an
<br /> � $ attorney, but Schechter kept needing more and more
<br /> .x : of them. He started to question their effectiveness.
<br /> r Schechter told his neurologist, "I really am starting to
<br /> •
<br /> doubt whether this is even having any effect because
<br /> ',,.,,,,,i,,'-f, I'm in so much neuropathic pain."
<br /> His neurologist had heard of Wallace's work and
<br /> Related Article: Come aboard the referred Schechter to the clinic. The first night
<br /> Schechter used marijuana, he took a puff or two from a
<br /> cannabus: More seniors taking trips to vaporizer. "Within a minute, I had immediate pain relief.
<br /> get weed ... [The pain level] was so tolerable that I was, like, in
<br /> heaven."
<br /> f 5 5/1/2018, 1:25 PN
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