I took the largest dose in the late afternoon. We soon got to know this time as the babble hour. But I figured being stoned and a bit stupid was far better than being sick from the effects of chemo therapy. So we climbed into a very aggressive protocol of cannabinoids, the reduced oil of the cannabis plant. Luckily it’s now legal where we live.

You have cancer. Those words can be devastaing, but in fact they are true for everyone because it turns out that we all have cancer cells in our body, those rogue cells that don’t die as they are supposed to. Generally our immune systems take care of these cells, but when that internal system fails then the cells turn into tumors. So what didn’t make sense was putting poisons (chemo and radiation) into my body and effectively killing off my body’s own immune defense system.

Cleaning up our diet and adding supplements would recharge my immune system. The cannabinoids would take on the cancer cells. There is compelling evidence coming in from Israel, Spain, and other European countries that in fact cannabinoids kill cancer cells – without harming other cells and organs in the body. However there are no similar studies in this country. Resources for medical studies and clinical trials are provided by the major pharmacutical companies and they are not interested in studying something they cannot patent – and you can’t (yet) patent a plant. This thinking also pervades the limited governmental research dollars. The head of the FDA (food and drug administration), formerly with Monsanto, has said publicly that the agency will never study anything organic. Information about using cannabinoids is, in this country, fragmented, contradictory, confusing, and coming from underground sources. This landscape is changing, but we were very much left to our own research to discern how to work with this protocol.

However in spite of all our research efforts, my first experience with cannabinoid oil did not go well.