https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehvIkZCZmzA
About three years ago a friend of mine suggested that I try marijuana for pain relief from rheumatoid arthritis. It seemed like an OK idea. I've tried marijuana a couple of times but just never liked the wooziness. But it seemed like it might be worth a second look and I didn't think of it as especially harmful. And it was easy to get since my friend's husband grew and sold marijuana. So pretty soon I had a nice stash of marijuana, and also a starter kit of papers to roll a joint in.
I attempted to smoke a joint, but I couldn't seem to inhale it because of coughing. Hmmm. It occurred to me to eat a little bit since I had heard of marijuana brownies. So I had gelatin capsules and put some marijuana in one. It was a 500 mg capsule size, and I filled it about half full. I didn't expect much to happen.
In a few minutes I realized I was losing consciousness. This was frightening, but I suspected, correctly, from the level of collapse that I was experiencing that I had only seconds to go before I was out, so I couldn't do anything to rescue myself from whatever was happening, and rushed to lie down in bed. It was 1:00 o'clock pm. I was unconscious for about a day, not waking up for any reason. Mom was here but didn't seem to notice, even though she was still able to get around then and could have checked on me.
The next day I woke up in the late morning. Goodness I felt terrible all day. Later I told my friend that I thought I had an allergy to marijuana because I had had a severe reaction to it. "No, that's not possible. You can't be allergic to marijuana." I was mystified about what had happened, but it sure wasn't going to happen again. I asked her if the marijuana could have been contaminated with anything. I was thinking I might have been poisoned by an insecticide. She was certain that had not happened. At first I had considered throwing the rest of it in the trash, but I was paranoid about this idea for some vague reason. Well, dump it out in the yard? Maybe. Ask for a refund? No, I didn't want to make anyone feel double-crossed on a drug deal, even if it was only weed. Eventually I decided to just return it and not ask for a refund. I told my friend's husband that it had caused me to lose consciousness. He laughed, and said, "Well, it must be good!" Cheesh. Later on I found a small amount of it left that I had misplaced and forgotten. I gave this to another friend that liked to smoke weed. I told her that I had had a bad experience with it when I had put some in a capsule and swallowed it. "Oooh. Well, that's because you should cook it into something like brownies, not eat raw marijuana." Hmmm. Did that explain it? It sounded like a stretch.
Was I done walking on the wrong side of the law? Pretty much. Mom broke her back not long after that, and it was diagnosed as bursitis. Even though she had X-rays that showed a broken back, the local "doctors" as they like to call themselves, didn't feel it was either very painful or more than bursitis. Seeing the amount of pain she was in, I asked her primary care alleged doctor to prescribe pain medication. "You're the one that really wants opioids aren't you?" she asked. I gave her a tongue lashing, but still, there was no attempt at addressing pain. I found myself in a nightmare world for a while of trying to help a screaming woman all day. Finally I started to think of trying to buy Vicodin or Oxycodone from off the internet. This was something I didn't want to do, but it might be the only solution. However, I dropped the idea. It was just too far over the line. "No wonder there are so many heroin addicts," I thought.
What does this have to do with Fentanyl? I was unaware of the Fentanyl crisis until the last few months when I saw some documentaries by a Youtube channel from Texas about the recent huge increase in opioid deaths in the US. The majority of the deaths are caused by accidental overdose from Fentanyl that people have taken usually not even knowing they are taking Fentanyl. This has happened because China has been sending the ingredients for making Fentanyl to cartels in Mexico, and the drug cartels have flooded the market with Fentanyl laced drugs. The cartels make convincing copies of prescription drugs like Percocet and Xanax and people will buy them thinking they are buying the actual drug. In reality, many times the pills are actually made of Fentanyl. Since Fentanyl is 100 times stronger than heroin, the pills are extremely easy to overdose on. I've even heard that these fake pills have sometimes been sold at pharmacies in Mexico. And more recently, the Fentanyl lacing has started being added to marijuana.
And so, when I hear of overdose deaths, and how easy it can be to die this way accidentally, it sends a chill down my spine. There were 112,000 such deaths in the US last year.
This is a picture from the DEA website of authentic (left) and fake (right) Oxycodone. The fake can look very genuine. When I hear of deaths from Fentanyl overdose, I think, "There, but for the grace of God, go I."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S193-xKXJCc
No comments:
Post a Comment