There are many patients who smoke or have considered using marijuana to try to alleviate the pain of their illness. Some recommend its therapeutic use and others criticize it for fear that the patient will end up with an addiction to this drug. However, the most widespread debate in this type of case is the need to hustle to acquire the drug. Many patients are older and, firstly, do not know how to buy this substance and, in addition, they are afraid of having to enter this world.
This is the case of a 50-year-old man from Lanzarote. He suffers from fibromyalgia and his pains are unbearable. "I had the idea of trying marijuana, but I don't dare, because I don't want to resort to a drug dealer," he says. This patient has also been diagnosed with hypertension and is now not sure that joints can be useful to him. "When they told me about marijuana, I clung to that idea like a drowning man. However, then I heard news that pointed out that it had consequences, that it had side effects and I became afraid, because this issue generates many doubts for me," says this patient, who in his next visit with the doctor will ask him about the benefits of this plant.
His case is similar to that of a woman from Lanzarote who also suffers from fibromyalgia. "The pain pills don't do anything for me anymore. I would have to start with morphine patches, but I still consider myself young, I'm 50 years old, and I think that if I start with morphine, I will need more and more," she says. For this reason, she has considered several times resorting to cannabis. "The problem is that you have to know how to consume it and I have no information. I am already a bit older and I have no knowledge of the use of this drug, or any other. What I have tried have been marijuana infusions, and the truth is that they relaxed me quite a bit," says this woman, who is betting on this way of consuming marijuana, instead of smoking it.
Other patients who use this drug to alleviate pain are cancer patients. "I can't say that I'm in favor, but I know that in many cases and in countries like the US it is used, and they prescribe it and there are people who do very well," says the president of the Lanzarote Oncohematological Family Association (Afol), Carmen Arrocha.
Fear of addiction
"Personally, if the plant is really effective, I think it's perfect, because nobody has to be in pain, and if it can be avoided, then much better. However, I'm afraid of addiction, that you don't know how to differentiate," she warns. And it is that while some fear its use, above all, because they do not know its consumption and because they do not know how to cultivate it, others are committed to giving marijuana a therapeutic purpose and taking advantage of its properties to alleviate the pain of many patients, without the need to resort to strong medications.
