Turns out there’s a growing number of seniors who are tossing their prescriptions drugs and turning to cannabis for relief for a wide variety of illnesses including insomnia, anxiety, pain, glaucoma, fibromyalgia, and arthritis, to name a few.
In a recent article New York Times reporter Christina Caron writes: “Seniors are one of the fastest-growing populations of cannabis users in the United States. While some older adults have used pot for decades, studies suggest that others are turning to the drug for the first time to help them sleep better, dampen pain or treat anxiety — especially when prescription drugs, which often come with unwanted side effects, don’t work as intended.”
Caron interviewed Nancy Herring, a 76-year-old woman whose husband was suffering with Parkinson’s Disease and dementia. As the illnesses progressed he began to suffer sleepless nights and soon Nancy wasn’t sleeping either. But none of the pills doctors prescribed worked and he had one really bad reaction and ended up in the emergency room.
But they had a cannabis dispensary near their house so they decided to try indica strain gummies and flower.
“It wasn’t long before after one gummy and a hit on a pipe he began to sleep.” Nancy told Caron. “It was huge.”
The intense demonization of the cannabis plant goes back 70 years has been funded mainly by the tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceutical industries who are losing significant market share as people give up their cigarettes and Budweisers for products derived from the cannabis plant. Because it’s a plant, it can’t be trademarked so the big cannabis operators have been desperately trying to find a synthetic form of THC so they can make cannabis products in a factory. Then they can be trademarked. You can’t trademark a plant.
Cannabis is still listed as a Class 1 narcotic like heroin and methamphetamine so scientists and doctors have a hard time getting cannabis samples and permission to do the research. But despite all this, the word is spreading anyway about the tremendous healing properties of cannabis.
Dr. Aaron Greenstein, a geriatric psychiatrist in Denver, told Caron the story about his own grandmother who had dementia and began reliving the Holocaust in her dreams. He said he was able to get her some dissolvable strips with THC. The Holocaust dreams ended and she slept much better.
“People are just desperate,” Greenstein added. “They are willing to try anything.”