How Medical Marijuana Can Help Treat Opioid Addiction

So there is a ton of controversy surrounding marijuana and its medical uses. Research steadily shows, that cannabis has many medical applications for human beings. The most common things people think of is using it for are symptom relief from debilitating illness, to curing daily anxiety problems transforming people's lives.

Most of the medical research is being done in states where marijuana is legal like Colorado, California, Washington, and others. Leading scientists agree that the medical applications for cannabis are just being discovered and many more ailments will become curable using it.

There is an emerging demographic in Florida that has discovered how medical marijuana can help treat opioid addiction, on many levels.

Since early 2008 Florida has been ravaged by opioids, known as the pill mill state, we experienced the devastating effects that opiates can have on individuals, families and entire cities within our borders.

Relaxed laws and crooked doctors looking to make a buck, systematically changed the fabric of our state and the residents who live here.

If you don't already know America is facing the worst opioid epidemic we have ever seen, with more addicts dying every day then ever before. There are hot spots within the country that really feel its impact the most some of which include: Florida, Georgia, Boston and many more.

Floridian's were hit especially hard because of the accepted practice of over-prescribing these opioids like Roxicet, Oxi-Cotton, Oxi Codon, Dilaudid and others, to patients that simply offered up an MRI. The MRI business just became an extension of the black market and you could at one point in time find a mobile MRI truck on every corner in big cities, statewide!

So what ended up happening is hundreds of patients flooded the doctors in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Tampa, Jacksonville and got high doses and huge amounts of pills prescribed. This began the opioid crisis in the Sunshine State.

After a few months, the patients getting up to 300 Oxi Cotton pills would become addicted and would begin needing higher doses, to maintain their hi.

These people also experienced very bad withdrawal symptoms, making opioids one of the worst drugs for long-term pain management.

Withdraws from these medications is what brings the crisis to its breaking point because there were so many people addicted, that the supply, even though in the millions, began to run out.

Drug dealers began to take notice and would prey on addicts, offering them "sponsorship" meaning they would fund the large bill for the medication, since the typical prescription for 300 pills would be in the thousands and then they would feed the addicted people just enough to take their scripts and sell them on the black market.

The price for Opiates in Florida skyrocketed over the next couple years as demand spiked and supply got to lower the people who were getting dope sick, from withdrawal would simply start using heroin.

As Florida lawmakers began to take notice around 2010 and cracked down on pill mills and the doctors writing scripts to unqualified patients, the heroin began flowing even stronger. Florida police inadvertently caused the worst heroin epidemic that we've ever seen.

Now people were getting arrested daily and the over-dose rate of heroin users sky-rocketed. People who use heroin typical shoot up and this is simply deadly. The addicts that were created from this entire process is staggering and now we are left with a nasty heroin trade, full of drug dealers, and addicts suffering with no way out.

One of these addicts spoke with us about how he is using medical marijuana to treat the lasting effects of opioid addiction.

CBD Oil is known to help opiod addicts get through withdrawls and stay off hardcore drugs, by giving them a well balanced endo cannabinoid system, which is responsible for many bodily functions.

Jacob Hansen from West Palm Beach Florida is 42 years old and was another tragic victim of the opioid crisis in Florida. Having lost everything he owns and ended up homeless due to his insatiable lust for Oxi and eventually heroin. Being a professional his entire life only to get prescribed opiates after a car accident in 2011. After a few months and a nasty addiction, he began buying additional pills off the street just to get through until his monthly appointments at his pain doctor, who only prescribed 30 pills at a time.

After finding out about the pill mills he would start down a slippery slope of opioid addiction that would lead to total disaster for himself and his family around him. This disaster is ruining entire families not just the person addcited.

After 5 years, 2 Million dollars, 3 jail stays on various charges and a complete meltdown, Jacob found rehab, which also has become a huge industry here. 120 days later and heroin-free Jacob was on the verge of relapse because of chronic anxiety and PTSD from years of addiction. Knowing that opioids would ruin his life again a friend mentioned medical marijuana, to take away the symptoms making him want to use.

Some people think this is a scary proposition because any drugs may take a clean addict back into the underworld, however for some there simply isn't an option.

For Jacob, it worked and 4 years later in 2018 he is still opioid-free and gives a lot of hard work, a good treatment plan and medical marijuana for giving him his life back.

The marijuana calms my nerves and allows me to center myself. Without that effect, I am constantly on edge and white knuckling my sobriety, many say that since I still smoke pot that my addiction lives. But no one knows better than me how opioids destroy everything and for me, marijuana is the way I stay off the heroin and pills!

If you aren't able to stay clean and you keep relapsing, give medical marijuana a try. Get a state certified cannabis doctor who can work a specific treatment plan for your needs.

Staying clean is the number one priority and if medical marijuana can take away my urge to use opioids, then more power to it. No one can take away my life now and I feel that I owe a lot of my success to cannabis.

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