I am no medical expert but the way I always viewed cannabis and pain is a little different. In my experience, weed doesn't kill pain is the same way an opioid would. That is, it doesn't greatly lessen the sensation of pain (though I would argue that it does to some smaller degree). However, it does seem to change the way in which I experience pain. It seems to make it less bothersome and I find that I am able to more easily ignore the pain which allows me to function more normally despite the pain that I am suffering.
That being the case (as I see it anyway), statements like the one from Dr. Ware can be seen as not incorrect but highly misleading. Cannabis is not particularly effective if you are asking to it to be morphine (no drug is exactly like another) but that misses the point. Cannabis has beneficial effects for those who suffer from pain but those effects are different than the ones this individual is comparing them to.
Ideally, if someone has just lost a leg or something, I think they should have access to both traditional pain killers to reduce the pain, and cannabis to make the remaining pain more tolerable. Or so I think, anyway.
I think in the long term cannabis can help pain. But yes your right, its more of a disassociate vs a pain killer. Opiates work great, almost to great. You have to keep taking them over and over to get the desired effect.
Haha that is the problem with them.
I had two knee surgeries because I had injured it playing football (the first time) and again while I was fighting (sport fighting not street fighting). The first time, I was able to smoke and the second time I was not (for employment reasons). I noticed that I needed far less Vicodin the first time (despite the surgery being more invasive) and I credit weed for that for the reasons I pointed out. To me, that ability to reduce the need to consume opioids is one of its most valuable uses for cannabis.
As far as the quote goes. I think that type of thing is intentionally deceptive framing to provide an inaccurate picture of what is going on. They will say weed isn't as effective as morphine or whatever at reducing pain but that ignores the value it has in stopping people from needing or needing as much morphine. I think that would go a long way toward keeping people from having addiction issues in the first place.
Yeah great point @artisticsreech . My initial experience was that it took the edge off and allowed me to function. V.S. being in a stupor and wanting to sleep. I was trying to allude to that with the statement "...Also, what is the end goal? Elimination of pain or pain management?"
But you expanded on that the standpoint it's not incorrect but highly misleading is an important distinction.
Gonna have to mull that over a bit . It really strikes to the truth of the matter.
With a high enough concentration, you can knock yourself out pretty well. That's pain management. Whatever gets your through the first couple of days of experiencing acute pain I think sounds like it's effective in managing the pain. Which is better using a non-addictive substance or a highly addictive substance to let you sleep during that terrible time? I would vote for the non-addictive substance.
Thank you. I would suspect that there is often a motive behind that kind of misleading statement but even people without any agenda can get caught up trying to compare one drug to another and that is not always the most productive way to look at things. If they are in the same class of drugs it is probably okay. No one would argue if someone said psilocybin and DMT are similar because they are both tryptamines but we can't really compare them to opioids and cannabinoids. That makes us think we can determine which one is better but the real question is which one is better at what we are asking it to do. If I want some deep introspective thought I am not going to pop some pills to get that and if I just got shot or something I really don't to go to town on a big bag of mushrooms.