Cannabis as an Alternative to Pharmaceuticals - by Emily Earlenbaugh, PhD(@emilyearlenbaugh). - #KushSmokers / Powered By Steem

As someone with many chronic health problems, I’ve always needed help from medication to manage my painful symptoms. For a long time, I was on a variety of prescription medications to manage pain, anxiety, nausea, insomnia, and digestive problems. People often ask me why I switched from using traditional pharmaceutical medications to using cannabis as my primary medicine. So, I thought I would share some reason why I made this change, and why you might consider making the change yourself.

Before I go too far into the reasons for replacing pharmaceuticals with cannabis, let me caveat the conversation. Cannabis is an amazing and incredibly versatile medicine, and patients report it helping with all kinds of problems. This is in part because cannabis helps with pain, inflammation, and immune responses, three problems present in so many conditions. Still, cannabis is not a cure-all and it can’t just replace everything. I still use a few pharmaceutical products for things like allergies, which cannabis doesn’t help me with. And there are plenty of medications which can’t be replaced by cannabis. Be sure to talk to a doctor before stopping any current medications and never stop a medication suddenly as this comes with it’s own dangers. Still, many commonly used medications CAN be replaced with cannabis, and probably should.

The most obvious reason to use cannabis is it’s safety. The research shows that cannabis is incredibly safe when compared to the alternatives. Many conventional medications can be severely addictive, dangerous and cause long term damage to your health.

The most common use of cannabis is as a pain-reliever; so I will focus on that for this piece. One study found 97% of patients using cannabis were using it for chronic pain. And a recent study by the National Academy of Sciences reported that there is substantial or even conclusive evidence that cannabis is an effective treatment for chronic pain. Since the majority of medical marijuana patients use it for pain management - it can be helpful to compare with the alternative pain-relievers available.

The Opiate Death Toll

Let’s start by looking at opiates - a controversial but commonly used painkiller. Many people use opiates for chronic pain. This might be pain from an injury, chronic headaches, arthritis or really any type of pain that interferes enough with your life that your doctor is willing to write the prescription. While pain management is crucial for these patients, going on opiates is a dangerous choice. Opiates are incredibly addictive, and long term use comes with a host of health problems - including ironically - increased pain.

The opiate epidemic is real. Over 33,000 people die each year from opiates and the rates are only increasing each year. Well.. actually… opiate related deaths did go down in some areas over the last few years- those states that legalized medical cannabis.

That’s right. In states that allow medical cannabis laws, deaths from opiate overdoses have gone down by 25%! With a safe alternative to opiates, patients needed to rely on them less. Cannabis as a great alternative. It not only replaces opiates in terms of pain relief, it can also help with the challenging process of withdrawing off of opiates.

Animal studies suggest that using cannabis can actually decrease one’s desire for opiates. One study showed that adolescent mice exposed to thc showed less addictive behaviors towards opiates. Human studies also show that cannabis use can ease the withdrawal process and increase success rates for quitting.

Over-the-Counter Pain Killers

You may be thinking - OK - but I don’t use opiates, so I have nothing to worry about. Some people only need pain relief occasionally from an over-the-counter medication like aspirin. Well - these painkillers are dangerous as well.

Aspirin and other NSAID painkillers are incredibly common. These are medications that most people use on a regular basis for mild pain. It doesn’t require any special prescription and we even have versions of the drug marketed to children. It is in most medicine cabinets - and people use it for all kinds of normal aches and pains. A headache here, a pulled muscle there. Most people have taken these on more occasions than they can count and have it standing by, in case of pain. Others take it on a daily basis for some kind of chronic pain, or heart disease preventative.

But every year, thousands of people die from taking too much aspirin. You can easily overdose from these medications if you take too much at once. But even if you don’t overdose - over time, NSAIDS can lead to long term risks. Estimates have deaths from NSAID’s at over 15,000 a year, and hospitalization for complications caused by NSAIDS (like GI bleeding or liver damage) are in the 100,000 range.

Cannabis as an Alternative in 2017

On the other hand we have medical marijuana - which despite being branded as a schedule 1 substance - has no recorded fatalities. Cannabis has a long history with human-kind. It has been used by human populations for at least the last 12,000 years. From very early on in our history, we used the cannabis plant for food, rope and textiles. Then around 5,000 ago we also started to use it medicinally, as well. So we have a very long history of consuming cannabis.

People have been using cannabis all this time, but there have been no recorded fatalities from taking cannabis in our entire 12,000 year history with the plant. Because there is no known toxicity for cannabis, patients can increase their intake with their needs and not have to worry about overdosing.

It is also a substance that is not chemically addictive, so while people can become habitually attached to the habit of using cannabis, they won’t go through the intense and dangerous withdrawal process associated with addictive pain pills like opiates.

While cannabis is still a Schedule 1 Drug, making it difficult to study the benefits of cannabis, funding for studies aimed at discovering harms from cannabis has been readily available and many studies have been done on the topic. Still, researchers havn’t been unable to come up with much. While we are still investigating potential risks - and it is possible there are some - what we have found pales in comparison to the death toll associated with other painkillers. And there are many other uses for cannabis.

I have personally replaced benzos, antidepressants, sleeping pills, and all medications for my nausea and digestive problems with cannabis. Cannabis not only replaced these medications for me, they work much better - and don’t give me the same negative side effects. What negative side effects I got from cannabis, I was able to eliminate by honing in on the best cannabis options for me. And it’s great that I now use just one medication - cannabis- instead of mixing all these different medications.

If you think cannabis might be a good fit for you and want to get started shifting to a healthier medicine, be sure to talk a cannabis specializing doctor. A doctor can look over your current medication list and let you know which of your medications are safe to swap out with cannabis, and what cannabis options might be especially helpful when you do. Pain management is just one area where cannabis is a viable replacement for prescription options, but it illustrates why many are making the change to this safe alternative.

-Dr. Emily Earlenbaugh

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