As someone who has suffered with chronic nausea for much of my life, I know how absolutely miserable it can make your existence. While I can often work through back pain or a headache, and still be productive, it’s pretty much impossible for me to get anything done when I feel like I’m going to projectile vomit all over the person standing next to me.
For a number of years I dealt with debilitating nausea nearly every waking hour of every day. I would awake feeling sick to my stomach; the thought of having to eat breakfast making me gag. On good days I would be able to eat a little something at lunch, only to have that stomach churning feeling return just moments later.
This continued unabated for what felt like an eternity. Of course I had all the regular medical examinations done, and the not-so-regular too. I saw specialists and healers, doctors and psychics, hypnotherapists and more, but nobody could determine the source of my ailment.
During this time I lost nearly 50 pounds from my normally hefty frame, reducing me to a very pale and sickly looking individual who gave my friends and family great cause for concern. My doctor tried progressively more potent medications, but absolutely nothing worked, and the side effects were often nearly as bad as the unrelenting nausea. At one point he prescribed a very powerful pill (and expensive – at more than $30 a dose) that he emphatically stated was the ‘silver bullet’ for stopping nausea and vomiting in chemotherapy patients. If that didn’t work, he said, nothing would.
It didn’t work.
As you might imagine, things were beginning to look a little bleak.
One morning, after a completely sleepless night spent doubled over on the couch, I staggered into one of my house-calls looking a hellish mess. My client looked at me and asked, in a very concerned tone, “are you okay buddy”? I admitted that I was not, and as I guided him through his physiotherapy exercises I explained my situation. We finished up and before I left he asked me to wait a moment while he stepped out of the room.
He came back holding a small ziplock bag with four small cannabis buds in it. Handing it to me he grinned and said “this is Green Crack” (terrible name, I know, but what do you expect when marijuana cultivation has remained almost exclusively in the hands of organized crime and drug dealers for the better part of a century). “It’s not as scary as it sounds” he assured me, obviously reading the trepidation on my face. “A couple puffs of that and you’ll be ready to eat, trust me. Just take it slow, it’s strong shit!” With a name like Green Crack, I thought, that goes without saying.
Green Dragon From Lucky 13 Seed Company: A Heavy-Hitting Indica Cross Between Green Crack and Herijuana
On my way home from work that night, I stopped at a gas station and picked up a pack of zig-zag rolling papers. Feeling particularly sheepish, I purchased a few other items that I didn’t need just so I wouldn’t look like a ‘stoner’. The remainder of the drive home was steeped in deep thought over the consequences that may befall me as a result of what I was setting out to do. Visions of reefer madness danced in my head. Surely this was the beginning of the end for me. I was about to open pandoras box and begin my trek into hopeless addiction, crime, and pathological laziness. The paranoia had begun before I had even taken my first toke; the irony of which was completely lost on me in my irrational state. I began to lose my nerve.
Half way home, my stomach forced me to pull over to the side of the highway, a fresh tidal wave of nausea washing over me and draining the remaining color from my face. “Fuck it!” I cursed in frustration, striking the steering wheel with the butt of my fist. I can’t live like this anymore. Debauchery be damned, anything is better than suffering like this.
That night, with my stomach doing it’s usual somersaults, I finally decided it was time. I waited until my wife had gone to bed; unsure what her reaction to this would be, and fumbled my way through constructing the most busted-ass joint ever rolled. I quietly crept out the front door and sat on the steps in complete darkness. My wife and I both being non-smokers, the only flame source available in the house was a box of extra-long barbecue matches. I soon realized that any hope I had of keeping this operation clandestine was all for nought. As I struck the foot long match my face lit up like the fourth of July against the blackness of the night. Any neighbours casting a glance in my direction that evening would have had a perfectly lit view of my mug in all it’s depraved glory.
I took two very small and cautious puffs, recalling my client’s warning, and waited. Nothing happened. I checked my watch obsessively for the next 10 minutes, not exactly sure what to expect and when to expect it. I was just about to take another toke when I started to feel my eyelids getting heavy. Then my stomach gurgled, drawing my attention back to the reason I was sitting on the cold steps in the first place, and I realized that my discomfort had begun to abate. I was far from feeling good, but definitely not as bad as I had been. Not wanting to overdo it, I checked to make sure my joint was extinguished and stashed it behind a rock before heading back in the house.
The effects were becoming more pronounced now, and I made may way to the couch to lie down in front of the TV and let the weed do it’s work. I felt a little dizzy, and I had a feeling of pressure around my head, almost as if I was wearing a baseball cap that was too tight. Closing my eyes seemed to intensity this effect, so I directed my attention to the TV for the next little while and these sensations soon passed. I became engrossed in a particularly engaging Discovery Channel program and completely lost track of time. When the program ended I suddenly realized that I hadn’t thought of my stomach in close to an hour. In fact, the discomfort was entirely gone! Not only that, but I was actually hungry!
I made my way to the kitchen for a light snack, smiling from ear to ear while I assembled a particularly delicious turkey sandwich. Before heading off to bed for the most restful sleep I’d had in months, I recall thinking that this could all just be in my head, the power of suggestion – placebo effect. I am happy to report that it was not, and I now look back at that night as the defining moment on the road to reclaiming my health.
-Professor Sprout
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