Medical Marijuana for Fibromyalgia Pain?

I rather take umbrage with this dr's "description". It's medical statements like this IMHO that make it seem as if marijuana has no use whatsoever save getting high if ppl need to be "cautioned" they won't achieve nirvana from it!

Fibromyalgia is a notoriously difficult condition to treat simply because of the vast disparity in fatigue & pain levels that it causes. It's bad enough many ppl still call it a "wastebasket diagnosis" & think it's an excuse for "laziness" despite FDA approval of Lyrica & Cymbalta for its treatment, acknowledging at long last that this is indeed a disease.

Even a subtle implication that use of marijuana in any form to treat this indicates an expectation of "euphoria" damages the credibility of FMS as a "real" condition & the medical uses of marijuana as a whole. When is the medical community going to truly acknowledge that herbals have been around a lot longer than the FDA & that in many cases they're more useful than pills, w/o this type of attitude?

This irks me because I recently had to cease taking Cymbalta because of its dangerous side effect of raising my blood pressure & I feel as if I've been hit by the proverbial truck w/o it. Apparently it's better to raise it naturally & gradually by being in untreated pain than by not being in pain. Lyrica's side effects seem to include profound stupidity LOL so I can't have that, either. Anything else has to be gotten at from a roundabout to get insurance coverage b/c nothing else has been "approved". Some ppl have success w/ Elavil or Prozac, but alas, those make you gain weight & cause the drs to frown at you like you're off dummying up to a trough in your spare time. I spit on your obesity epidemic.

FYI a big red glaring neon sign of FMS, if you think you may have it, is to get approval for a sleep study. Without exception, FMS sufferers do not achieve delta stage sleep. This is the stage after REM where one gets the restorative sleep one needs to awaken refreshed & the reason why FMS is often confused or linked w/ chronic fatigue syndrome. It also seems to be the sole thing that impresses drs sufficiently to agree that FMS is present & it's not "all in your head".

FMS is viewed as a menopausal female condition (hence the "all in your head" dismissal) & I consider myself fortunate that I was sent for the sleep study & had that dr make the diagnosis of why I was so tired all the time. For some reason specialists have more cred w/ PCPs than patients. Go figure LOL I'd barely heard of it b4 I was told I had it. I do understand why so much research goes into fatal conditions....no one wants to die, after all....but it would be nice if an equivalent amt of time & money could be devoted to medical conditions like FMS b/c quality of life is also important. It's no fun dragging around in a painful stupor, either.

FDA needs to get on the stick & stop denying Americans medictions that are common in other countries, making it a priority to have such proven & effective drugs "approved", as well as develop & publicize others. I'd never heard of Cesamet until I saw this article. Marinol is used to stimulate appetite in cancer patients (o those wicked munchies), as I know a friend took it during his treatment. There's this idea that if marijuana can be synsthesized enough to take the "high" out of it, then it becomes "acceptable"....but if it works, does it matter one way or the other if one cops a little buzz from it? Stoners drive like little old ladies LOL compared to drunks, & we're naive if we think ppl aren't behind the wheel on much stronger meds like morphine or methadone, 2 commonly used narcotics for chronic pain treatment, or a whole range of pysch meds. And is one really that motivated to move out the door under the influence of marijuana, anyway?

There's this common misconception, even among the medical community, that "addiction" & "chemical dependency" is the same thing. One can be chemically dependent upon an anti-seizure drug & need to taper off it in the exact same way one would taper off a narcotic. What they don't get is that pain eats the high. A day or 2 of adjustment to a narcotic for pain treatment & that little buzz is gone. You break your leg, you're going to be swooning on a bottle of Percocet or its ilks b/c it's new & it's temp. If one is in chronic pain, esp from more than one source as is usual, that doesn't happen.

That's why it's called pain management, not pain eradication; the introduction of pain meds will make the body's pain receptors attempt to seek & destroy the greatest site of pain it has. But once that occurs, if there's more than one site, the 2nd biggest one then ramps it up & screams for attn & its fair share. No one in chronic, non-terminal pain is ever going to be pain-free b/c if one were given enough drugs to quiet down everything, one would start experiencing major organ system failures one after the other. The best that can be done is to try to make one as functional & comfortable as possible, & that doesn't always happen due to all the federal restrictions on pain management in addition to individual drug tolerances.

Wouldn't the feds rather have ppl feeling well enough to go back to work & save them those SSD/SSI payments etc? They're fooling themselves if they don't realize the #1 reason ppl throw in the towel & apply for disability is uncontrollable chronic pain & fatigue, though they rarely consider it as a reason for approving benefits b/c pain & fatigue is so subjective, esp where FMS is concerned. They don't get the difference btwn "fatigue" & "tired", either.

Ironically we must randomly pee in a cup to continue getting relief, & what are the feds looking for? Marijuana, of course; nothing else stays in one's system longer than a few days & since the "random" peeing occurs at a regular pain management appt, anyone w/ half a brain & an ounce of self-control who has access to other drugs can pass it otherwise. Yet marijuana has been proven effective in treatment of chronic pain....it's a Catch-22 IMHO.