by Tab Moura
It’s time we unpack my cannabis origins… I did not have a positive relationship with cannabis until 2016. In fact, I was anti-cannabis until life put me in my place.
My husband broke a bone in his back, a few bones in his hand, and bruised his hip when he fell from his motorcycle. Thankfully he was wearing his gear, otherwise we know he would have fractured his skull and additional bones in his back. His helmet, coat and backpack were trashed. We followed his care instructions, but ultimately his pain was so severe that his prescription couldn’t keep up, and with a history of addiction in his family, we didn’t want to experiment with more pills. I was unable to lift him myself, and he was having trouble getting around, so he stayed with his parents for a few days while I focused on our girls. While there, my brother in law gave him some cannabis, and within a few moments my husband was feeling relief. It was so little… and yet, it was everything.
Before, while I was still watching him writhe in pain, it made me wonder. If the prescription isn’t working, and if addiction is such a slippery slope… then what else can people do? Even if something OTC, like Ibuprofen, could help with that degree of injury, it’s not like it goes without affecting you in other ways. In big and small ways, he has dealt with lingering pain from that accident for almost 5 years… if we had relied on pills, I already know what his trajectory would have looked like. I told myself that I would rather we ‘play-chicken’ with cannabis, than with pills.
In that time, our family has grown from 4, to 5. He’s daddy to three sweet mini-hims; our youngest is 3. I was terrified to go down this road, because I believed what they said about weed… being toxic. How it makes people’s brains shrink= makes people dumber. I grew up where cannabis was this big, ugly topic that we never spoke of, and I didn’t want my children exposed to it. Little did I know that cannabis would answer many, many questions that I would have over the course of the next few years.
I prayed about it. I researched it. I took classes. I met with growers and processors. I spoke with people who know and respect the cannabis plant. I dove in, because I knew this was very serious for us. I wanted to know if there were any skeletons in the canna-closet… but the truth is, all I found were Stoners hot-boxing. So I joined them.