Replies: 18

Rosena Posts: 515 Registered: 6/8/09 Re: MY DAUGHTER THINKS POTS THE ANSWER Posted: Sep 17, 2009 11:11 AM   Reply Wow...that's news to me that smoking helps asthma! I have been given the reason ....it rejuvenates the brain cells! They will say anything in order to get high! How can her smoking assist with asthma in anyway? I have heard of patients...usually terminal that are given THC pills ...and don't have to smoke! But this is severe cases involving servere pain! Using it for asthma is one of the worst I think I have heard!

waterdance Posts: 624 Registered: 6/10/09 Re: MY DAUGHTER THINKS POTS THE ANSWER Posted: Sep 17, 2009 11:40 AM   Reply Hi lily1, Of course it would be wonderful if your daughter decided on really becoming healthy and quit everything and ate right.....But that doesn't look like that's in the cards right now. She's replacing one bad habit with another. I don't know if it would do any good but find out about the dangers of pot and print them up for her to read. I had a son-in-law who smoked pot like people smoke cigarettes for almost 30 years.....he died last December..age 54. Had cancer throughout his body. Never drank...never smoked cigarettes...was on cocaine for about 11 years. I'll have to say this..If my son told me he had given up meth and only smoked pot I would have been jumping for joy.(he died in 2005 from meth induced stroke..age 48) I do feel pot should be made legal and should have been legal years ago. I don't agree that pot is a gateway drug. I know hundreds of people that only smoke pot. Good luck, Deb

kiah Posts: 168 Registered: 8/18/09 Re: MY DAUGHTER THINKS POTS THE ANSWER Posted: Sep 17, 2009 1:17 PM   Reply Pot, or medical marijuana, should be used for many medical conditions. It can allow people who have different illnesses to avoid a whole slew of prescription drugs in exchange for just the pot. I agree, it should be legal. It should be used wisely though. I feel it is much less harmful that alchohol. It has its place in several different instances. It is no where near the class with Meth or Heroin.

ckj4me Posts: 27 Registered: 6/11/09 Re: MY DAUGHTER THINKS POTS THE ANSWER Posted: Sep 23, 2009 12:08 AM   Reply I use to feel the same way about marijuana - but my son is presently sitting in a mental hospital and has been diagnosed with schizophrenia last week. Evidently, MANY studies point to pot as triggering this additional condition if there is a predisposition for it (most of us don't know we have it)- not just mimicking it like so many other drugs do. Evidently marijuana affects all parts of the brain - many other (harder) drugs attack the center part. I remember learning this a year ago at a family week - I had no idea it would be back to haunt me. I have been told by three different doctors that my "best hope" was that he was just a drug addict. Can you believe that? I feel we have been given worse than a death sentence.

waterdance Posts: 624 Registered: 6/10/09 Re: MY DAUGHTER THINKS POTS THE ANSWER Posted: Sep 23, 2009 5:53 PM   Reply Hello ckj4me, I don't know why but somehow what you wrote doesn't make sense....what the doctor said. I have a half-brother who is schizophrenia and has been since his late teens, early twenties How old is your son? If your son is schizophrenia it can come about without any drugs what-so-ever. Also many on meth mimic paranoid schizophrenia. Having a child who is schizophrenia is heart-breaking and so is having a child on drugs. My brother does not drink nor take drugs...thank goodness. He does smoke cigarettes and drink coffee all day and into the night. He is now 66 years old. I have taken care of him partly while mama was alive and now full time for the past 12 years. It's no picnic but I'm proud that he's not on the street and my mom and I stepped up to the plate and did the right thing. What this doctor told you doesn't make sense. Maybe your son is bi-polar. Maybe he's fine. Drugs can make you act pretty screwy for awhile.The truth: still little is known about long term use of marjuana. You need to do some research on your own and get other opinions. Take care, Deb

ckj4me Posts: 27 Registered: 6/11/09 Re: MY DAUGHTER THINKS POTS THE ANSWER Posted: Sep 24, 2009 6:52 PM   Reply I understand what you are saying, but the research that I have read supports the doctors' information and so does NAMI. Very sad. I am so glad your brother is doing so well. He is so fortunate to have you! God bless~

Ann Posts: 646 Registered: 6/6/09 Re: MY DAUGHTER THINKS POTS THE ANSWER Posted: Sep 26, 2009 8:32 AM   Reply Deb, are you taking care of your brother at home? Wow, you've been through it all. You must be made of steel! I think when you get to heaven, your crown will be so heavy that you'll have trouble keeping it on :o) Love, Ann

waterdance Posts: 624 Registered: 6/10/09 Re: MY DAUGHTER THINKS POTS THE ANSWER Posted: Sep 26, 2009 5:05 PM   Reply Hi Ann, Thanks for the kind words. A few people have said I was a saint. But that's not right. My brother drives me crazy and I yell about all kinds of things: leaving a heater on in the middle of the summer, leaving the freezer door open, burning stuff on the stove, using bleach in his bath water, walking through the house with a lit cigarette, making noise in the middle of the night. There's much more. But just lately I've said less about anything. Want to keep my blood pressure down and besides the yelling doesn't do a bit of good. Living with him is something like having a teenager around all the time. He has a genius IQ and thinks he owns 3 casino's. He also thinks he was in the service in the Viet Nam War and thinks the government owes him lots of money. He tells me he was in charge of everything. "I was in charge of air, land and sea Deb" He's always writing to the government. There's lots more. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Being told of his illness was a big blow for me. We live in a small town. Most people here don't understand the illness. People here don't understand me either. I'm a fish out of water. Love, Deb

kiah Posts: 168 Registered: 8/18/09 Re: MY DAUGHTER THINKS POTS THE ANSWER Posted: Sep 17, 2009 1:18 PM   Reply Medical MArijuana is sometimes given in a form that the patient can eat.

ginamac Posts: 143 Registered: 6/28/09 Re: MY DAUGHTER THINKS POTS THE ANSWER Posted: Sep 23, 2009 7:09 PM   Reply I have a friend whose mother has bone cancer, lung cancer, she is 90 lbs and stopped all treatments, has less than a year to live the doc says, she cannot eat anything except after she smokes pot, then she can have an appetite and for some reason the food stays down. go figure. I'm on the fence about this issue, my son used to use pills and alcohol and pot, lately its just pot. Thankfully no more alcohol. Like Deb said, if it was "just" pot and not anything harder I think I might be OK with it if he's not selling it just using a little bit. Who knows whats right or wrong. Not me.

waterdance Posts: 624 Registered: 6/10/09 Re: MY DAUGHTER THINKS POTS THE ANSWER Posted: Sep 23, 2009 8:23 PM   Reply Hello, The woman that has bone cancer and is dying should be allowed to have any thing she wants. Pot does increase your appetite. Pot should be made legal. Should have happened years ago and not made so many people criminals. I have never known anyone wanting to fight on pot. There is a health problem with pot. There's a serious health problem with cigarettes. Over 400,000 die every year from cigarette related illnesses. I have a brother dying from cigarette smoking and what a terrible death it is. Take care, Deb

motto Posts: 10 Registered: 11/9/10 Re: MY DAUGHTER THINKS POTS THE ANSWER Posted: Nov 9, 2010 11:50 AM   Reply This forum is about sharing our stories. So this is mine -- and it's why I don't think pot should be legal. My son got addicted to weed at age 16. It was dramatic. He became nasty, except when he was high. He stole from everyone to buy it. He dealt at school. His enire life revolved around it. He had trouble at school - he had a 1.5 GPA, and got suspended for showing up at a school event high as a kite. When we grounded him, he paid a stranger to pick him up in the middle of the night and drive him to a dealer's house. Another night he walked 45 minutes through 6 inches on snow at 3:00am to a store that was open all night so he could steal benadryl and robitussin to trip on, because he had no weed and was desperate to get high. He wound up in the ER, and nearly died. He only did that once, thank God. But his first love was weed, and he used it almost exclusively. He began to have psychotic thoughts. He thought I could read his mind, so he hid in his closet. He wrote on his walls. He thought he was the only real human, and all the rest of us were robots. Very scary. He finally was arrested for burglary, and again for illegally using someone's credit card (he needed weed money). It was jail or rehab. He chose rehab where he stayed for 60 days. In rehab, the counselors said they see kids with stories like this all the time. I heard the same thing from his doctor, his probation officer and the judge. It's a very typical story, almost TEXTBOOK: addiction, bad grades, suspension, dealing, stealing, getting arrested, mental issues. All of this from weed. WHY IS THIS SUCH A SECRET IN THIS COUNTRY? How does the story end? He came to see he was addicted. We did too. (We all believed "you can't get addicted to weed".) His psychotic thoughts gradually went away as his brain recovered. He turned his life around. He continues to see a therapist. He is now a freshman in college studying to be a drug counselor. If not for rehab and recovery, he would be TOTALLY lost to weed. All that misery from a so-called "medicinal" drug. I know most people can use it and not get addicted. But my son did. The counselors said that weed is second only to alcohol as a reason for rehab admissions. Over 60% of kids in rehab are addicted to weed. It happens everyday. Legalizing weed might mean more kids will try it. It might mean more dabblers will get addicted. Who knows? One thing is certain though, legalizing it tells kids that it's pretty harmless, and that is a dangerous message. In fact, just hearing us debate legalization gives them that message. P.S. My son once wrote a 15-page single-spaced paper to try to convince me that weed is harmelss and should be legal, and that I should leave him alone and let him smoke. He is now grateful I didn't leave him alone. He is strongly opposed to legalization. He is wise beyond his years at the tender age of 18.

mixnroll Posts: 59 Registered: 5/23/10 Re: MY DAUGHTER THINKS POTS THE ANSWER Posted: Nov 10, 2010 12:02 AM   Reply Motto - Our story is very very similar. My son is currently in rehab and I hope it turns out as well for him as it did your son. It also came down to jail or rehab. His drug of choice is definitely weed...and when we first started talking about rehab he said they will laugh at me there because all I do is smoke weed. Well the rehab told me different, most of the young people that come in, come in for pot! Now as it turns out my son was also doing a bunch of other stuff such as the painkillers. He also liked yours used robitussen and once benedryl, which landed him in the ER with psychotic symptoms. When people say pot is not a gateway drug what do they mean? I agree not everyone who smokes pot goes on to harder drugs, but most people on harder drugs started with pot. In principal I tend to think pot should be legal and always did until my son had drug problems. The problem I think is if pot is legal, more kids will use it and more kids will become addicts. Not all of course. There are plenty of casual once in a while pot smokers out there, but for some kids it becomes a serious problem like your son and my son.

motto Posts: 10 Registered: 11/9/10 Re: MY DAUGHTER THINKS POTS THE ANSWER Posted: Nov 12, 2010 10:03 AM   Reply I truly hope your son gets better! I'm praying for him, and you. Don't ever lose hope. My home was like a war zone, and my son was totally in the grip of addiction. Things were very, very dark. Your son is right - there will be some people who scoff at his addiction to weed. My son hears this often. Tell him to be prepared. My son no longer argues about whether it's addictive or not, he just tells them his own experience and agrees that it's not like that for everyone. This has earned him a lot of respect among peers. And, it's a more powerful warning to other kids. Recovery support is weak for kids like ours. Not only do some people doubt that marijuana's addictive, but it seems like everyone is talking about legalizing it. Lots of TV shows and movies regularly chuckle about weed - Family Guy, SNL, Conan, Tosh.0, American Dad, The Hangover, Hot Tub Time Machine, etc, etc. To make matters worse, my son feels out of place in AA because he never used alcohol, and feels out of place in NA because some of them consider him a "lightweight" since he never used narcotics. Even some NA members think you can't get addicted to weed. All of this together makes it really tough for marijuana addicts. Nevetheless, recovery is possible. I admire my son for his 13 months (!) of sobriety in this unsupportive environment. Good luck to you and your son

fightingformyboy Posts: 13 Registered: 10/11/10 Re: MY DAUGHTER THINKS POTS THE ANSWER Posted: Nov 10, 2010 8:53 PM   Reply I HATE marijuana. It hurts families. I believe your daughter is justifying her behavior. I have a daughter with exercise induced asthma and she uses an albuterol inhaler. See if your daughter will go to a doctor and get diagnosed and treated with real asthma medicine if she needs it.

fightingformyboy Posts: 13 Registered: 10/11/10 Re: MY DAUGHTER THINKS POTS THE ANSWER Posted: Nov 11, 2010 10:35 AM   Reply Sorry for my really dumb response. Its just that I have heard excuses too, and I like to challenge the validity of them. Of course your daughter isn't going to go to a doctor because the truth is that she has found an excuse to tell herself that allows her to feel okay about using. She is trying to deceive herself and somehow she hopes that you will fall for it too. As much as I want to believe in my child I cannot live a life of self-deception along with them. My prayers are with you.

motto Posts: 10 Registered: 11/9/10 Re: MY DAUGHTER THINKS POTS THE ANSWER Posted: Nov 12, 2010 9:24 AM   Reply Your response isn't dumb. This young woman's disease is doing the talking for her - helping her to justify her drug use, make excuses and try to convince others it's okay. She doesn't want real asthma meds because they can't get her high. It's tragic. I'm praying for her, and her family.

Lori Posts: 28 Registered: 9/29/10 Re: MY DAUGHTER THINKS POTS THE ANSWER Posted: Nov 11, 2010 2:57 PM   Reply no simple answers here. If my son could smoke pot at bedtime, and get off of Seroquel (for insomnia) and never take opiates again (his drug of choice) I would be ecstatic, but my son can't control his impulses so it would never work. He cannot regulate his intake of ANYTHING (even food) and has many obsessive-compulsive behaviors. If he had pot he would smoke it all until it was gone and then look for more. Pot can be harmless for some people, and even helpful for some people, but for addicts it's a different story, it can be a gateway for worse drugs and rob a person of all ambition or motivation from chronic use. It's also very expensive. And of course it shows up on drug tests so anyone in a rehab program, in the system, etc cannot take it.