I got medical cannabis.

Yesterday I had my first order of medical cannabis (and apparatus to use it with) delivered.

It all came through Royal Mail, and other than signing for the medication itself it was no more complex than getting anything else delivered to my home. I received the medication in a typical prescription bag which was then packaged in a cardboard box.

I ordered 5 different strains as I wasn’t sure what was going to work for me. They’re all low in THC as I have very little experience using cannabis and so I have not built up tolerance, unlike many people who self medicate through black market cannabis before turning to legal medicine access.

I decided to just go through them in order of expiration dates, and this was first. I set up my dry herb vaporiser, which was thankfully much easier than I’d anticipated, put some of the cannabis into my newly purchased grinder, then put it in the aroma tube of my arizer. All of that was simple. I was not expecting the issue to be getting the aroma tube into the device itself.

The instructions mentioned that preheating the device might make inserting the aroma tube easier, but I found that to be a lie. It was not easy. And seeing as the aroma tubes are glass and will be in my mouth, I didn’t want to go full hulk mode on it. I tried everything short of whacking it, and decided it must have just been meant to be like that.

The device is very quick to heat up, I was expecting to wait longer than a few seconds. I attempted to use the device to medicate for a few minutes but didn’t feel I was getting anything through it, and realised the aroma tube was actually meant to go in further. So I let the device cool down and tried again- some specific angle of wiggling must have done something because it finally slid in until I could feel the glass connect with the bottom of the channel.

I tried again.

Once again, I am not an experienced cannabis user. What I am, however, is a smoker. I’m very used to the feeling of smoke in my lungs. I do vape nicotine more than I smoke it nowadays because I physically can’t get outside a lot of the time so it’s more convenient. But the only times I’ve used cannabis previously I’ve smoked it, and so when I got no feeling in my lungs I just assumed the device wasn’t hot enough, or I wasn’t inhaling for long enough, or I was making some other silly mistake.

This lead to me using far more than I should have, and I got pretty stoned. Luckily it wasn’t a bad experience, in fact I was happier than I’ve been for a very long time, but it wasn’t what I was planning. I laid in bed cuddling my dog and having extremely vivid memories of my childhood dog- lovely. But I’ve learned my lesson- I shouldn’t be puffing non stop for a full 15min session. I am a cannabis baby.

Before bed last night I tried again, but this time I paced myself, took my time, and used an appropriate amount. I slept for nearly seven hours. I haven’t slept for that long in a year. It was delightful. My pain decreased by a lot, enough that it wasn’t at the front of my mind whilst trying to fall asleep. And my brain was so quiet and slow that falling asleep didn’t feel like a betrayal.

When I woke up this morning all of my symptoms had returned, but I was expecting that. I kept my vaporiser next to my bed for this exact reason. I medicated around half an hour after I first woke up, and within an hour my joint stiffness and pain had lessened to the point that I could get myself to the bathroom. This is a big deal for me, as the stiffness and pain in the morning is far more intense than I could ever describe and one of my biggest gripes is that I always, always, wake up needing a wee but unable to go for hours.

I would say the effects are currently lasting around 4-5 hours. I’m excluding yesterday’s slip up in that calculation- that was a whoopsie.

Right now it’s been around 3 hours since I last medicated and the pain is definitely returning quickly. My thoughts are still definitely filtered at the moment, however, so it’s good for me to know that for me personally the mental effects last longer than the physical ones.

I’m sure I’ll make many more mistakes, and I’m sure I have a million more things to learn, but as of right now I’m considering the first attempt a success. Any amount of time- even if it were minutes, not hours- without the agony I’ve been enduring daily would be a success.