When I Was Addicted to Fentanyl, Cannabis Saved My Life

This story is based on an interview with the editors of The Doe.

When I was prescribed fentanyl patches for my chronic pain, I didn't think anything bad would happen. I had this false sense of, I can be strong enough, smart enough to not get hooked. My dad was a heroin addict—I was not going to end up like him.

Honestly, I thought, Fantastic. This is going to give me my life back. And it really did help. It was great. Until it wasn't. 

I was 32. I was raising my two kids who were 12 and nine. And I was in nearly constant pain. I was born with Ehlers Danlos syndrome, a connective tissue disorder. Your ligaments and tendons don't hold your joints together properly, which means chronic joint pain and muscle pain. I was working fulltime caring for people with severe developmental disabilities, transferring heavy people from wheelchairs to beds. There were people with violent behaviors, and you could get injured just ducking and dodging. I would often get partial hip dislocations at work.

To manage the pain, I was using a lot of cannabis, which was illegal in Florida, where I lived. I eventually got arrested for smoking in my car. I was put on probation, which involved drug testing, so I couldn’t use cannabis anymore. That’s what led me to a pain management doctor in the first place.

Here's the thing about these doctors: I didn't feel like I was in a doctor's office. There was not a discussion of what my pain was like or ways to mitigate pain without the medication. In “pill mills” like this, the waiting rooms are full of people who look like they're in varying levels of distress. Some people look like they're in withdrawal, very fidgety, sweaty. It had an uncomfortable feel—a little sketchy and shady.

I started wearing the fentanyl patches, and it was really helping with my pain. I had more energy. I felt a sense of wellbeing from the medicine. But one day, my pharmacy was out of the patches, and I experienced my first withdrawal. It was absolutely horrific. Chills. Sweating. Air and clothes hurt my skin. I constantly felt like I had to pee. I had diarrhea. I was nauseous. No energy. Light hurt my eyes. That was when I realized that my body was addicted. Eventually, I was getting the urge to put on a patch early. The patch is supposed to last for three days, but after only two, the pain would come back worse than before.

I get so angry thinking about the fact that cannabis is illegal while opioids are widely available.

On that last day, I was doing whatever I could to get through the day: taking lots of Tylenol and ibuprofen, drinking tons of coffee. But I was still in so much pain. I became less and less available to my kids. I wasn't going to tell them that Mommy's detoxing; instead I would say, “I’m just not feeling good today. Tomorrow will be a better day.”

The breaking point was about a year after I’d been on the patches. My pharmacy was having supply problems, and I was in bed for an entire weekend. I just went from the bed to the bathtub, because being in hot water was the only thing that brought any relief. I said to myself: I can't do this anymore.

My pain doctor prescribed me methadone. That was such a mental hit for me: I felt like I had become those junkies I had judged before. I started tapering off very slowly, shaving a little bit off of the pills each week. During this time, I started to think about moving to a state where it was legal to take cannabis. My brother was in Washington, and he knew all about my pain. He said, “You'll love it here. And there's legal cannabis.”

I started going back and forth from Washington to Florida, flying back every time I needed to pick up my methadone prescription. When I got my very last one, I moved my family to Washington permanently. I survived that slow, slow tapering by having a joint in my mouth all day long. It was the only thing that took the edge off the pain. 

I found a doctor who would prescribe cannabis. I brought this thick stack of medical records and the doctor glanced at it, checked off a few things, and gave me the paperwork to get my card. It was so brief, so nothing. It was a joke. I'm not mad at it because I think cannabis should be available to everybody, but nothing about the process felt medical or like health care. The doctor was sort of knowledgeable about pain and inflammation, but he didn’t give me a regimen or anything. I was kind of disappointed. I wish we had holistic health care in this country, where doctors could counsel effectively on using cannabis.

I get so angry thinking about the fact that cannabis is illegal while opioids are widely available. I think about how it was in Florida, where my doctor was handing me fentanyl like it was nothing and the cops were throwing me in a cage for a plant. That's insane to me. Of course it’s individual, but opioids should never be prescribed for chronic pain. They just shouldn't.

I know my addiction wasn't a failure on my part—it was a process of physiology—but there’s still shame. I hardly ever talk about it. My experience made me have more empathy for addicted people. Even my father, who’s a hard person to have empathy for. Ask anyone: He’s an abuser and manipulative. But I do believe I inherited the connective tissue disorder from him. And he was probably treating physical pain by doing heroin.

More people should know that cannabis can help with opioid addiction. There's probably a lot of resistance to the idea of getting off of one drug and using another. Don't get me wrong: Cannabis is a drug. But it's not the same class of drugs as opioids. It does not erase the perception of pain like opiates do. You do have to shift to accepting a certain level of pain. It doesn’t produce the same type of euphoria. Opiates make you feel like nothing is wrong and everything is great. You can solve every problem. So I understand why people lose their lives to this stuff.

I’ve figured out what works for me. I vaporize full-spectrum oil, once per hour, all day long. Getting the right dose can be a very delicate dance of enough THC where you're getting some pain relief, but not so much that you are cognitively impaired. I also had to learn meditation and breathing techniques. I started exercising. I started therapy. I implemented everything I possibly could to try to live with this pain without being shackled to a drug that almost ruined my life. Without cannabis, I would not be functioning. I wouldn't be a wife, mother, a friend. It’s not dramatic to say that it saved my life.