Trapped in a flesh vessel.

I suffer from a disease called Systemic Lupus. This causes me to suffer through unmitigated pain due to full-body joint pain and large mouth and esophageal ulcers. This condition also causes me to experience near constant nausea, and having this nausea combined with mouth and esophageal ulcers equates to an immense discouragement to eat any sort of food. I am 5"7, and I weigh 100 pounds.

The current method of dealing with this is to pump my body full of various opiates, in hopes of relieving the pain in my joints, mouth, and esophagus. Over the past year of this, I’ve developed an powerful tolerance to hydrocodone and oxycodone. So, not only are these opiates damaging my liver terribly, they do almost nothing and exacerbate my nausea so horribly that on an average day, I eat one single small meal. On worse days, I eat nothing.

I live in Michigan, a state that has legalized the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes. Marijuana has been proven to effectively relieve nausea, joint pain, and ulcertive pain, as well as stimulate appetite. To medicate, a person can use the traditional method of smoking the cannabis, they may choose to vaporize the cannabis (A method of heating the marijuana to the point of releasing the active ingredients without burning, resulting in a scentless, carcinogen-free, easy to inhale vapor), or even medicate by eating a specially made baked good or just sucking on a THC losange or candy.

This medication appears to be a godsend. Not only would it effectively relieve my joint pain, ulcertive pain, and nausea, it would even stimulate my appetite and encourage eating more food daily. However, I am seventeen years old. To use medical cannabis, I need permission from a parent or guardian. Both of my parents are conservative, and are adamantly against this solution.

My parents, the people who love me the most in this world, see their son wasting away, and are willing to fill him with ineffective, addictive opiates because the government and society says that’s okay. But the non-addictive miracle med is a terrible idea. Why? Because society says so.

Mark my words, if I’m still alive in five months, on my eighteenth birthday, I am immediately going register to use medicinal cannabis.

Nobody is going to stand in my way from escaping this daily, somatic hell.