[ "S" sent me his story of living with the chronic pain caused by his condition. He wishes to remain anonymous, and his identity is known only to myself - Stuart]

"Depriving people in pain of analgesia is torture"

I haven two chronic pain conditions, affecting the urinary and musculo-skeletal systems. Because of these, I have been unable to work for a decade.

I haven two chronic pain conditions, affecting the
urinary and musculo-skeletal systems. Because of
these, I have been unable to work for a decade.
However, I have constantly worked hard on regaining my
former good health: exercising every day and taking
care over diet and rest. Most days, I manage to play a
little music on a number of different instruments,
which is absolutely vital for maintaining good humour!
It is thirty- five years since I first smoked dope as
a teenager. It is twenty- five years since I gave up
smoking tobacco. Last year I took the next logical
step, and gave up smoking altogether. Because I cannot
drink alcohol at all, and have also stopped using
coffee, I find that the only drug habit I maintain is
the only illegal one I have ever had, cannabis.
I eat a small quantity of cooked weed every day. I
really mean "small" I find that less is definitely
more! I am not interested in getting high! The little
flapjack I take in the mornings allows me to turn taps
without screeching with pain, it lets me sit in
comfort for half an hour, it gives me back a bit of my
former facility on the fretboard of a guitar.
Since I changed my pattern of use from smoking to
ingestion, I find my illnesses ameliorating in the
medium term as well. My feet are less sore, so I have
applied to reduce the levels of my Incapacity Benefits
payments. My pelvic pain attacks are shorter and less
intense. And best of all, my right hand is no longer
as bright red as a cherry tomato, but now a salmon
pink.

I visit three consultants three or four times
annually. All of these know about my self- medication,
and two have expressed support for it.
It seems to me that the Law is hypocritical and
malign. I cannot endorse a position which permits the
preventable early deaths of 40,000 people annually
from the killer drug alcohol- and allows the media to
promote drinking, day in day out- whist persecuting
people who use cannabis. Weed has been used as a
medicine for 4,000 years, long prior to the inferior
aspirin. There are many of us who need it for pain
relief now. Depriving people in pain of analgesia is torture.