I come from a world where we smoked weed when we had it, we broke it out, and we shared it. Sure, some people hoarded their stash and would pocket the roaches; we all knew that type - the lighter-jacker who forgot to give it back due to the rushing mind THC gives us, or at least did back in the day. I'll never forget Stan the Man Stankler, a total stoner and very giving type, hell Stan would hand you his lighter and say, "Steal it, everyone else does," then laugh.
He gave me the very first joint I ever smoked; I was out riding my dirt bike with friends and not yet nine years old. With Team Yamaha on my jersey, I stood proud next to an older dirt bike racer - Stankler - I always felt like the big kid on the block as he was 14. An advanced kid, several years ahead in school, I knew that Pot was bad for us according to the government, but that's not what my Mom's hippie friends said; they were down with marching against the bourgeois, government control, and suppression of the people.
Stankler turned me onto the doobage at a young age, but I didn't enter full-blown Stonerhood until I hit my teens, around 14. Now, that's when I had to have a pinner every morning; I'd use my lunch money and get 2 for a dollar, ya - I'm that old.
It was up to two-dollar joints when I left high school and saw College at 16. Inflation hit the dank bud market hard, and eventually, we saw the price of a dime bag equate to only one gram. That shook a lot of us; we were used to 4 fingers for a dime - we'd weigh our weed by how far up the bag it went!! A dime is ten bucks for the younger generation - if you haven't figured that out yet.
I started making a ton of money young, so it didn't matter how much it cost - I'd buy ounces at a time from Eddie Lepp, who eventually became known as OG Eddie Lepp. Back in the day, Lepp and Dennis Peron, the famed Prop 215 author, lived in Lake County, and I went to Clear Lake High School in Lakeport, California, for 2 years of my long-lasting career; I absorbed all four pretty fast! Who says stoners can't be smart?
So let's jump ahead again, as that was the 80s; by the time legalization came, I still hadn't figured out that I needed to ingest something, and I was no longer making a ton of money. I'd been in a horrific racing wreck that left me paralyzed on one side and with severe epilepsy. The pain was part of every day; life was in shambles, and everything fell apart. Then, I got Cancer for the first time.
I didn't know about the RSO gig because it didn't exist. At that time, Rick Simpson was treating his skin cancer and also trying to get his doctor to accept what he was doing. I was unaware of all of that as my role in life was as a Civil Rights lobbyist and Non-Attorney Representative who traveled the countryside pro bono fighting restraint, seclusion, and abuse in special education. I smoked a lot of weed, but I never could figure out how to do much more than feel better after a seizure with it.
Nobody talked of turning it into what looks like Gear oil; if they had, I would have said no - as an independent, I was still somewhat conservative, and cannabis oil looked like Tar Heroin to me at first - I didn't like it even when I got it in 2013 to help me stop taking a bunch of medicines I no longer needed.
That catapulted me into the world of compassion - by force - I started giving away CBD and other oils, including THC Cannabis oils. As a lobbyist, it wasn't too brilliant of me to post a bunch of photos of weed on my Facebook Timeline; after all, we're in government-controlled America. Or wait, maybe it's just what I needed as the stress of working those cases for 2 decades had me thematized; I'd seize so often.
Eventually, I got sick and ended up using 'RSO' like so many others did, following the message of the many social media memes that say 60 grams in 90 days wasn't in the cards back at that time as I was running a massive compassion program giving it away all over the USA.
I'd put a gram of oil in my coffee every morning, regardless of what state I was in, both physically and mentally. Sometimes, it would be more; I had so many sticks of oil on me that I'd use whatever I needed to keep my train on the tracks to get back on Amtrak and to the next destination. I was in pain a lot of time and used Oxy, Fentanyl, and other harsh drugs - with bone metastasis; it was needed as a metastasis fractured my collarbone.
I sit here typing today without any grams of RSO in my coffee, and with more than a half dozen locations in my leg, I walk all over on fractured from not a metastasis but the start of bone cancer that couldn't survive due to the environment I put that beast in. I starved it, kicked it when it was down, and hunted that ugly thing until I could smother it with nature in so many different ways - armed with supplements of over 50 different plants, there was no chance of survival.
Yet, I needed counseling for six months to accept a small dose of the lowest level medicine they have, Norco, only at night so I'll sleep in this battle that's already ended with the R-word, Remission. Now, while my oncologist and I both give credit to an excellent diet that my lady created for me and the countless ways of lifestyle change that occurred from cutting out meat to dairy and eventually turning into a near Vegan that eats fish - as being key in my survival.
But, the point of this drawn-out editorial isn't that I found other ways of giving myself a break during breaks of my bones; it's all about how much oil I was ingesting daily. It got crazy, it got wild, it got totally out of hand. I never thought it was a problem until I needed THC for other issues. I felt it was pretty cool I could smoke a couple of joints back to back; people would put a whole gram down for me to dab and then applaud as I did it as I traveled around.
Ahhh, what an extraordinary life, one would think. From fighting to walk again nearly 30 years ago to fighting that beast many of us call 'The Big C' for two decades, it's been something worthy of a book or five, But what was one of the most intense factors in all of it was how I handled the overwhelming tolerance to THC that I had grown, now back then thankfully nobody was talking of Tolerance Breaks so I had no unnecessary debates - that would have never flown - to starve myself out.
But, I did eventually starve out from those opioids, and at the time I did that, THC needed to work for me, but due to the fact I had just ended years of battle on the war fields of life with the oils of blackened gold, I was up to a whopping 3 grams a day, and there was just no way. I couldn't replace what I needed to stop the agony of life's traumas and dramas with THC oils; I was stuck due to those three years of use of oils.
Wow, what do I do? That was all I could think.
How could I find a way to feel high? That was my number one goal because I was quitting some of these harsh drugs. Then I decided all the pain stuff had to go as I wasn't using that crap for anything that hurt other than my feelings, my sad heart, all the old memories I wouldn't let go of, and so much more that made me think I needed to rely on something like I always did with Weed.
I've done interviews about how I created ECS Balance Control, but that seems like an ad instead of what I feel like on the inside when I think about that dark period in my life. Nothing worked, and here I was, this kingpin in the world of Cannabis, so it seemed - in my own mind, anyway. I'd wander into my office, often scrawling out a still incomplete book called 'My Opioid Exit' in between battle cries from the bathroom.
Three grams a day is what I figured out my prior dose of RSO was. I had to absorb that too - why oh why does anyone need 3,000 milligrams of a cannabis oil so loaded with THC? When we smoke a joint, we're only getting a few hundred to the head.
"You only need 150-200mg a day," Dr. Allen Frankel shared with me years before the UCLA Professor of Medicine gone Cannabis passed away. He had a treatment center in Southern California and primarily worked with patients he could track through inhalers. "Nobody needs a gram a day for 60, 90, or even 120 days, but most need a small amount all the time." I'll never forget the debate after he stated this to me.
As I tried to get myself back on track without THC during the months after I quit the chaos of Purdue-pushed pills and patches, it was other cannabinoids that became the star of the show. Things I swore that could never work - worked. It was like a miracle to watch me, and many thought that I'd go back to the pain drugs from the pharmacy as I was so broken up from a lot of wrecks and more throughout life.
I would look back to Dr. Frankel's works and words and to the famed Dr. Uma, who wrote "Cannabis the Exit Drug" about 15 years ago. She's busy nowadays seeing patients and leading the Cannabis Science world in the US with research and symposiums or other educational appearances. It was Dr. Uma who inspired me to 'Just Say No' to the pharmacist and the Rx Pad when it came to drugs my body didn't need, but my mind thought they did.
The bottom line is that 3 grams of RSO is unnecessary to use daily, and anyone even using 1/3rd of it must consider supplementing it. I don't advocate for the use of THC oils in place of integrative care on any issue - I am a firm believer in labs, images, and even doctor visits, even if we don't like what they say or disagree. If I didn't have a roadmap of where to go and visit, which is given to me via testing, I wouldn't be able to act like my own Department of Defense and 'take out' the enemy as I do.
Three Grams a Day, I never questioned it, and neither did anyone else around me - but they did question my use of doctor-prescribed medications to the point of shaming me over it. I do not believe anyone should be made to feel that way over the need to stop pain or their decision on how to survive; it's wrong; we need to support people.
How did I get back on track? Did I starve myself out in a Tolerance break - No. Did I use some magical wand or potion? Well, I wish that had been available. Instead, I slowly figured out ways to make smaller amounts of oils work, as anything over 1/4 gram made me ill for months.
I found happiness in cannabinoids that I didn't like before; my stoner ways had to change. My message of using FECO (RSO) or facing the gravestone was buried under its own, saying, "Rest not in peace - you were wrong'.
When we're sick and lethargic, our Endocannabinoid System is in a state of dysfunction known as severe downregulation; feeding it THC causes further CNS depression, which is a regulator for other systems of our body - so it's not always our friend, but we use more, more, and more based on what others say - regardless of our IQ.
I want people to open their minds and keep their wallets closed as they read this. It's my heart opening up; it's me sharing how I felt inside, which wasn't that great. After becoming an established researcher at the American Academy of Cannabinoid Medicine, what I learned about downregulated endocannabinoid systems wasn't good - and that's an understatement.
I learned about how our bodies need both upregulation and downregulation to gain a 'balance' - but this wasn't in a study or a textbook - I had to figure it out, and It didn't come to fruition as a Theory until I got stuck in that rut unable to find solace in my oils due to the amount I had used in the past - there's no way to get around the word 'abuse'.
What a harsh word to place upon myself, fighting the tragedies of this world, but I can't bypass it. Just like I abused opioids,
I abused the privilege bestowed upon me by Mother Earth - she gave me her best of plants with the strongest of oil, and I ate upon them like a never-ending feast - almost like Exxon with oils - but the only difference is I didn't have any massive spills, and stayed away from the ocean so no fish or wildlife died because of my habits - but my Endocannabinoid system suffered crucial blows to it with receptor availability gone - I couldn't feel THC because there was no place to land.
I turned my favorite cannabinoid into a runaway plane with no airstrip to land on - it had no receptor sites, so I couldn't feel it as my body headed towards wreck after wreck; what a lesson to learn.
Three grams a day, when I look back on that, I often ask, "How did I get there"? But it's hard to come to an answer as I was in such an Opioid Blur; I had the supply, so it was simple to use, but the average person would have been sick from even half that much.
What I had to learn was harsh; I lived a stoner life.
Bragging about how much THC I used seemed like a cool thing, but when it came to fighting for my life, it had to be the stupidest possible area to find pride in - overuse of THC oils leads to massive downregulations that cause the very issues I fought.
Wow, huh?
-Mike Robinson, Global Cannabis Educator and Creator of ECS Balance Control, The Researcher OG
