215
I worked construction for 42 years, starting at age 18. I started carrying hod, which means I carried bricks and block and mortar up ladders to masons who were paid by the brick, and who would take be out back and beat the crap out of me if I didn’t serve them fast enough. I dug ditches and hunkered in eight-foot dirt trenches dodging the tungsten teeth of an excavator bucket. I swung a hammer for eight years until my shoulders wouldn’t take it and I started driving tracks and big rubber on construction and logging sites. I had my femur busted when a conveyor collapsed and pinned me to cold concrete for twenty-five minutes while they cut me out with a torch. I rolled a skidder on a side hill pulling five tons of logs and got two ribs through my left lung when a stump poked through the roll cage. They rushed me 40 miles to the hospital laying in the back of a pickup; I was coughing blood and spitting it into a metal lunch bucket. I’ve had countless sprains and bruises; probably broke fingers and toes, don’t know because things like that a guy just didn’t go to the doctor for.
Now, I hurt.
Most of the pills and crap they shove at me for my bone and spine pain rot my liver and kill my stomach; one of them killed a friend of mine with a heart attack.
Like most construction workers, I’ve been smoking weed for pleasure for years. Now, I smoke it for pain. It doesn’t exactly kill the pain like opiates do. It doesn’t numb me out like rye. It reduces the hurt, makes it just part of the world.
The other day my wife picked up my medical files and we went to a local pot clinic. She got tired of having Harvey, and old friend of mine, come by the house to the tune of $400.00 a month for an ounce of weed. We went to the local pot clinic, which wasn’t run by hippies after all, but by people who look just like the folks at the dentist office. They looked at my records, asked me some questions, warned me that smoking pot is bad for my lungs and told me not to drive or use equipment, and gave me a letter which lets me legally use pot.
I had no idea what a difference it would make. For one thing, my wife now has a nice row of plants going. She’s read up on it on the internet and is growing me some nice train wreck weed. I’ll know what’s on it, how it was cleaned and dried, and it wasn’t grown by a speed freak, and that’s nice.
The other thing is how different I feel. I had no idea I gave a shit what the government thought about my puffing weed. I’ve smoked with my street crew at busy intersections at the end of the day, while we put tools away; no one wanted to say anything to us over it. Helped bring the crew down from the meth most of them do during the day.
But, some how, it is different. I guess I’m basically a law abiding guy; I’ll do what I think I need to, but I’d rather follow the law. Now, when I soak my bones in a hot bath and light my pipe, I feel more, normal, I guess.
If you are using weed for pain, I suggest you do what I did and get one of those letters under Prop 215. I’m my own boss, so I don’t have to worry about drug testing which is a big thing for the younger guys now. If you can swing it, though, do it, you’ll be surprised how nice it is not to be a criminal.
