Show Me the Facts

In this section of the site, I will be creating a nice, organized list of symptoms/ilnesses/diseases/conditions that have been researched in conjunction with the use of medical marijuana.

Let me say first of all that no one at Show Me the Facts is a doctor has any type of medical education or knowledge which would give us the authority to recommend any treatments for any conditions. As always, we are simply here to provide data with references for information purposes only. We do not condone the use of marijuana for anyone for any reason; we are only a resource. Consult your doctor or physician with any medical questions you may have.

Second, while I am spending much of my time organizing, citing, an annotating various resources, I take no credit for the vast amount of work it must have taken to compile much of the list. The original creator is known as Granny Storm Crow and, in her own words, here is the reasoning behind why she took so much time to compile the list which inspired this resource:

“If the truth won’t do, then something is wrong!“

Those were the furious words of my grandfather to my Mother. I had walked in from joyfully stuffing my face with red raspberries in the garden, straight into “war zone”! My gentle grandfather in a fury, his hand raised! Mom was just beginning to shrink back away from him. They saw me and quickly sent me away. But it was too late, the scene and the words were seared into my 5-year-old brain. That was over 55 years ago, but I still remember it clearly. My grandfather was a minister, one very short step away from God in my 5 year old mind. It was one of those life changing moments. It is still rare for me to tell a lie. I never found out what my Mother’s lie was.

As I child, I suffered a traumatic head injury. Another child tried to murder me with a hammer. I was left with frequent migraines. At 19, like many rebellious teens, I tried cannabis. It took about a year for me to make the connection between using cannabis and the absence of my normally frequent migraines. I have used cannabis ever since.

I am an avid reader. While perusing an old book on herbal medicine, I read how the little old ladies of Mexico made and used a cannabis/tequila rub on their arthritic hands. Then I met Joey, an epileptic musician. He told me another interesting fact- when he had pot he could cut his medication in half! On a camping trip years later, I smelled an unmistakable odor. Following my nose, I was totally shocked to find a grandmotherly lady in her 70s puffing away on a delicate oriental pipe. “Parkinson’s. And the pot’s way cheaper than the pills!” Her nephew kept her well supplied, she said. We had a nice chat about various medical uses of cannabis.

Epilepsy, Parkinson’s, arthritis, and my migraines! What else was it good for? Yet every news article on cannabis that I saw, claimed one new horror after another. Men grew breasts and were impotent. Women became sterile or miscarried. It made you crazy and murderous. Made you lazy and do nothing. It caused cancer and heart attacks…What I had learned on my own and from others and what I was being told in the press were so different!

What was the truth? I began researching. I printed the first studies up and kept them in a notebook, just as a personal reference. The notebook quickly filled. I started a Word file of the URLs and on July 30 2007, I posted it. It continues to grow.

Admin note: I’m going to start converting the list as of March 14th, 2009. I will make a blog post when it is complete. It could very well take me several weeks to get it all organized and converted.