Fear of Flying

I thought about writing this as an open letter to Barack Obama, but then I thought, "Why would my voice be any more compelling than the thousands of people who voted on the town hall questions the other day?" As the President said, “I don’t know what this says about the online audience.” Though it pains me, I have to take him at his word and presume he honestly has no idea, even though the laughter in that clip suggests otherwise.

Instead of letting him insult me again, I thought I'd tell you, in the hopes that you might understand. This particular member of "the online audience" has a condition called CVS, or cyclical vomiting syndrome. That's what the question about legalizing marijuana said to me. Every so often (and thankfully, not since August!) I just throw up every twenty minutes for about 12 hours. I also have horrible burning sensations in my stomach that make me moan and thrash around.

This is apparently kind of a rare condition. It took years to get any diagnosis and I seem to have a minor case: some people can have episodes lasting several days, and some people have much more frequent ones than I do, so believe me when I say that I'm not trolling for sympathy. Still, when I'm sick, I tend to get dehydrated, so we'll often go to the hospital so I can get an IV. They usually give me a combination of Phenergan for the nausea (which was developed for morning sickness) and morphine for the pain.

That combination is not nearly as effective as smoking a bowl. You might think that in California, my solution should be pretty straightforward: medical marijuana is legal here, and it's relatively simple to find a doctor to write you a prescription. But the fact is, marijuana is still illegal at the Federal level, and the Federal authorities have continued to raid dispensaries, even after Obama took office. His belittling answer does nothing to address this reality. If you take advantage of California's program, you are essentially admitting that you're breaking federal laws and risking arrest.



I don't find that funny at all. I don't like the fact that when I'm sick, I get drugs that make me hallucinate. I don't like the fact that I get heroine's little sister instead of a drug that works and isn't terrifying. If I could ask the President again face to face, do you think he'd find it funny that I have get so high when I go to the hospital? These legal drugs scare the crap out of me. There's a reason I prefer this particular chemical, which I don't even have to swallow. In the past, when my episodes were more frequent, they even prescribed Phenergan to take at home and I don't have to swallow that either. It's not better.

Do you think he'd be amused by the fact that I'm terrified of going out of state to visit my family, because the stress of traveling has prompted episodes in the past?

I'm not going to get into any of the more objective reasons for decriminalizing or legalizing pot... I only know why it's important to me. Mythology is not medicine, and it isn't justice either. These laws force me to risk arrest, to consume harder drugs, and to pay for them through an insurance plan that often makes them cost several times what they should. All this, instead of letting me grow my own medication in my garden.

While I know we're still years away from that reality, and I don't expect the President to step in and magically fix everything, did he have to laugh so hard?