The Plant Over the Pills

After the accident, the answer to pain was always the same: another script. More tablets, stronger tablets, tablets to manage the side effects of the other tablets. For a lot of people that’s the right road and it works, and I’m not here to tell anyone to throw their medication in the bin. But for me, given where I’d been, that road frightened me more than the pain did.

So I’ll be straight about what actually gave me a workable life back: cannabis. Not as a party, not as an escape — as the one thing that takes the edge off the pain without the fog, the dependence, and the slow erasure of myself that the pills brought. For me, it’s been the best thing. I’m not going to pretend otherwise just because it’s awkward to say out loud.

Let’s deal with the obvious objection

Yeah — I know. A former addict telling you a drug fixed him. I’ve turned that over harder than any sceptic ever will, because I had the most to lose by getting it wrong.

Here’s the distinction, as honestly as I can put it. The drugs that nearly took everything from me took more the more I used — they always wanted the next thing, and the next, until there was nothing left. What I do now doesn’t have that hook in me. It manages something real — pain that’s measurable and permanent — rather than manufacturing a hole and then selling me the filling. I stay clear-eyed about it, I don’t kid myself, and I keep an honest eye on whether it’s serving my life or running it. That distinction is the whole ballgame, and I don’t take it lightly.

And here’s the bit that still gets me. The whole time, the answer the doctors kept reaching for was more pharma — Panadeine Forte, Tramadol, oxycodone, Lyrica, Norspan, an antidepressant for good measure. Half of them I couldn’t even tolerate; my own medical file lists the ones that didn’t agree with me. And the heavy hitters were opioids — the exact family of thing a hospital put me on for six months and then cut me loose from, the thing that started my whole descent in the first place. So when I say no to the pills and yes to the plant, understand that it isn’t recklessness. It’s the most clear-eyed decision I make. I’ve seen exactly where that other road goes, because I’ve already walked it once.

I’m not naive about cannabis. It isn’t harmless, it isn’t right for everyone, and for some people — especially some histories — it’s genuinely a bad idea. I’m not waving it around as a miracle. I’m telling you what’s true for one bloke who’s used it most of his life — since I was sixteen or seventeen — and knows the difference, from the inside, between a thing that helps and a thing that takes.

What changed for me

The pills managed my pain by managing me — flattening everything, the bad and the good, until I was a slower, foggier, more hollow version of myself who happened to hurt slightly less. The trade was my clarity for a dulled-down ache.

What I use now does the opposite. It quiets the pain enough to function while leaving me here — able to think, work, be present, write this. The difference between “less pain and less me” and “less pain and still me” is the difference between surviving a day and actually living it.

More than the pain

There’s another piece to this I’ve only understood with time. I think I’ve had ADHD since I was a kid — undiagnosed, back when nobody was looking for it. My brain runs hot and fast and always has, and for most of my life that felt like a fault I had to white-knuckle my way through. A hundred thoughts crashing into each other, none of them holding still long enough to finish.

Cannabis slows it to a workable speed. It’s the difference between that crash and being able to hold one thought long enough to do something with it. Looking back, I suspect that’s part of why I started so young — sixteen, seventeen — quieting a noise I didn’t have a name for yet.

Now, I have to be careful here, so read this twice: that is my own read on my own head, not a diagnosis, and absolutely not me telling anyone cannabis is a treatment for ADHD. It isn’t an established one. If your brain feels like mine, the move is to get assessed properly by someone who knows what they’re looking at. I’m just being honest about what it’s done for mine.

Why I’ll say it plainly

There’s a lot of stigma in this, and stigma thrives on silence. People manage serious pain with this every day and feel they have to whisper about it, like they’re getting away with something, when often they’ve simply found what works after years of being handed things that didn’t.

I’m not telling you what to do. I genuinely mean that — your body, your history, your laws, your call, and a real conversation with a professional who knows your situation. This isn’t a how-to and it isn’t advice. It’s just me refusing to be quiet about the thing that helped, in a place that’s supposed to be about honesty.

The pharmaceutical road is the right one for many people. It just wasn’t for me. And after everything, being able to manage my pain and stay myself — that’s not a small thing. That’s most of a life handed back.