Wilco, the Florida Keys, and the CBD Miracle
William J Mullen
April 19, 2016: en route to Siesta Key, Florida
“There’s an airline plane that flies to heaven everyday”
– Wilco “Airline to heaven”
My wife and I sat drinking beers at 11 A.M. Watching planes taking off at Bradley International Airport, Hartford, CT. People arriving, departing – the general buzz of an airport.
It was time to let the last few days, weeks, months erode in our minds. Dissolve via air flight. It was time to forget the daily crap, the trappings, stupefying bullshit, and seek out the white sands once again. Yes, one more escapade to the sun and sea of the west Florida Keys.
As I walked down the gangplank boarding the plane, it hit me – my usual relaxant, a small piece of French toast made with a large slab of the “green butter”. The plane was narrow and crowded. I recoiled a bit as I stood in the doorway to the cabin.
I turned to the stewardess when she said, “How are you sir?”
My reply in turn was “Hi.”
We boarded a small craft, a Delta CRJ-200 9S seating about 50ish people. We flew over the old shade tobacco fields of Connecticut – long rows of long, red tobacco barns. From the air it was a dichotomy of city and fields, water and highway.
Water and highway turned into water and woods. The great Eastern Woods. Upper New York state, Pennsylvania. We live in the great woods too, high in the hills of New Hampshire at just below 2000 feet. But now we were 35,000 feet above all that flying ‘cross the sky speeding to the Motor City, our layover, Detroit.
Passing over the Great Lakes and their Bahamian-like blue water leaves me thinking about the end of this day . . . the destination . . . Siesta Key, Florida, and sunset over the Gulf of Mexico.
Looking down, we see both shores – the USA and Canada. It looks the same from up here, but my mind is lost in the differences. Political, social, ethical – like different realities. Separate sides of a very large glacial puddle. Many fortunes were made out there . . . on Erie . . . running Prohibition whiskey. Must have been something – running moonshine by night from the north shore to the south.
The prohibitionist “hard on alcohol” tactics – disruption, seizure, imprisonment – that ushered in those terrible years of liquor prohibition. The years of gangs, shootings, fear. Those teetotalist tactics didn’t accomplish shit then, and we’ve been doing the same thing since 1972, when Nixon proclaimed a war on drugs. That type of thinking – the social model that gave us “The War on Drugs”, with all it’s permutations – has also empowered substantial criminal networks, some with a GDP the size of a small third world country. Has broken homes . . . and heads . . . has alienated the youth for a full generation now. We’ve been lied to, we’ve been cheated and profited from like whores for all those dark market dollars. Yes we’ve been duped. The phony war on drugs. Just a guise, a ruse, and a failure for truth.
We’re winning, they said.
Near to 45 years now, none of it has worked. None.
Yes, these big lakes are a sight to behold from 35,000 feet.
“Everyone is a burning sun”
– Wilco “Jesus inc.”
April 21, 2016 Crescent Beach Florida
It felt like the sun had gone out. First for me, then for Kathy.
We were heading into our 25th year of marriage though we were 46 and 44 respectively. I had been battling Lyme disease for a long, long time. In the last year it had taken an uglier turn.
Days I could barely walk, was a struggle just to put on clothes and shoes. I had to hold onto stair railings as I was so weak in my legs I feared falling. I could not work or live normally.
Kathy, nine months ago had damaged the disks and some nerves in her back. She was in a lot of pain. A lot.
She took prescribed painkillers, nerve blockers, nerve tonics, and vast amounts of ibuprofen daily. She took directed cortisone shots into her spine. Nothing helped. Nothing.
She dragged herself through work days and through long nights working toward her doctorate. She was in agony and it showed.
I went through another extended antibiotic treatment – five and a half months, two different antibiotics and an antimalarial drug. I improved only for days at a time, but in the big picture I was going backwards. I stated openly my thoughts that – though I was not giving up – I had lost hope I would see much brighter days. I had also in all forthrightness all but given up that Kathy would recover. Sad I know, but that’s where I was . . . where we both were.
“Once in awhile you get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right”
The Grateful Dead “Scarlet Begonias”
April 22, 2016: Manisota Key, Florida
A lot has been said in the past 30 years or so about the medical aspects of marijuana. Some listened, some didn’t. Myself . . . I didn’t.
In the late 90’s, I had started to see published studies regarding how cannabis can help those with epilepsy. And cannabis in relation to pain therapy. I was intrigued, though I had no idea of the movement at hand.
Fast forward a bunch of years, and I find myself 45, chronically ill – in pain. Less, much less than the man I wanted to be . . . knew I should be, or had been. A friend offered me a medical marijuana vapor pen to try, high in CBD – or cannabidiol, the non-psychoactive compound in marijuana that has proven near miraculous for certain types of epilepsy, and pain patients. I was amazed. Though I can’t say it took all my pain away, using that pen was a huge eye opener into the possibility of what medical pot had to offer. When I used it I was immediately soothed. It was like having a huge weight lifted from me. But the pens were from a nearby state that offered medical cannabis, and it was a one time thing.
Then, a friend of my 20-year-old son told me more about CBD, an extract of hemp or marijuana.
CBD is legal in all 50 states, so long as it is derived from hemp, or marijuana stalk, having no – or very little – THC, the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis. THC, the substance in marijuana that the Feds have specified as a schedule 1 drug. Placing it into a category along with heroin.
The federal government lifted the prohibition for medical marijuana in all 50 states, under the Obama administration.
However, the current administration seems hell bent on running your life for you . . . all over again. Maybe they could come balance my checkbook, pay my bills, and my taxes too.
No, no, they merely want to control society through a vague interpretation of 18th and 19th century ideals. Progressive.
So bloody ironic that the conservative camp – always beating the drum and waving the flag – over too much government control, too much big government – still rallies around the cause of “The War on Drugs”. The “War” has bloated all aspects of the social control mechanism far and wide, and turned small town cops, and most police departments into paramilitary organizations.
The War has also empowered some very, very scary men. Men with nefarious ideals. Men like El Chapo, or John Gray – visionary behind the company that launched Oxycodone – or his predecessor Craig Landau. The War is power. Power for all sides directly involved. Like Big Money. Like Big Pharma. Big Pharma will be hell bent – is hell bent on keeping CBD away from, and out of reach of the general public – or monopolizing it. Either way. Control.
Look at the list of current research being done on a multitude of differing ailments. From AIDS, Alzheimer’s, cancer, depression, diabetes, fibromyalgia, to spinal cord injury and stroke – just to name a few. The research is mounting – “medical cannabis” is effective.
Yes, Big Pharma makes billions – to make pills, build factories, run infrastructure, and buy government. If I think about how much money I have spent, by proxy of my insurance, to treat my Lyme Disease compared with my now – to-date – couple hundred dollars worth of CBD that just made my pain, of the last 10 years of my life obsolete . . .
Yeah, I guess if I was them – Big Pharma, I’d be scared too.
~
I visited a head shop that sold CBD in a neighboring state in early 2016. I took it as instructed, and within two weeks my pain – chronic, debilitating pain – was gone. Not numbed only to come back before the next dose – no, my pain was gone. Other symptoms of chronic inflammation – the constant fever, and extreme fatigue – went away. It was – still is nothing short of a miracle.
Kathy, on the other, hand was still in pain and had associated problems. We were heading out to Florida’s Gulf Coast in a couple of weeks, feeling a little uncertain how she was going to handle the travel. We talked about her starting CBD. She did. Several days later, she stopped taking the painkiller prescribed for her for the previous eight months. She stopped the nerve blocker soon thereafter. Greatly reduced the ibuprofen, eventually eliminating it a few months later.
~
As we walked along the beach, beside the rising Gulf tonight, we were awed by the fact that – eight weeks ago neither one of us would have been able to so much as seriously think about walking the beach. We walked, together, under the fattening moon – pain free. Real miracles.
“You were right about the stars, each one is a setting sun”
Wilco “Jesus inc”
Early Spring 2012: Amherst, NH
Jesus, I thought. Had it really come to this?
I sat in the medical room with a young Puerto Rican nurse running her mouth about everything under the sun in her life . . . Her ex was abusive but she got away by clocking him one night with his rum bottle so hard he went into a 36-hour coma. The local police all knew the situation though, intimately, and simply helped her load her car with her belongings – and her daughter – and wished her well.
She got her degree from a local program, and here she is, in New Hampshire in 2012, bleeding me dry.
“Wow,” she said in her thick Spanish accent, “That’s a lot of tubes, you OK?”
“Dunno,” I answered, pausing: “We think it’s Lyme, but we have to test for everything, you know?”
“Yeah, but that’s a lot – I never drawn so many, serious”
“Well fuck,” I said, “ I’m always up for an adventure, so vampire me up.”
She laughed as the needle went into the intermediate basilic vein inside my elbow.
I left the medical office with close to a pint less of my blood, and a head full of questions:
Where the hell do they make people like her? . . . the character inside one of her is worth more than that of a hundred soul sucking politicians . . .
The larger question, the burning one – was simple – what the fuck was wrong with me?
I had been a highly active person all my life. Active climber, skier, trail runner, hiker, walker, biker, drinker, traveler . . . and more. I was running a moderately successful fine-landscaping business . . . I could never stop doing things, anything. I was like a border collie, I. Needed. To. Move.
The past several years, I had been in slow decline.
It started as fatigue and pain. Not so bad. But nearing the end of the day, feeling like I could not go on. Not at all. Not one more minute. Dragging ass into my work truck and trying to drive home, arms so heavy I could barely hold onto the wheel. Getting home, bathing, crawling – yes, fucking crawling – up the stairs to my bed. In later years, I would have to stop on the stairs to muster up the “fuck this bullshit” strength to go the rest of the way.
I do not say these things lightly.
So after my hemoglobin removal I hopped into my ‘79 MG, top down, fired up a fatty, and sped off into the warm, damp September morning. This – all of it was a good thing. The best in fact.
I knew I was on a journey, a now – definable journey, into unknown – Lyme, lupus, rheumatoid, HIV. Yes, it was ALL on the table, but it was now a journey. And not a solo journey, I had a pit crew, a crack staff of badass medical talent. And that is good – really good.
I had that convertable, that black rocket, that escape, that marvelous dance of cog and wire, rubber and steel, fuel . . . and spark. It was redemption at its purest for me. To scream down the twisting, demanding roads of New England in that car was just what I needed. That and the weed. Even better.
Yes, I needed all of it, the car, the weed, the thrill of speed, the sassy Spanish nurse . . . my team. It soothed a soul, a worn, bruised soul.
“You have to learn how you die, from watching the miles slide by”
War on War, WILCO
April 25, 2016: Manisota Key, Florida
The surf was nearly motionless. Dead flat. All but for the slight movement of waves at the shoreline. The sun was high in the sky. Hot. Ospreys wheeled around the sky. Pelicans flew in long trains, low, on the wind, searching.
A year ago we were searching. Kathy and me. Searching for reason, for meaning, for health.
Our search brought us to the Gulf Keys of Florida. The blue clear waters of the Gulf, the white sand beaches, the sun, the manatees, the eagles, and the fish-bone skies brought us here.
Our search also brought us to CBD, and the miracle therein.
Now two years in . . . my continued use of CBD to combat chronic Lyme symptoms has been mainly successful. Beginning at a point where I was a broken human, to now . . . productive, happy, free of pain. Medically using CBD changed my life in a more profound way than any other treatment I had pursued.
Kathy needed only to take it for several months. The nerve swelling in her lower back fully abated. After being on various drugs for most of a year, to see her improvement within two weeks of CBD to the point of being able to cease the pharmaceuticals… amazing.
And we are not the only ones lucky enough to benefit from CBD and other cannabinoids.
No, not by far.
~.
We were sweating heavily under the Florida Gulf sky. The sun was hot. We had hiked out the extra mile through barrier island forest, on Manisota Key, on a winding little trail beneath live oak and cabbage palm. Lizards skidded across our path.
We set out our beach chairs, backpacks, and towels. We cracked open a couple beers, looked up at the clouds and the fish-bone patterns in them, and thought.
We thought about the miles we had traveled to get here, that we all travel…to get “there”. We thought about airplanes and fast car rides. We thought about the osprey and eagles. We thought about friends, and family. Of healing, and miles.
We thought about WILCO, the Florida Keys, and the CBD miracle.
William J Mullen 