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Medical Marijuana (7): Dosage


As I explained last week, I have as yet been unable to balance the palliative benefits of pain reduction with the side effects of being high, baked, wasted, buzzed, ripped, faded and/or stoned. You see, as with most prescription drugs, "effects may vary." The problem is dosage. We humans are not the same, we react differently based on age, weight, metabolism, contents of stomach, amount of sleep you got last night, stress, the phase of the moon.

You get the idea, we do not react the same to any stimuli, we are unique creatures. So with Medical Marijuana the prescribed "dosage" is a bit of a guessing game. Let me give you a most recent example:

I bought a six ounce Chocolate Peanut Butter Hash Bar (product review below). Yesterday I split the bar with a friend, he has less acute pain than I and he is a long time recreational pot user. So we had two levels of discomfort and two very different histories of functioning while under the influence. Adding these additional variables would provide more data for my experiment.

But with Medical Marijuana there is a second issue regarding dosage - there is no standard for what constitutes a "dose". I can report without fear of contradiction that one patient's 1/2 dose is another person's full dose or quarter dose or double dose. Here is yesterday's dual test subject report.

The effects began fairly quickly (30 minutes) for both participants. Pain was effectively reduced for both in the one hour to perhaps mid third hour after consumption. However, the bar was labeled as being 1/4 to 1/2 dose and we split the bar equally. So according to the manufacturer we each had 1/8 to 1/4 of a full dose.

By late in the fourth hour I was supine in a cool, dark room contemplating the nuances of string theory as it applies to snack cheese. Somewhere in the fifth hour my friend found me and suggested that the dosage disclosure on the packing had clearly been set for elephants or small cetaceans.

So as for dosage - you will have to learn to titrate any Medical Marijuana products to your unique physiology and to the wildly inconsistent labeling of the various products. Also recommended in the early testing stages - stay home but pre-stock the kitchen with chocolate.

PRODUCT REPORT: Chocolate Peanut Butter Hash Bar

Ingredients: Sugar, Peanut Oil, Flour, Milk, Salt, Hash.

Notice the absolute absence of chocolate in the product. Clearly bad labeling, however, it was wonderfully peanutty; in fact, this is the best tasting product so far in the experiment. As noted above the package dosage disclosure is obscenely low and should be adjusted in line with other competitive products. On a cost per dose basis, this is an exceptional value. My next test of this item will involved dividing the bar into eight doses.

Previous posts in this series:
Medical Marijuana (5): The Patients
Medical Marijuana (4): Botanical Chemistry
Medical Marijuana (3): Human Experimentation
Medical Marijuana (2): The Dispensary
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Osmose



Osmose - to gradually or unconsciously assimilate some principle or object;


Have you ever stopped to consider how many of your deeply held "beliefs" are not actually yours? Most of what we "believe" comes from one of two sources. The first and most prevalent is childhood. The old "Nurture" accounts for what most people think and believe about most everything. Indeed, the apple or in this case the moral and ethical center, does not fall far from the parental tree.


The second most common source of your belief system comes from the same source but involves a profound rejection of it; we often refer to this as the generational gap or simply being a teenager. In either case radical shifts in what we believe seldom take place much beyond our teenage years.


However, it is possible to change. One common adult period of ethical readjustment involves being the parent of one or more teenagers who are themselves inspecting and dissecting your professed beliefs. At times the teen years are as life changing for the parents as they are for the young adults.


But the point of the Borg Cube is to emphasize that many of our cherished beliefs have been gained through a process of slow accumulation. We take on the moral and ethical tenets of those around us. Society, peer groups, church, television, motion pictures, assorted role models, even advertising can shape your moral compass.


The obvious question at some point is: "Are your most embedded beliefs really yours?" Or did you just osmose them from your environment? Perhaps the direction of this influence is the other way around, the environment osmosed you. Come to think about it, you should probably come to think about it. Which may lead you to several uncomfortable conclusions, including:


"the unexamined life is not worth living" - Socrates
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A Blogging Milestone

This week we have reached a numerical milestone for this little blog. As of Friday morning we have topped the ten thousand page views per month level. This means that 10,000+ computers logged into the blog last month. Each unique log-in counts as one, so I don't actually have ten thousand readers, you probably account for multiple hits yourself. 

I have excluded from the automatic counter my own computers and any commercial hits, like those from Google or Yahoo. Also excluded are hits of less than 10 seconds, no sense in inflating the numbers with lost surfers.

The bottom line is a big thank-you to those who read my scribbling. I appreciate your time and your interest.

PAGEVIEWS LAST MONTH
10,040
Friday Sept. 16 10:40 AM PDT
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Thinking Outside the Box

Today we cogitate beyond the cubic






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Reagan's 1984 Landslide

One of my favorite political exemplars when I argue for third party participation is the 1984 election - Reagan vs. Mondale. This was the most recent "landslide" in a presidential election. Reagan won, of course, but how you report the numbers can tell several very different stories. The way most of the media reported it was this way:

Reagan -   58.77%
Mondale - 40.56%

That's the total popular vote and yup that's a landslide. But what if we take a look at registered voters, then whopping winning number of 58%+ becomes:

Reagan - 43.8%

A landslide sounds like a huge win, a mandate from the people. Yet only 44% of the registered voters came out to support Ronald Reagan in his big win. I know, this is where someone says "Decisions are made by those who show up" or "If you don't vote, you don't get to complain afterwards." My alternate interpretation would be that the political process in 1984, so turned off 25%+ of the registered voters that they basically voted 'None of the Above'.

There is one more significant way to look at the final numbers in 1984 and that is the percentage of the Voting Age Population who supported Reagan in his reelection bid. Of those over 18 years of age the numbers are truly abysmal:

Reagan - 31.2%. Hail to the Chief!

 .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

The last time I trotted out those numbers in a political discussion, someone asked me if current voting numbers were better or worse today. Being that this is a political question, I felt perfectly justified in ignoring the actual question and instead supplying a talking point from my crack campaign staff. Here it is just for you:

2000 Presidential Election

Popular Vote
Bush - 47.87%
Gore - 48.38%

Registered Voters
Bush - 32.02%
Gore - 32.46%

Voting Age Population
Bush - 24.12%
Gore - 24.38%


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The Vast Wasteland


The Boob Tube, The Idiot Box, White Noise, The Glass Teat, A Vast Wasteland. Criticizing television is the ultimate low hanging fruit. Even if you do have your own personal tv favorites, that still leaves you hundreds of channels and thousands of shows to loath.

Back in Berkeley my onscreen guide shows only the channels I receive. Yes, I am one of those types who actually reads the manual and does the full setup on my electronic toys. No shopping channels, no cartoons, block the foreign language channels, CMT is out; well you get the idea. My friends here in Lake Shastina have a satellite dish and their guide shows every channel with the all the channels they don't get dimmed but still readable.

The other day I was familiarizing myself with the options for evening surfing when I saw a listing for Perfect Boobs. What the hell could it be? A reality show? The Surgery Channel? Perhaps, a workout video. Turns out it was an infomerical for a revolutionary bra. But really can you imagine a time when Perfect Boobs might have caused an uproar in certain places if used in a tv guide? I went through the entire scroll for a Tuesday evening and found the following uplifting titles. None of these are porn channel offerings.

Brazilian Butt - another infomercial

Look Good Naked - exercise DVD

Sleep Sex - I have no idea

Drinking Made Easy - it was difficult because?

16 and Pregnant - reality show

I am not a fan of censorship in any form. I sympathize with parents who wish to protect their kids from certain content but I generally come down on the side of a free and open market of information. But should someone wish to make such an option available to parents would that mean having to censor the tv guide? I mean paid cable channels sure, even selected shows of course, but the channel guide? 

Perfect Boobs really??? Next thing you know we will have little plastic containers full of unknown liquids that plug into electrical outlets and vaporize the chemicals to add odor to your house.
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Lucubration



lucubration \loo-kyoo-BRAY-shun; loo-kuh-\, noun:
1. The act of studying by candlelight; nocturnal study; meditation.
2. That which is composed by night; that which is produced by meditation in retirement; hence (loosely) any literary composition.


About a third of my writing is done in the dark. Well at least at night if not actually in the dark. I discovered years ago that what I produce in the wee hours is of a different quality than my work product in the bright of day.


Sheer numbers tell me that I produce a lot more words on the page when writing during the day but they are of a very different flavor than my night writing. The emotive content, the big twists and turns come at night. Moving the story along filling in the linear details is a daytime activity.


Nocturnal work also contains a lot of marginalia both on previous sections and notes for future writing. There are times when the fingers just can't keep up with the ideas so I take lots of notes. This nearly always happens at night. 


A new day of writing generally begins with reading yesterday's work. Words produced after dark often require a fair amount of daylight editing if only to fill in all the linkages for a potential audience. It's not stream of consciousness writing, well most of the time it isn't but methinks the collective unconsciousness rises closer to my waking world when the sun is on the far side of Gaia.
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