I am 17 years old, and I suffer from severe Crohn’s Disease, a chronic inflammatory disease of the gastrointestinal tract. I have struggled with this disease for two years now, and spent my Christmas vacation at Scottish Rite in Atlanta full of IVs, being fed through a catheter run under my bicep into my chest cavity, in agonizing pain, losing blood, and on the verge of needing a total removal of my colon. I dropped from 170 pounds to 135, all on a 6-foot 2-inch frame.
Medical cannabis has great potential to help people like me. According to studies in respected publications such as the Journal of Endocrinological Investigation and the Journal of Molecular Medicine, cannabis assists in wound healing in the intestines, as well as regulating peristalsis in the gut and suppressing acid reflux, and pre-emptively protects against further damaging inflammation.
In addition, it shows promise as a painkiller. Crohn’s and related disorders are excruciatingly painful when the disease is active, to the point of being completely disabling. However, as well as being highly addictive, heavy-duty painkillers like morphine have negative effects on the contractions of intestinal muscle and can therefore worsen Crohn’s Disease flares. I personally refused morphine during my hospital stay not only due to these frightening effects, but due to fear of addiction. Obviously, cannabis was not available in any form, so I simply took a weaker painkiller and toughed it out.
I don’t use marijuana in any form. I fear my life will be ruined if I am caught, as the justice system doesn’t often differentiate (or even think there’s a valid distinction) between a “lazy stoner” and people simply desperate for relief from an incurable illness that has plagued them for years and will plague them until they die.
This is shameful and immoral. The debate on this subject is going to heat up in coming years as more and more states legalize medical marijuana. My plea is that opponents of medical marijuana in this state will consider the words of Rep. Allen Peake, R-Macon, after recently visiting a girl whose family is fleeing to Colorado to receive cannabis-derived medication for their daughter’s seizures: “If it was my child, I’d be crawling over broken glass to get legislation passed, as would any legislator who’s here. Why can’t we as a state be compassionate enough to look at what makes sense?”
Where is the compassion for people like us? Nobody reading this would hesitate to take hydrocodone or morphine if they were in severe pain for months on end. Yet if someone wants to avoid the potential for addiction or the acute negative effects these drugs can have on the course of their disease, their concern is often belittled and mocked as a druggie’s front. I face a lifetime of harsh intravenous immunosuppressants — with side effects ranging from lupus to rheumatoid arthritis to extremely rare, incurable lymphomas — just to keep my disease under control.
I am fearful for my financial future, as without insurance, treatments to keep me alive total well over $100,000 a year. I ask anyone reading this to think of their own children facing the kind of pain and suffering and uncertainty about the future that those of us who are candidates for medical cannabis go through every day. Crohn’s patients, cancer and arthritis sufferers, those whose bodies have been ravaged by multiple sclerosis — we are all desperate for some kind of relief that doesn’t just cause us more problems.
I am not someone looking for a quick high. I am a 4.0 GPA student bound for the Kennesaw State University Honors College in the fall. I’m my school system’s Star Student representative to the PAGE Foundation. I’m a churchgoer, and I volunteer my time to organizations outside of school. I am not someone making excuses to get high, and most of my fellow advocates aren’t either. We’re normal people asking for a little compassion from those who have a little better luck in the health department than we do.
I come before those who oppose my right to protect my vitality, not as some Great Satan or boogeyman who wants to destroy the morality of the nation or get everyone hooked on drugs. I come before all simply wanting to be healthy again.
Eli Hogan, 17, lives in Cartersville.
