Does medical marijuana work for chronic pain?

Where does one obtain ketamine wafers for pain? Does one have to go through an IV protocol first?

@bwe, here is something I posted in another thread on ketamine. I am not a doctor, only a person who has had chronic pain for 30 years and never stopped searching for the root cause, but while searching, had to manage his chronic pain while traveling the world on business and now, unfortunately, have found my son also suffers chronic pain for a very different reason but did not want him to rely on opioids for pain relief so I kept searching for alternative pain management solutions.

I believe you need to find a younger ketamine specialist who believes in wafers, as some of the older generations still only do infusions, which are so much more demanding on the body or are done in the hospital. They will likely do infusions to start with, monitor your reaction, pain levels, and liver function for some time, and then, if all is good on the liver side, transition to a wafer where you can manage the treatment without the ups and downs of an infusion.

Ketamine has been a game-changer for my son since 2018 from chronic pain. He started with intense 6-hour infusions, which lasted three months before the next round. That sort of infusion was very tough on the body. The pain would go from a 7 to a manageable 3, then gradually creep up over three months.

During Covid-19, he helped develop different flavor wafers with his doctor in Miami, as you could not go into the clinic. He would have one wafer one day and two the next day. This changed his life as the pain would stay at a 4 in general day in and day out. This a fantastic outcome after eight years of searching for a solution to allow him to manage his pain.

We moved country, and unfortunately, where we live is not as advanced, and he had to do an 8-day stint in the hospital for an extended infusion by a pump with a needle inserted under the skin on his stomach, far from ideal.

The wafer system is a life-changing way to go, but as we have found, not all doctors like that route. Ketamine is not for everyone and only works for 1/3 of the people who start it. You will need blood work every three months to measure liver function, and you may run a higher risk of bladder cancer later in life, but this is not clinically proven. I would highly recommend taking Milk Thistle tablets to help the liver function. Once we learned this, his liver enzymes were perfect. The doctors where we live now were amazed as they never knew this. Look up ketamine treatments in Miami, and you will find some options to call. Ketamine is not for everyone, but if it works, it can be a game-changer, as my son has seen. He got his life back.

I tried cannabis first for my neuropahy. Edible dose of 10mg with some cbd. Was effective initially, but ceased to be after about 3 months. Thank God I discovered Kratom. No drug effects, just pain relief. No fan of opiods, but you cannot "just live with" severe neuropathy. Whatever helps people, that's what people need. So called first line treatments such as Cymbalta or Gabapentin, etc, seemed alnost useless to me due to horrendous side effects. No physician will ever get it, unless they have it themselves.

I’m about to try medical cannabis (whatever that contains I don’t know) here in Au. Happy to give it a try, considering opioids suppress breathing critically (I have diaphragm palsy and damage to the breathing centre in my brain, so each breath is a wakeful, conscious effort with purpose, and thus anything slightly suppressing ability to breathe is catastrophic - but try getting a pain ‘doctor’ to wrap their siloed mind trap around that one, haha! I’d have better luck lifting busses with one arm), and I’ve had increased nerve pain with gabapentin along with some almighty hallucinations way beyond anything else I’ve ever experienced with an administered drug (like anaesthesia, for instance)…gabapentin was like chemically induced torture, actually. Tried others, have had acute kidney failure, so it’s moving on time to Mary Jane for me.
I’ve smoked it a couple times when pass the dutchie was in vogue, back in the day, and never had any high feeling; only a sense of less pain. So I’m hoping that same effect happens with whatever mystery bag turns up courtesy Au Post.

I’m about to try medical cannabis (whatever that contains I don’t know) here in Au. Happy to give it a try, considering opioids suppress breathing critically (I have diaphragm palsy and damage to the breathing centre in my brain, so each breath is a wakeful, conscious effort with purpose, and thus anything slightly suppressing ability to breathe is catastrophic - but try getting a pain ‘doctor’ to wrap their siloed mind trap around that one, haha! I’d have better luck lifting busses with one arm), and I’ve had increased nerve pain with gabapentin along with some almighty hallucinations way beyond anything else I’ve ever experienced with an administered drug (like anaesthesia, for instance)…gabapentin was like chemically induced torture, actually. Tried others, have had acute kidney failure, so it’s moving on time to Mary Jane for me.
I’ve smoked it a couple times when pass the dutchie was in vogue, back in the day, and never had any high feeling; only a sense of less pain. So I’m hoping that same effect happens with whatever mystery bag turns up courtesy Au Post.

I have been using medical pot for 3 years. I only use edibles-gummies, tincture, capsules & drinks. I was using Oxycontin and Oxycodone but the breathing problems and the constipation problems it caused got to be too much. I also tried gabapentin and that did not help pain at all but did make me feel physically sick. It's hard with edibles because they take awhile to get into your system. They do not totally get rid of pain but help my body to relax & deal with the pain better. I also started taking B-complex which seems to help with pain also. Most of my doctors do not agree with my decision but at 74, don't really care what they think.