I grew up in an evangelical Christian minister's home during America's "Just Say No" era, which means I spent most of my life believing that marijuana was just one more sinful tool that the devil used to shred America's moral fabric. But that was before I developed a mysterious and debilitating chronic pain disorder against which most traditional medicines proved worthless. Pain, like time, has a way of transforming us.
On a gray morning in December four years ago, I awoke in my cramped Brooklyn apartment and could not feel my hands. Over the following weeks, the numbness morphed into burning, tingling, stabbing pain that spread all over my body. The pain was soon accompanied by panic attacks, crippling depression and something bordering on suicidal thoughts.
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