MOM KEEPS SON ON MARIJUANA REGIMEN

Marijuana treatments prescribed for an 8-year-old Rocklin boy with a mental
disorder will continue, his mother said Tuesday after a judge dismissed a
petition that could have removed the child from her home.

"I can't believe it's finally over," the woman declared after a brief
appearance before Judge Colleen Nichols in Placer Superior Court.

Although the court did not endorse her approach to therapy, it did conclude
there is no need for an order protecting the boy from neglect or
mistreatment, the woman said.

The only condition attached to the dismissal, she said, is her agreement to
seek treatment from a pediatrician at least every six months.

Child Protective Services had stepped in last July once it learned of the
treatment, accusing her of being unfit and contributing to the delinquency
of a minor. The judge allowed her to continue the treatments while the case
was being decided.

Neither the county nor Wendell Peters, an attorney representing the mother,
would comment on the proceedings because such matters are confidential
under state law.

But Peters said he was pleased with the result. "I'm happy that this mother
and her child can get on with their lives," he said.

To protect the identity of the boy, neither his name nor the names of his
mother or grandparents will be used by The Bee.

The woman said she has been using marijuana to treat her son's afflictions
since May, when, as a last resort, she turned away from the more
conventional drugs, "none of which ever worked."

Since shortly after the boy's birth, diagnoses offered by 16 different
physicians suggest he has been suffering from attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, obsessive-compulsive
disorder, bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

"When he was 9 months old, I knew we had a problem. I just didn't know what
it was," his mother explained.

He demonstrated extreme changes in mood, energy and behavior, began biting
and hitting other children and was literally unmanageable, she said.

"By the time he was 2, he'd been in and out of well over seven or eight
preschools," she said. "And by the time he was 4, he'd been banned from all
of Placer County's child-care system."

His brain disorder on three different occasions led to psychiatric
hospitalizations, she said.

Ritalin was the drug of choice in the beginning, the mother said, but when
that seemed to worsen his condition, the doctors switched to others:
Adderall, Carbamazepine, Clonazepam, Clonidine, Desmopressin, Depakote,
Dexedrine, Guanfacine, Imipramine, Mellaril, Methylphenidate, Neurontin,
Risperdal, Seroquel, Tennate, Thioridazine, Zoloft and Zyprexa.

"The adverse reactions these medications had on him, not to mention the
unknown of what they were doing to his system, were heart-wrenching," the
mother said.

The boy's grandmother, who attended Tuesday's hearing with her daughter,
said, "This poor little guy has been so overmedicated at times. At one
point, he reminded me of a dog we once had who just staggered around and
drooled with distemper."

Turning in desperation to the Internet, the mother stumbled on the idea of
marijuana therapy, and began making inquiries among the many doctors she'd
consulted.

One pediatrician in Oakland suggested that she give it a try.

Although federal law still considers marijuana to be an illegal substance,
Proposition 215, an initiative passed by California voters in 1996,
legalized, under state law, the medical use of marijuana with a doctor's
recommendation.

"To tell you the truth, we were very much against it," the boy's
grandmother said. "We didn't know anything about marijuana, had never seen
it or smelled it. We thought it was just an illegal drug.

"But now we know the medicinal effect of it and I've seen the positive
results," she added.

Initially, the mother prepared the boy's "medicine" in the form of muffins,
which she fed him regularly.

The results were immediate, she said.

Her son's behavior improved markedly. His mood swings leveled off. He
developed friendships with children in the neighborhood.

And this year he had his first ever birthday party.

From the time of her first court appearance in early July, the mother has
been maintaining her son's treatment with the approval of the court, she said.

It was interrupted just once, for a tonsillectomy, and has evolved over
time, his mother said.

The pot is obtained by prescription from a 100-acre medical marijuana farm
in Santa Cruz, she explained, and is ground in a coffee grinder, cooked
with butter and a little water in a skillet and dried in an oven before
being stuffed into capsules.

"It's not an easy process," she said.

The boy doesn't know he's receiving marijuana, she said. To him, it's just
medicine.

It hasn't been a cure-all, the mother explained.

"He still has challenges. I expect him to have bad days. But he's
maintained more than he has on any other medication," she said.

She said she shares a special phrase with her son, "Love your guts," which
tells him that "even when he's bad, I still love all of him. Even the icky
stuff."