TO ALL SOME GOOD HERBS

Peace, hope, love, goodwill, light in the darkness-they're what every
winter solstice holiday has ever been about, but also sadly sometimes
as elusive as a hungry child's faith in Santa. Elusive because the
world can be harsh, and because we too often don't register the
dissonance inherent in riding to elaborate diamond-studded holiday
celebrations in plush chariots to celebrate giving and goodwill while
taking from those with less so we can have more.

It's an age-old thing, the dark quicksand that power becomes, and it
has mostly determined who eats well and who doesn't, and which
freedoms and rights and medicines we have access to and which we
don't. But hope and light and goodwill are age-old, buoyant and
resistant too, and so we kiss under the mistletoe that is now a
plastic relic of what was once a valued medicine. North American
mistletoe and mistletoe berries are poisonous, but the leaves of other
varieties have historically been used to ease anxiety and headache,
and to promote sleep and stimulate the immune system-uses which
science supports; in Europe mistletoe extract injections are used as a
cancer treatment.

Back when healers were mostly women-back before the masculization,
professionalization and chemicalization of medicine-we all, for better
or worse, relied on botanical medicines.

And now that science has, for better and worse, brought its own gifts
of medicine (I am profoundly thankful for many powerful anti-seizure,
anti-pain, anti-all-things-unbearable meds), we ignore and dismiss
many beautiful botanical medicines in favour of more powerful (and
more toxic) chemical ones.

But it's the season we kiss under the mistletoe, and would rather not
think about things like cancer, or about five-year-olds depending on
the love and expertise of those at the Stollery's new pediatric pain
clinic.

And kissing is an excellent thing to do, and love can ease stress and
depression and elevate pain-relieving feel-good endorphins and
endocannabinoids produced by our brains.

And speaking of cannabinoids and peace and goodwill and botanical
medicines, we've had good news on one valuable, cheer-inducing and
often considered sacred botanical.

THC's potential to reduce inflammation in the brain, stimulate the
formation of new brain cells, and reduce risk of Alzheimer's has
recently been getting some serious attention from neuroscientists, and
pot has, as of October, been given a green light to get to medical
users through other medical users.

Thousands of Canadians echo Grant Krieger's love of the pot butter
that can give him a good night's sleep, and who but Scrooge (and
sometimes our governments and our courts) would deny anyone living
with chronic treatment-resistant pain a good night's sleep on
high-quality organic pot? Therapeutic uses of marijuana are
indisputable, so this is good news for medical users, and isn't good
news what Christmas is all about?

To the rigidly proper and nervous about herbal medicines not
sanctioned by western medicine, I'm not saying we should all replace
breakfast with pot. But unlike other pain meds, pot bypasses our
livers and, especially vaporized, comes with a far, far lower risk
profile than prescription pain meds. In 1988, the US's own Drug
Enforcement Administration Judge said, "Marijuana, in its natural
form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to
man."

Aspirin, readily available, can cause a lethal reaction at 20 times
the recommended dose, and some drugs (chemo therapies for example) can
do so at a fraction more than the therapeutic dose. Based on lab
tests, marijuana's risk is too small to note-to achieve fatal toxicity
a smoker would have to consume thousands of times more than what is
delivered by a therapeutic dose. We need light in the legislative
darkness determining our medicines; we need to nurture empathy.

But I'm hopeful.

We're seeing cracks, and light, given a crack, leaks
through.

And we're hard-wired for empathy and goodwill-MRIs of the brains of
children watching others in pain show them responding as though the
pain were their own. 'Tis the season to nurture that bent.