WHAT MY CANCER TAUGHT ME ABOUT MARIJUANA

Why I - and a Surprising Number My Friends - Smoke Pot

Ahh, cancer. One learns so much from being diagnosed with a
death-sentence disease.

Of course, 95 percent of it is stuff you would rather not know, but
that other 5 percent is downright interesting. For example, America's
Next Top Model is much more fun to watch when you've lost 15 pounds
without trying. During chemotherapy, vanilla smells good, but vanilla
wafers taste disgusting. And eyelashes really do have a purpose.

But the most compelling fact I learned was about my friends. Not just
what you would expect: how they cooked for my family and took me to
doctors and pretended not to notice how bad I looked and, most
important, that I could not - cannot - survive without them.

No, what really shocked me was how many of my old, dear, married,
parenting, job-holding friends smoke pot. I am not kidding. People I
never expected dropped by to deliver joints and buds and private
stash. The DEA could have set a security cam over my front door and
made some serious dents in the marijuana trade. The poets and
musicians were not a surprise, but lawyers? CEOs? Republicans?

OK, I admit it, in college I smoked dope with the rest of them. I
mean, everybody was doing it - an excuse I do not allow my children.
Plus, I felt my only other option was alcohol, and the sweet drinks I
liked were too fattening.

But that was a long time ago, and since then I have learned to drink
bourbon straight, get high on life and appreciate the advantages of
not doing anything you wouldn't want your kids to do.

I thought all my friends felt the same. Boy, was I wrong. When I
surfaced from my chemo haze enough to care about anyone else, I was
curious. Why do so many 40- and 50-somethings still get high? I asked
my suppliers.

Pain was the No. 1 answer. Not just the psychic angst of being
mothers and fathers to teenagers, but real physical pain. We're all
beginning to fall apart, and a couple of tokes really take the edge
off the sciatica, rotator cuff injuries, irritable bowel syndrome and
migraines.

Obviously some of us use drugs to ease the lives of quiet desperation
we never thought we would have back when we were getting stoned the
first time. Our drug use now is really the same as in college. Then I
got high to relax, to gain confidence, to forget I was an overweight,
mediocre college student terrified of the future. Now we get stoned
to relax, forget our disappointing careers and mask our terror of not
just our own future but the future for our kids.

I spoke to my oncologist about the pros and cons of marijuana use for
cancer patients. He said he was part of a study 25 years ago on the
effects of pot on nausea, joint pain and fatigue caused by
chemotherapy. It worked then, he said; it really helped some people.
But now they have great new drugs that keep the nausea and other pain at bay.

He said the people who use pot now do it because they like it. Or
maybe because they would rather support a farm in Humboldt County
than a huge pharmaceutical conglomerate.

After chemo No. 1, I was violently ill. Anti-nausea drugs
notwithstanding, I was hugging the porcelain throne. I was willing to
try anything, so I lit up. It helped. A lot. I collapsed on the
couch, I zoned out watching Project Runway, I was able to take deep
breaths without puking.

My 15-year-old daughter was shocked. The look on her face was proof
that her elementary school DARE program had really done its job. A
friend - not a supplier or a user - explained to her that it was just
to make me feel better and that if it worked, wouldn't that be great?
My daughter reluctantly agreed, but I knew she didn't mean it.

I had come full circle in my life. The next time I had a toke, I
stood in my bathroom with the fan on, blowing smoke out the window,
but instead of my parents, I was scared my kids would find out I was
smoking dope again.

The biggest pain of cancer is the gnawing, scratching, bleeding dread
that they didn't find it all, that you didn't go to the doctor soon
enough, that it is growing out of control at this very moment.

My doctor recommended meditation. Yeah, right, I thought, more time
sitting quietly trying not to think about dying. But occasionally,
only when nothing else would do, I could turn to my friend Mary Jane.