BOOK REVIEW: KIDS, CANNABINOIDS AND OUR BODIES

A Review of Jeffrey's Journey: Healing a Child's Violent Rages By Debbie
Jeffries and LaRayne Jeffries (2005; Quick American)

I'm not a parent, but if I were, I would do whatever was necessary for my
child. I'm supposing that is a common sentiment, and that is where Debbie
Jeffries found herself - having to do what was necessary. She found
herself as a single parent with a child who kept having violent rages.

As I have had some experience with rage myself, I know that when
uncontrolled it is terrible for adults to endure, but at least we have
recourse to reason and logic. Those two in-and-of themselves, reason and
logic in adults, cannot eliminate rage - it's ingrained in us - but most of
us are able to control and manage it.

But imagine being three years old and having violent rages - hitting,
biting, and screaming - and then you enter Debbie and Jeffrey's world.

Now, it shouldn't surprise anyone that our moods and thoughts are based on
chemicals: the scientists refer to these chemicals as
neuro-transmitters. If you watch the evening news or read a popular
magazine, you will no doubt come across an advertisement for a
pharmaceutical drug. What the drug attempts to heal is an imbalance in
one's chemicals - in our processing of neuro-transmitters. Frankly, drugs
are a good thing: we can help more individuals today than we have ever been
able to help before. The drugs that focus on the brain, such as Ritalin,
Dexedrine, Imipramine, Zoloft, Tegretal, and all the others, have to focus
on these neuro-transmitters - on getting the right "balance" - in order for
the patient to heal. Depending on the diagnoses, that is, it depends on if
the individual is fighting depression, Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity
Disorder (ADHD), Bipolar Disorder (BD), Oppositional Defiance Disorder, or,
in the case of Jeffrey and his family, they were fighting all of these
diagnoses - and a handful of others! - all at the same time. So imagine
being three years old and having your chemicals out of balance, and the
balance was tipped toward violence, and you can see the importance of books
like Jeffrey's Journey - a point of diversity on a diverse issue - one's
health.

Jeffrey's Journey is a family's story on dealing with one of life's many
surprises - parenthood. The dream is generally of the perfect healthy
child; the reality is sometimes just the opposite. Jeffrey was a healthy
strong boy in every respect except his temper, which he couldn't control.
In reading the book you realize you won't find another story like this:
Jeffrey hails from a conservative Christian family that pursued all options
- - from prayer, spanking, and sixteen prescriptions drugs to help his mind
work better - all by the time he was seven-and-half-years old!

Jeff had no fear as a young child, which produced continual confrontation.
By the age of three he was hitting pre-school teachers in the face with
metal objects and showed no fear of adults or other children. To control
his rage he was prescribed Ritalin; this was an experiment, as Ritalin is
not recommended for children under age six, but everyone involved -
teachers, family, and the medical professionals - all supported what they
called an "extraordinary intervention."

But the intervention didn't work: nine months later they switched him to
Dexedrine. This lasted only three days, at which time, Jeffrey was
"suspended from school for having very aggressive combative behavior and
explosive anger." At this point he was diagnosed with ADHD and Impulse
Disorder and given a trial prescription of Imipramine - an antidepressant
usually prescribed as a short-term therapy for bedwetting. Imipramine, like
all the other drugs that target neuro-transmitter activity, comes with a
legal qualifier: Safety and effectiveness in children under the age of 6
have not been established. It also has the following list of most common
side effects for children: "anxiety, collapse, constipation, convulsions,
emotional instability, fainting, nervousness, sleep disorders, stomach and
intestinal problems, and tiredness."

As if all of these possible side effects weren't enough, Jeffrey had also,
as his mother expressed, developed an "infatuation with killing - himself,
me, and animals, mainly." In what I found to be the most disturbing passage
in the book, his mother describes Jeffrey's first night on Depakote, a drug
to treat BD, seizures, convulsions, and migraine headaches:

This drug had a very serious psychotic side effect. The night he started
it, I awoke to find him standing beside my bed, his hands around my throat.
He was trying to strangle me. I sat up, pulled his hands away, and asked
him what he was doing. "I have robots living in my stomach," he said with
an eerie calm. "They're telling me to kill my mother."

Well, it took two-and-half more years of psychoactive drugs, periods of no
drugs, mental hospitals, and special classes, but in the final analysis,
nothing was working. Then, through her own research, and with a variety of
governmental agencies advising her they could not help her or Jeffrey, she
turned to her last hope - marijuana.

That's crazy, right? Giving a child a dose of marijuana muffin, well,
that's criminal, right?

The answer to both questions is a resounding - No!

The Jeffries live in California, a place where the citizens voted in 1996
to protect patients and doctors as it concerned medical marijuana. The
federal government has a different opinion, but, given the fact that Debbie
was going to have to place Jeffrey in special custody - care away from her
- - she followed California law. This meant she could consult with a doctor,=
see if the treatment would work, and, if so, then possess marijuana. What
she found was as experimental as all the other treatments had been:
marijuana, better known from a health perspective as cannabis, had never
been recommended for a child as young as Jeffrey and no doctor had ever
treated a case like his. Through the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical
Marijuana (WAMM), a collective of mostly terminally ill patients in Santa
Clara, Debbie met Valerie Laveroni Corral, WAMM's director. Valerie put her
in contact with a medical professional in Oakland, a Dr. Michael
Alcalay. They met and talked about Jeffrey's condition and treatment
options. Dr. Alcalay and Debbie discussed cannabinoids, which are
neuro-transmitters that occur naturally in the human body and in cannabis
(marijuana).

Now, to understand how cannabis might be able to help a seven-year-old
control his violent rages, we have to look at some recent developments in
our understanding of how we think - that is, how are brain works. I know
often-new science sounds wacky and preposterous - but that's good, as it
shows things are changing. To that end, there is a very informative
introduction to the human cannabinoid system, defined as a series of
receptors, referred to as "CB1" and "CB2", as well as neuro-transmitters,
in the December, 2004 issue of Scientific American. The article, "The
brain's own marijuana," provides a review of the developments in
cannabinoid research, both the one's produced by the human body, the
so-called endocannabinoids, as well as the one's found in cannabis - which
number more than 60 and include THC (delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol) and
Cannabidiol. As the article argues, the human cannabinoid system is
fundamental to health, and it makes the following rather revolutionary
statement:

The receptor CB1 seems to be present in all vertebrate species, suggesting
that systems employing the brain's own marijuana have been in existence for
about 500 million years. During that time, endocannabinoids have been
adapted to serve numerous, often subtle functions. We have learned that
they do not affect the development of fear, but the forgetting of fear;
they do not alter the ability to eat, but the desirability of the food, and
so on. Their presence in parts of the brain associated with complex motor
behavior, cognition, learning and memory implies that much remains to be
discovered about the uses to which evolution has put these interesting
messengers.

Interesting messengers indeed: that is the science of cannabinoids, and
like the article says, "much remains to be discovered." Jeffrey found a
degree of peace from his violent rages: the cannabinoids, those interesting
messengers, facilitated his thinking process. On that first day when Debbie
gave Jeffrey some medicine in a muffin, and within a few minutes of
medicating, his first comment to her was "Mommy, I feel happy, not mad -
And my head doesn't feel noisy." She had been waiting a long time to hear
such kind words.

Well, the cannabinoid-based treatment worked for sixteen months, but then
everything changed on September 6, 2002, when the federal government raided
WAMM and literally took away the medicine - they cut down plants and hauled
them away. Jeffrey's plant, his medicine, was a unique product: like a
special medicine, the cannabinoids in this particular plant were the ones
helping him the most. It had taken several attempts to find the right
cannabinoid, and after some trial and error, they had done so. The
Jeffries had hope for a little over a year and Jeffrey had a medicine, a
cannabinoid-based treatment that he could take orally with no harmful side
effects. According to his mom, "unlike previous treatments, medical
marijuana allowed Jeff to participate in therapy, go to school, live at
home, and have friends."

Without his medicine, Jeffrey relapsed. He was unprepared to deal with his
burgeoning adolescence, and his violent behavior returned. Currently he is
away from his mother and the rest of his family: he is participating in a
treatment center in Utah that gives him one-on-one care. They report that
he is well, but, as we all might suspect, the "What-ifs?" linger for his
family.

The government didn't bother to ask "What-if?" when they raided WAMM - a
question like "What-if we are wrong?"

It is time they did so, and the reason is cannabinoids.