SMOKING POT EASES PAIN, SAYS WOMAN WITH MS

B.C. Woman on Cross-Country Trek to Raise Cash for Research Into
Multiple Sclerosis

Marijuana is an amazing treatment for the stabbing pain
and spastic tremors caused by muscular sclerosis, says a 43-year-old
woman who is walking across Canada to raise money and awareness.

"It provides me with the ability to cope so well. I can weather
anything that can happen," said Lori Wikdahl, who arrived in Orillia
on Friday after trudging almost 1,900 kilometres.

Back home in British Columbia's Fraser Valley, Wikdahl grows her own
marijuana, which she brews up to make a soothing tea.

Although the federal government is finally permitting the medicinal
use of marijuana in closely regulated doses, Wikdahl has not applied
for a licence. In so doing she would be opening the door to surprise
government inspections, she told The Packet & Times.

"I don't want to give the government permission to show up at my door
any time they choose. I should have the right to have my own life."

An inflammatory disease that attacks the central nervous system,
muscular sclerosis or MS can suddenly cause Wikdahl's hands to clench
painfully like bird talons.

"It's like a steel trap. But if I have a couple of tokes (of
marijuana) the pain levels off and my hands unclaw."

Agonizing nerve pain, like a knife in the back or a hot poker through
the head, drifts away when Wikdahl smokes grass or drinks a cup of
marijuana tea she prepares by the jug.

Before she tried marijuana to alleviate MS symptoms a few years ago,
Wikdahl was spending between $700 and $800 a week on prescription drugs.

"I was taking Lithium (mood stabilizer) Zoloft (anti-depressant) and
painkillers like morphine, Demerol and codeine."

But unlike pot, which provides long-term relief, the pharmaceutical
remedies tend to become less effective over time, said Wikdahl, a
former family resource worker.

Many doctors, including Wikdahl's family doctor, are uncomfortable
prescribing marijuana because of its street-drug stigma.

Sadly there seems to be as much misinformation about marijuana as
there is about MS, said Wikdahl.

Just as MS sufferers who lose their balance and fall in public are
dismissed as drunks, so marijuana users are seen as socially
unacceptable, said Wikdahl.

"I'm not a hippy freako."

Wikdahl doesn't smoke just to get high.

"When the pain levels off and I don't need any more, I put the joint
out and it sits in the ashtray."

On her seven-month cross-Canada trek, Wikdahl has decided to go
without grass. "I didn't want to get arrested. But I'm paying the price."

To dull the pain that wracks her body, she is back to taking
conventional drugs like codeine.

"I take the equivalent of 60 Tylenol 3s a day."