Marihuana, The Forbidden Medicine
by Stephen Jay Gould
am a member of a very small, very fortunate, and very select
group—the first survivors of the previously incurable cancer, abdominal
mesothelioma. Our treatment involved a carefully balanced mixture of all three
standard modalities—surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. Not pleasant,
to be sure, but consider the alternative.
Any cancer survivor of such intensive treatment—indeed,
anyone who has endured aggressive medical battles against any disease—knows
firsthand the enormous importance of the "psychological factor." Now I am an
old-fashioned rationalist of the most unreconstructed sort. I brook no
mysticism, no romantic Southern California nonsense about the power of mind and
spirit. I assume that positive attitudes and optimism have salutary effects
because mental states can feed back upon the body through the immune system. In
any case, I think that everyone would grant an important role to the maintenance
of spirit through adversity; when the mind gives up, the body too often follows.
(And if cure is not the ultimate outcome, quality of remaining life becomes, if
anything, even more important.)
Nothing is more discouraging, more destructive of the
possibility of such a positive attitude—and I do speak from personal
experience here—than the serious side effects induced by so many
treatments. Radiation and chemotherapy are often accompanied by long periods of
intense and uncontrollable nausea. The mind begins to associate the agent of
potential cure with the very worst aspect of the disease—for the pain and
suffering of the side effects is often worse than the distress induced by the
tumor itself. Once this happens, the possibility for an essential psychological
boost and comfort may disappear—for the treatment seems worse than the
disease itself. In other words, I am trying to say that the control of severe
and long-lasting side effects in cancer treatment is not merely a question of
comfort (though Lord only knows that comfort to the suffering is enough of a
rationale), but an absolutely essential ingredient in the possibility of
cure.
I had surgery, followed by a month of radiation,
chemotherapy, more surgery, and a subsequent year of additional chemotherapy. I
found that I could control the less severe nausea of radiation by conventional
medicines. But when I started intravenous chemotherapy (Adriamycin), absolutely
nothing in the available arsenal of antiemetics worked at all. I was miserable
and came to dread the frequent treatments with an almost perverse intensity.
I had heard that marihuana often worked well against nausea.
I was reluctant to try it because I have never smoked any substance habitually
(and didn't even know how to inhale). Moreover, I had tried marihuana twice (in
the usual context of growing up in the sixties) and had hated it. (I am
something of a Puritan on the subject of substances that, in any way, dull or
alter mental states—for I value my rational mind with an academician's
over-weening arrogance. I do not drink alcohol at all, and have never used
drugs in any "recreational" sense.) But anything to avoid nausea and the
perverse wish it induces for an end of treatment.
The rest of the story is short and sweet. Marihuana worked
like a charm. I disliked the "side effect" of mental blurring (the "main effect"
for recreational users), but the sheer bliss of not experiencing nausea—and
then not having to fear it for all the days intervening between
treatments—was the greatest boost I received in all my year of treatment,
and surely had a most important effect upon my eventual cure. It is beyond my
comprehension—and I fancy I am able to comprehend a lot, including much
nonsense—that any humane person would withhold such a beneficial substance
from people in such great need simply because others use it for different
purposes.
[ Stephen Jay Gould, In Lester Grinspoon, ed.,
Marihuana, The
Forbidden Medicine, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993, 39-41. ]
Home Page |
Further Reading |
Site Map |
Send Feedback
