I never wanted to reach a point where I felt love I needed medication every single day just to survive.
However, it wasn’t our fault that I would end up in this situation.
It was a poor labor accident in our 20s that finally did it to several discs in our spine. Back then I was employed by a landscaping company and was on ladders every single day trimming trees for both commercial and resident clients. After several years of doing this without any accidents, it’s easy to overestimate a single’s confidence level with the work. Sadly, a single day I didn’t have our ladder secured to our tree regularly and I went down. I was incredibly lucky that our injuries weren’t enough to take away our ability to walk or know anything below our neck or our waist. I got back up again despite the fall, but it meant dealing with back pain on and off for the rest of our life. Occasionally I can get by with just acetaminophen or ibuprofen, but other times I entirely need something more than basic over-the-counter medications. I don’t want to get addicted to prescription narcotics either, so I have largely turned down prescriptions to take opiates with this fear at the front of our mind. One of the only things that has actually given myself and others relief with our drastic back pain is taking strong doses of CBD throughout the day to improve how I feel. The CBD acts on our body’s endocannabinoid method and relieves that pain that creeps up our back better than any other drug short of a real prescription opiate. At least I’m able to find relief with the CBD by itself if I take enough at any given moment.