It was January 2011 when Anthony landed in the Middle East. He was young, laid-back and credulous. “I had no clue about the real world,” he said in hindsight.
Anthony had enlisted in the U.S. Navy when he was 19 years old and working a dead-end job. Four years later, he found himself in the Nimruz province of southwestern Afghanistan, working as a medic with the Marines.
That April, a preacher at a small church in Florida publicly burned a copy of the Quran. The Taliban used the perceived transgression to incite violence against American soldiers stationed in Afghanistan. Anthony’s base was attacked and overrun as a result.
After the bloodbath that spring, Anthony said, his worldview changed drastically. A lifelong Christian, he rejected his religion. He began to feel betrayed by people he’d always looked up to as he became convinced the war was nothing more than a product of capitalism.
“We’re spending billions on killing people and not doing anything constructive,” he said. “I’m not proud.”
As the year dragged on, so did the carnage. As a medic, he saw first hand the gruesome wounds war inflicts on the human body.
He said Afghan children were often brought to his base for medical treatment when they were sick or had been shot, and sometimes after they’d been brutally tortured by the Taliban. “I had to treat a lot of children,” he said.
In 2012, Anthony returned to Portland, where he had been born and raised. Soon after, he married his fiancé, had a baby and enrolled in college under the G.I. Bill.
But something was wrong.
“Up until Afghanistan, I was timid – a people pleaser,” he said, but the war turned him into “a crazy rage monster.”
He drank heavily and got into bar fights.
“I was an asshole. I didn’t care what anyone thought,” he said. “Like many others, I was in denial of my PTSD.”
He’d become a statistic – another veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder. A Department of Veterans Affairs report released the same year he was discharged revealed nearly 30 percent of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have PTSD .
Anthony remembers his first flashback. He was playing a first-person-shooter video game at a friend’s house when the room began to close in on him.
“It was just like when you see someone having a flashback in the movies,” he said. “I got tunnel vision – that literally happened to me. I was scared.”
He said he was too proud to seek treatment. It wasn’t until he got into a heated argument with his wife that he realized he needed to get help. He had thrown a chair across the room in front of his infant son, who began to cry.
He sought counseling, which he said helped, but his quick temper didn’t subside completely.
This Memorial Day, he had a breakthrough.
“Memorial Day is always rough,” he said. His then-3-year-old was aggravating him. Anthony said the boy was just behaving the way little kids often behave, but for some reason it was touching a nerve.
Anthony decided to remove himself and take a “little hit” of weed.
“I came back, looked down at him and realized: He just wants to hang out with his daddy,” he said. “It’s me – I’m the one who’s uptight and pushing him away. And then I smoke, and I see it differently.”
He’d smoked cannabis periodically while in Afghanistan and after returning but said it was at that moment he realized he could defuse his temper instantly by smoking pot.
“This is medicine – I realized it then,” he said.
Smoking weed also helped him cut back on drinking, which, looking back, he said was likely a way of self-medicating.
“If you can show me any peer-reviewed evidence that weed is worse than alcohol or pills, then I’m all ears,” he said. Until then, he said, he plans to treat his PTSD with pot. As an added benefit, it also helps him tolerate his chronic back and foot pain.
Anthony agreed to be interviewed for this story under the condition of anonymity, because, he said, he wanted to speak candidly without jeopardizing his employment.
His job involves working with other veterans on a daily basis, and he has seen how many of them experience the same positive results when using cannabis to treat their chronic pain and PTSD.
He asked we use the name “Anthony” to honor a friend who was killed in action.
“I know many, many veterans who smoke weed for, specifically, PTSD,” he said. “A lot of them picked it up because of their PTSD.”
Researchers examining the relationship between cannabis and PTSD in Israel have seen promising results in clinical studies of rats , and a psychiatrist in New Mexico saw a 75 percent reduction in all three areas of PTSD symptoms when using cannabis to treat 80 military veterans with PTSD in 2014. His study was published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs.
This September, however, the first-ever clinical study to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of smoked marijuana as a medicine on humans is set to begin – and the study is aimed at treating veterans with PTSD.
California-based research nonprofit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS, was awarded a $2.1 million grant by Colorado’s state health department to conduct this research.
MAPS spokesperson Brad Burge said the sheer number of veterans suffering from PTSD is one of the reasons behind the study.
“We also regularly hear from veterans organizations that they’re not getting the care that they need through the VA, and many veterans also report using marijuana successfully to treat their PTSD symptoms,” Burge said.
Burge said it was only after years of jumping through hoops with the federal government, and a lengthy appeals process, that MAPS was able to get started on this study.
Note: For veterans who experience paranoia or other unwanted side effects with smoked marijuana, some say they've found relief from chronic pain with cannabis tinctures.
The smoke prophet
Aside from the week his mother died, Hawk Marsden has tended to his medical marijuana garden every day throughout the past four years.
It’s a small operation, located in the garage and backyard of a residential home in North Portland’s Piedmont neighborhood, although he’s in the process of moving the nursery to a larger, more commercial venue in rural Clackamas County.
On a recent sweltering August afternoon, a steady stream of friends and clients, including several military veterans, dropped by the house to smoke, pick up medicine and hang out on the backyard patio.
Some stayed for a while, finding a seat on one of the dozen or so mismatched wooden, wicker and stuffed chairs that had been arranged into two sitting areas beneath a large palm plant with wide, low-hanging leaves.
The outdoor hangout was decorated with Bohemian tapestries, Tibetan prayer flags, various mobiles, potted plants and hanging lights.
A hodgepodge of smoking paraphernalia sat scattered across the circular glass-topped table, and a mix of jam-band melodies and classic rock drifted through the garden on the other side of the bamboo divider, where Marsden explained that this is where he teaches area veterans how to grow their own medical marijuana.
“They call me the smoke prophet. Natives call me a medicine man,” he said. “The plant saved my life.”
Marsden was an “artillery man” in the Marine Corps for 24 years, but that’s all he’ll say about his military service.
He had PTSD long before that anyway, he said, from “a really brutal upbringing.”
Before he began treating his PTSD and other chronic ailments, including prostate cancer, with medical marijuana, he said he was taking “a plethora of pills: anti-depressants, anti-psychotics – and then they had me on pick-me-up stuff and knock-me-down stuff.”
Today, he’s a grower specializing in strains that help veterans cope with their PTSD and chronic pain, and he said he’s created a cross-breed that’s particularly effective in treating PTSD.
Three years ago, he crossed Pre-79 Euphoria with pure Afghan Skunk while trying to create a new strain for chronic pain, he said.
“A person who is in pain 24 hours a day is predisposed to be an asshole,” he said. The Euphoria acts as a mood changer, while the Afghan Skunk was “one of the strongest pain relievers in the garden,” he said.
“Working for PTSD was a total accident,” he said, but as it turned out smokers discovered it was turning off many PTSD triggers, such as over-alertness and an over-awareness of sights, sounds and colors.
He called the new strain Eughanie and has been growing it for veterans suffering from PTSD ever since. The strain is available through Rainbeaux Farms and Marsden’s offshoot project, an education-based nursery called U’Canna Tu .
Many of the veterans Marsden works with have limited means. He said he typically provides them with some finished product for immediate use, but also a clone of Eughanie or other effective strain that will eventually yield enough bud to last them six months to a year.
He said many growers harvest six weeks too soon, which doesn’t allow the medicinal qualities in the plant to fully develop. That’s why he teaches veterans how to grow properly, to maximize the medicinal benefits. His pupils call him and stop by with their questions. He seems to have time for anyone who needs it.
It’s like the old Chinese proverb, he said, “Teach a man to fish.”
He said it’s never been about the money for him. “It’s about lives.” His nursery survives mainly on donations.
“In most cases, most of the vets who come here end up getting a strain for free,” he said.
In cases where his clients rent or live in public housing, he’ll tend the plants for them in his garden until they’re ready to start flowering. He explained that most of the vivacious, towering outdoor plants we were standing among actually belonged to clients.
He pointed to a plant he called Ice by Nirvana, saying it works for both moderate pain and “frightmares,” the insomnia-invoking flashbacks many veterans with PTSD experience at night. Vortex is another strain he grows that’s popular among vets. “It diminishes the pain but also gets them up off the couch,” he said.
But he’s just one in a vast network of veterans who grow medical marijuana, he said.
“Veterans all over the state grow it for themselves and for guys at their local American Legions and VFWs,” he said. “They keep it on the down-low because of the fact that they don’t want any issues – they are trying to protect their guys.”
He said many of them live in Oregon counties that declined to legalize recreational production and sales, and some live in states that still prohibit marijuana altogether, such as Idaho.
Access denied
While medical marijuana is legal in 25 states and in Washington D.C., to many veterans living within those jurisdictions, it doesn’t feel that way.
Many veterans are hesitant to discuss their legal marijuana use openly for fear it might jeopardize their benefits, the outcome of open disability claims or, in cases such as Anthony’s, their employment.
That’s in part because doctors working at clinics and hospitals for the Department of Veterans Affairs, where most veterans get their medical needs met, are prohibited from recommending marijuana to their patients, even in states where it’s legal.
Since 2010, however, the agency has permitted veterans living in states where medical marijuana is legal to seek the drug outside of the federal system.
Dr. David Lynam, a psychiatrist with the PTSD Clinical Team at the VA hospital in Vancouver, Wash., said he has patients who tell him they use cannabis to treat their PTSD, and that disclosure is not something that would cause them to lose their benefits or preclude them from services in any way.
He said he’s quite interested in hearing whether cannabis is working for his patients, who typically prefer indica – the more sedative and relaxing of the two major types of cannabis plants.
“Regarding cannabis,” he said, “I have not seen a high-quality, objective study for its use in treating PTSD. However it appears to be widely used in the community to treat PTSD symptoms. Many of the veterans I see tell me they smoke or ingest cannabis, and several have a positive benefit for sleep in particular.”
For many veterans, the stance their former employer takes on marijuana makes them uneasy; the federal government still categorizes marijuana as a Schedule I drug, on par with heroin as an illegal and highly addictive street drug with no medical benefits.
When the Drug Enforcement Administration denied petitions to reclassify marijuana this past month, several veterans who were initially willing to go on the record with Street Roots about their marijuana use changed their minds, citing their fear of repercussions from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
“There is no way I would talk to you about it,” one veteran who uses medical marijuana said. “I have an open claim.”
This past month, the Obama administration ended the monopoly the University of Mississippi had on being the only source of marijuana for research, however new sources will need to apply for licenses and new research projects will need approval from federal agencies including the DEA and FDA. This change will allow a wider variety of plant strains to be studied.
“The DEA is a nightmare. It’s just completely locked into the war-on-drugs mentality,” said U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon) .
FURTHER READING: Where Oregon stands in the war on drugs
Blumenauer has been fighting for veterans to gain access to medical marijuana by championing the cause in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“It is nonsensical for the federal government to place these restrictions on the Veterans Administration,” he said.
“The VA prescribes opioids far above the national average for veterans, and they die of overdoses at singularly high rates,” Blumenauer said. “It’s quite clear that medical marijuana has therapeutic benefits for veterans. I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had with veterans and their families who claim that this has been life-altering for them – and it doesn’t carry the toxic consequence of opioids.”
In March, PBS’s “Frontline” reported 60 percent of veterans returning from the Middle East suffer from chronic pain, and until a few years ago, the VA was treating that pain almost exclusively with opioids. Now, according to the report, 68,000 veterans have opioid abuse disorders.
Additionally, Health Affairs published research in July showing that in states where medical marijuana is legal, prescriptions for opioid painkillers and anti-depressants are down among Medicare patients. In 2013 alone, medical marijuana was estimated to have saved taxpayers $165.2 million in states where it is legal, the study concluded.
Blumenauer came close to getting veterans easier access to medical marijuana earlier this year when he attached an amendment to a military spending bill that would have enabled VA doctors to recommend medical marijuana as a treatment option.
The amendment had garnered the support it needed to pass in both chambers, with 57 Republicans in favor, Blumenauer said.
But in the very early morning hours of June 23, as House Democrats were holding a sit-in for gun safety following the Orlando nightclub shooting, the amendment was gutted in a conference committee chaired by Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Illinois). The funding bill was then hastily brought up for a vote that same night.
Just after 3 a.m., the House passed the legislation, with members largely unaware that the provision allowing VA doctors to prescribe marijuana in states where it is legal to do so had been removed.
While last-minute late-night legislation gutting is not a common committee tactic, it can happen. Regardless, Blumenauer said he’s going to keep pushing.
But the VA’s Dr. Lynam said if Blumenauer’s bill were to pass today, he’s not sure it would make much of a difference.
“We don’t have a lot of scientific medical research literature to help guide us,” he said, “and we rely on that in giving people treatment, so until that exists, I don’t know how that bill would help us, really.”
Ultimately, Lynam said, he wants to know more.
“We need to figure out what this stuff can do,” he said.
“There’s this big experiment going on out there in the community, where people are using marijuana to treat PTSD, and to treat pain and migraines and insomnia. I’m trying to understand if they are having any success, because we have very little research data that can guide us.”
On Aug. 30, the American Legion, the largest military veterans organization in the U.S., passed a resolution asking Congress to at least recognize marijuana’s potential for medicinal benefits and, in part, cited the DEA’s approval of the MAPS study of military veterans and smoked marijuana to treat PTSD beginning this month.
But even if the results of the study do show therapeutic benefits, MAPS spokesperson Burge said it’s just the beginning of what will likely be a 10- to 15-year process before marijuana is FDA approved as a prescribable drug.
“Even if all states were to approve medical marijuana, insurance companies still aren’t going to cover it, doctors still aren’t going to be able to prescribe it, and physicians and patients aren’t going to have access to the information that they need to be able to prescribe it adequately,” he said. “We’re aiming at federally legal prescription access, which comes with all the additional benefits that are not covered at the state level.”
In the meantime, Blumenauer said he will continue to push the federal government toward more in-touch marijuana policies.
“If we have some of the key Republican leadership opposed, it’s a bit of a long shot,” he said, “but ultimately, we’re going to get it. A majority of both the House and the Senate support it – and it’s the right thing to do.”
emily@streetroots.org
