Patient:
Sugam Soni
Age:
26
Condition:
Back pain, shoulder pain, nausea
Home:
Oakland
Using medical cannabis since:
I have been using cannabis for 12 years, but I’ve been a patient for about four years.
Why did you start using medical marijuana?
When I was a student I would often use cannabis for recreational purposes. Later, I learned that it was also effective at helping me focus on my studies. In 1999 and 2001, I got a lot of sports-related injuries while I was in high school. I played basketball, hockey, football and did wrestling. Later on I realized I had done a lot of damage to myself during that time, but when you are that young you think you are invulnerable. After I started feeling pain from my injuries, I started taking prescription painkillers, but they had a lot of harmful side effects. I realized cannabis was just better. I also use medical marijuana for nausea. Cannabis has really helped me deal with a bad stomach I have from living a bad lifestyle and having a bad diet when I was young. I had always had mild stomach problems, but they got worse as I got older. So I can say it’s great for treating nausea.
Did you try other methods or treatments before marijuana?
Other than the medicine the doctors would give me, no. I tried other alternative pain medications like aspirin, Tylenol and ibuprofen, but nothing was as effective. I’ve also gotten into other alternative medicines like yoga and acupuncture.
What’s the most important issue or problem facing medical marijuana patients in California?
We face a kind of different issue than other countries. We have some fairly lax laws compared to the rest of the states. What scares me is that people are starting to look at cannabis as a corporate entity, instead of a plant that comes from nature. The love for the plant is going away and is being replaced by the big corporate growers. I’m an activist at heart, and I’m also for legalization, but I don’t want the plant to get abused. In the medical cannabis community so many more franchises are starting to spring up. I guess it’s a good thing for legalization, but it feels like it’s starting to get abused.
What do you say to people who are skeptical about marijuana as medicine?
First of all, lot of people think smoking cannabis makes you lazy. Well, I pay the bills, am very active in the community and work a full-time job. I’m also a student . . . At the clinic where I work I’ve seen more patients than I can count ditch their expensive medicines for cannabis.
Our “Profiles in Courage” features are intended to highlight the problems—and solutions—that the Bay Area’s medical marijuana patients face every day.
