Rediscovering marijuana paved the way for healing and higher learning | Medicinal

Debi Facey’s work accident changed her views of pain medication and launched a deeper exploration into how cannabis can help feel better

Skyler Ash

 

Debi Facey has been using cannabis since she was 14, although it had always been just for fun; she never really thought twice about what it could do for her beyond a good time.

But that all changed in 2012, when Facey, 24 at the time, suffered a work-related accident.

A customer approached her in a Forever 21 store, where she was working on the sales floor, and asked to see a piece of clothing on a display mannequin. Quickly grabbing the clothing, she didn’t realize a metal rod had sliced her left hand, didn’t immediately feel the metal cut deep, didn’t notice the blood start to drip to the floor—that is, until the customer started to scream.

Facey had sliced through a tendon on the index finger of her left hand. The motion took mere seconds, yet to this day, the nerves in her left arm, from that index finger up to her elbow, remain damaged.

She says she has been told she will continue to experience some pain and her hand will never regain its full strength and range of motion.

For more than four years, Facey struggled through intense rehabilitation and four surgeries.

Entering her fifth year of recovery, she—and her body—had grown tired of the medications she was regimented, feeling like they didn’t work as well as they once did and that she was growing dependent on them. Tied to a strict schedule of taking Gabapentin, Facey felt stuck.

Cannabis credited with changing how she healed

Frustrated, she turned her focus to cannabis. Facey had read up on Gabapentin, and wasn’t too pleased to find out it could negatively interact with other medications, and that it could become addictive in some cases.

Facey was able to get a medical user card through the Apollo Cannabis Clinics. By the end of 2015, she had started using medical cannabis, either smoking or through a bong.

With Gabapentin, she told The GrowthOp, “it’s all about a set schedule. When it came to cannabis, it allowed me to start using it when I needed it,” taking it to stay on the schedule she was prescribed, she says.

The transition took about two weeks and, Facey believes, changed the way her body healed. She slowly phased out the pills and worked in the cannabis.

“When I started using medical cannabis more (at higher than her initial dosage), I found myself just being able to be more chill. I just wasn’t on edge,” she says.

It was a far different experience than with Gabapentin, which she describes as feeling in a state of withdrawal, something that only contributed to her stress. She says she felt like her body was responding positively to cannabis more so than it was with Gabapentin.

Statistics Canada reports that about one in five medical users consume cannabis daily. For Facey, she started with a dose of one g a day and now vapes about 1.5 to two g of CBD daily, using either a hybrid of 60/40 sativa or a 70/30 indica.

“I usually do smoke from my bong, just due to the fact that I don’t necessarily like using paper and vapes,” Facey says, although she does occasionally vape. She’s also an oral and topical user, adding a few drops of oil to a smoothie in the morning, or applying a homemade topical treatment—the product of hours upon hours of personal research—in the shower.

Research spurred passion that helped to build a whole new approach

Facey’s research to identify what she could do to help herself ignited a passion, one that led her to become the founder of EveryTing Canna, an educational workshop series and blog focused on informing everyday people about cannabis use and identifying the strains that might be right for them. Now 31, she is looking to use her knowledge to make smarter choices for her own body and to help others, however she can, do the same.

To those who are considering becoming a medical user, Facey emphasizes the need to brush up on one’s knowledge. “Do your research. You know you,” she says. In her case, her first research came from the Internet before she added to the store of knowledge through books and scientific studies.

A vendor points out marijuana buds for sale at a cannabis market in Seattle in this 2013 file photo. Elaine Thompson / Associated Press

Creating a new outlook on recreational use

Using cannabis medicinally changed the way Facey viewed recreational use, she says. While she still uses cannabis recreationally, she now does so for the benefit of her body and of her mind, pointing out that she consumes cannabis to help ease her anxiety, depression and dissociative identity disorder.

“Medical cannabis has changed my life drastically,” Facey says, relaying that it gave her a path back into the world of cannabis—not just as a user, but as an educator and content creator. “It’s allowed me to broaden my own personal use,” she says, and offer experience that, hopefully, can help others.

Statistics Canada figures from the final quarter of 2018 note that almost one in five Canadians will use cannabis in the next three months, and about 4.6 million have already used cannabis in the last three months.

“I think that’s one thing that is really important when it comes to recreational/medical cannabis,” says Facey. “We are all utilizing it for the same thing, which is (to feel better).