56: Opiates & Medical Cannabis with Peter Grinspoon
The Addicted Mind Podcast
Duane Osterlind, LMFT
4.7 • 655 Ratings
🗓️ 2 January 2019
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of The Addicted Mind podcast, we are joined by Peter Grinspoon, a primary care physician in the Boston area who is an advocate of medical cannabis.
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During medical school, Peter and a few of his classmates decided to try a sample of Vicodin to see if they could experience the euphoric side effects. While his friends tried it that once and never felt compelled to try it again, Peter immediately felt the need to find another high. This feeling was exacerbated by the stress of the medical profession and the easy accessibility of medications, and throughout 10 years, he battled an opioid addiction. Ultimately, this addiction led him to trouble with the law, a 90-day rehab program, and a few relapses, but 3.5 years later, Peter had progressed in his recovery enough to get his medical license back. He credits his successful recovery to the support he received from his family, friends, and Physician Health Program.
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Peter is an advocate of medical cannabis treatment as an alternative to help avoid and treat opioid addictions. Cannabis can effectively be used to treat chronic pain either in conjunction with or in the place of opioids. Baby Boomers are particularly open to trying this treatment and Peter anticipates that more people will be willing once the US government legitimizes its uses and changes the classification.
Contrary to what people may think, medical cannabis does not have to be smoked and does not have to give the user a high because different chemicals within the marijuana plant can be isolated to be used in treatment.
There is a hurtful stigma within the recovery community that insinuates that medically-assisted treatment is not adherence to the “zero tolerance” rule. Peter says that rehab programs that do not recognize the values of medically-assisted treatments are becoming irrelevant as a result of this stigma and he hopes that they will learn to adapt to the times.
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He also emphasizes the significance and importance to an addict of the love and support from family and friends. Even though they may have given up on themselves, it could mean all the difference for them to know that you will not give up on them.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | All right, everyone, welcome to episode 56 of the Addicted Mind podcast. |
| 0:10.8 | My name is Dwayne Austerlund, and I'm your host, and I'm also the founder of Novis Mindful |
| 0:14.9 | Life Institute, family counseling and recovery in Long Beach, California. |
| 0:19.1 | If you or anyone you know is struggling with |
| 0:22.5 | addiction or any of life's challenges, please reach out to us. We can definitely help. You can find more |
| 0:29.3 | information about us at theadictedmind.com forward slash help. If you're enjoying the addicted mind, |
| 0:35.8 | please rate and review us in iTunes. That really does |
| 0:38.5 | help get us a lot of exposure. I think we're almost up to 100 reviews. Pretty amazing. I didn't |
| 0:44.8 | even think that many people would listen to the podcast. And to get almost to 100 reviews, |
| 0:50.3 | blows me away. So if you're enjoying the Addicted Mind podcast, please rate and review us in iTunes. |
| 0:57.4 | That really does help and I really appreciate it. And it lets me know that people are getting a lot |
| 1:03.2 | out of this podcast. So thank you so much for doing that. Also, if you're interested to further |
| 1:09.8 | the discussion, we have the Addicted Mind |
| 1:13.2 | podcast Facebook group. Just go into Facebook, search the Addicted Mind podcast, and we'll come up. |
| 1:19.7 | Click and join. We have a lot of discussion and going on in there about addiction and addiction |
| 1:25.0 | treatment and what's going on. So if you're interested in that, |
| 1:28.3 | please go and find us on Facebook. Okay, our guest today is Peter Grinspoon, and he is going to talk |
| 1:38.2 | about medical cannabis and how it can help prevent addiction and especially opioid addiction for chronic pain |
| 1:48.5 | and issues like that and also how it may be helpful in the treatment of addiction as well. |
| 1:54.6 | So it's a wonderful discussion. He is in recovery himself from an opioid addiction. |
| 1:59.8 | So he definitely understands it and shares a little bit |
| 2:02.2 | of his story about how he got recovery and was able to overcome that and how he now supports |
... |
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