The Effects of CBD on Opioid Addiction: A Personal Journey

As I reflect on my journey with marijuana and CBD, I am reminded of how far I've come. Growing up, I was introduced to the world of cannabis through friends who were familiar with its benefits for pain management. At first, it was just a way to relax and unwind after a long day, but as time went on, I began to realize that my reliance on marijuana was a symptom of deeper issues. The constant need for Vicodin and Norco to manage the pain from my hip injury had taken a toll on me, and I knew I needed to find alternative solutions.

I was one of the lucky ones who found relief in the world of CBD. After being told by some dispensaries that pure CBD from the hemp plant might be able to help with anxiety and mood regulation, I decided to give it a try. At first, I didn't feel any immediate relief, but after about 30 days of consistent use, I started to feel normal again. It was as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders, and I could finally breathe easily once more.

For me, CBD has been a game-changer in managing my anxiety and stress levels. After years of struggling with the highs and lows of marijuana, I'm thrilled to have found an alternative that doesn't come with the same risks. As I look back on my journey, I realize that I was pretty out of it for a while, and that's one of the effects that I really didn't like about marijuana. I was lucky to find a solution that worked for me, but I know that not everyone will be as fortunate.

As someone who has been in the public eye, particularly as a former professional cyclist, I've had the opportunity to meet many people who are struggling with opioid addiction. It's heartbreaking to see how the stigma surrounding substance abuse can prevent people from seeking help. That's why CBD seems like an appealing option for some – it's easier to access and try without the risks associated with other substances.

However, as a businessman and CEO of a marijuana company, I also know that there's reason to be skeptical about CBD. Researchers are still in the early stages of understanding its effects, and we need more studies to confirm its efficacy as a treatment for opioid addiction. That being said, I'm hopeful that CBD will continue to emerge as a viable option for those struggling with pain management and withdrawal.

My own journey into the world of cannabis began when I started using it to manage my chronic pain after a cycling injury. At first, it was just a way to cope with the discomfort, but over time, I found myself relying on it more and more. As I delved deeper into the world of marijuana, I realized that the THC side effects were too much for me – I didn't want to feel high all day, every day. That's when I discovered the benefits of CBD, which offered a much-needed respite from the highs and lows of THC.

As I transitioned from being a user to a businessman in the cannabis industry, I was hesitant at first. I wasn't sure if I wanted my name on a product that I had once used for recreational purposes, but I knew that I needed to be involved in something that helped people. Colorado's law change made it possible for me to turn my passion into a career, and I've been fortunate enough to build a business around products that I believe in.

Now, as the CEO of my company, I'm constantly reminded of the importance of caution when it comes to CBD. We're not yet sure what its full potential is, and we need to be mindful of the risks associated with any substance. That's why I encourage people not to have too high of an expectation on CBD as a treatment for their pain and opioid withdrawal. While it shows promise, we still have a lot to learn.

I spoke with researchers who are studying CBD more closely, and they acknowledged that while there is reason to be hopeful about its efficacy, we can't yet say definitively if it will work for most people. However, I'm committed to continuing the research and working towards finding solutions that will help those struggling with addiction and pain management.

As someone who has been on both sides of the cannabis debate – from being a user to becoming a businessman – I've learned a valuable lesson: that there's more to this industry than just the highs and lows. There are people like me, who have found relief in CBD, and researchers working tirelessly to understand its effects. It's time for us to take a step back and approach this topic with caution and curiosity, rather than skepticism and fear.

My journey with marijuana and CBD has been nothing short of transformative. From the highs and lows of THC to the calming effects of CBD, I've learned that there are different substances for different needs. While it's not without its risks, I believe in the potential of CBD to help those struggling with pain management and opioid addiction.

As we move forward, I encourage people to approach CBD with an open mind and a critical eye. Let's work together to uncover the truth about this substance and find solutions that will help us all – whether you're a user, a business owner, or someone struggling with addiction. The journey ahead won't be easy, but with caution, curiosity, and a commitment to understanding, I have no doubt that we'll make progress and discover new ways to alleviate suffering.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhen I look back on that time period where I was on a lot of medications I actually had so many that my medicine cabinet was just a bunch of yellow bottles I would take you know between 15 and 20 norco pills a day you'd be surprised you know you've build up a tolerance to it and it doesn't take long the opioid epidemic is a huge problem and people are eager for any alternative ways to try to ease the problem research in general has shown that cannabis is effective for treating pains but what we don't know is how to really use it effectively what we're trying to understand is if a person takes 10 milligrams of THC or a person takes 10 milligrams of CBD how is that going to affect their symptom of pain CBD is short for cannabidiol and it's a compound found in cannabis plants which includes both hemp and marijuana and unlike THC which is another well-known compound found in cannabis CBD won't get you high we know for sure that when people take opioids over time they need to take more in order to get the same effect and we also know that they have withdrawal if they don't have opioids on board so those are two physiologic aspects to opioid dependence that we don't have with cannabis so that tolerance and the withdrawal so the opioids occupy specific receptors which are called opioid receptors and THC and CBD occupy endocannabinoid receptors now the real question is whether if you occupy the endocannabinoid receptors do you get enough pain relief that you don't need your opioid receptors occupied so most likely what will happen is that there will be some people who will be able to taper off opioids because of cannabis and there will be a lot of people who are not able to I think people dealing with chronic pain it's about managing the pain so that you can live your life and be functional on a scale of one to ten ten being the worst how would you rate your pain while on opioids on a one to ten scale I'd probably say three or four on average on the heavy opioids so what's it like now on CBD and now it's probably consistent five which for me with everything that I'm dealing with from injuries and illness that for me is manageable I served active duty in the Navy for four years I was injured right off the bat I tripped over the catch wire carrying roughly a hundred and eighty pounds worth of tie-down chains so I basically destroyed my left knee and my lower back simultaneously when were you first prescribed opioids or opiates in 2000 when I destroyed my knee and for how long did you take them 13 years so I had gone from basically naproxen to tram it all to vicodin and oxy and in the end I was taking morphine tablets and for me looking back my mental state just it was like I was there but I wasn't it was just like a shell of me hi here's Veronica but she's not present she's faking it so what I made an appointment with my primary care physician at the time she actually recommended that I go out and get a card for medical marijuana and see if that was effective for me and how high did you feel I was pretty out of it for a while and that was one of the effects that I really didn't like about marijuana so I talked to some of the dispensaries about you know what can I do to kind of mitigate this feeling and they had actually suggested trying pure CBD from the hemp plant and did you feel relief immediately with the CBD I didn't really feel relief right away but I felt like after about 30 days of consistently taking it I started to feel normal again and how do you feel now today um I feel alive you know I don't I don't feel like the world is coming down on top of me anymore and for me that's big it's important to remember that there are effective treatments for opioid addiction and those are things such as methadone but they're not accessible to all people so that's why CBD seems like an appealing option for some other people it's easier for them to just go to a store perhaps and get it and try it there is reason to be skeptical about this no researchers are saying go out and buy CBD and quit your opioids cold-turkey this is going to be great there's a lot of trial and error involved in figuring out if this is going to work my name is Floyd Landis currently the CEO and founder of a marijuana company essentially and we also make products out of hemp and prior to that how do people know Floyd Landis prior to that I was a bicycle racer for a period of time while natori France in 2006 which was followed by some long drawn-out drama in any case yes that was my first career in life was a cyclist you know in cycling it's not that uncommon to just use you know vicodin and things like that for for paying even even during races which frankly is not particularly safe after the 2006 Tour de France I had my hip replaced because I had a bad injury so I was prescribed you know vicodin and Norco to manage it the pain after the surgery over a period of a couple years you know I just increased the dose so yeah it's it's the kind of thing where it doesn't take that long to get addicted to them but it takes a while to realize what it's actually doing initially I started using marijuana because I thought okay this is people are saying this is great for pain and I hadn't really ever used marijuana and you know it's fun to get high from time to time but some people don't function well if they're high and I can't just stay high all day no no I want to be so you know over time we just sort of you know figured out that look you know the CBD side of it has it's just as as much medicinal benefit as the THC side of it and I preferred the higher CBD strains and so you know at some point we decided look why don't we just try CV on its own so take me from the time when you go from sort of user to businessman it took a little time for me to decide because of Who I am whether I wanted to have my name on it or not and I just didn't know what the public response would be I mean the jokes write themselves honestly so I was living in Colorado at that time and marijuana became legal recreationally and so I just started using it and that's more or less how I got interested in being in the business you know I don't I don't know I'm not a great salesman if I'm just selling something for the sake of trying to sell it but it's something that I cared about and it helped me dramatically and so I thought it would be a good thing for me to you know be involved in in almost every state in this country you can get CBD and every one of those labels says something different and people are taking it because they're desperate in fact I discourage them from using CBD that's over-the-counter but I know that CBD is helpful if there were an over kind of over the kind of product that we could trust you know that we could say this is how much CBD is in this many milliliters of this oil and this has been third-party tested and we know it doesn't have contaminants in it and it's safe I would probably feel okay about recommending that so if we knew that I would be fine with that but we don't know that right now it's important not to have too high of an expectation on this as a treatment for your pain and for weaning off of opioids because we really don't know yet if this is going to be effective for most people and I talked to the researchers who were you know looking into this more closely and I asked them why are you researching this and they also said look we can't say that this is going to work but we're hopeful that it will and that's why we're studyingwhen I look back on that time period where I was on a lot of medications I actually had so many that my medicine cabinet was just a bunch of yellow bottles I would take you know between 15 and 20 norco pills a day you'd be surprised you know you've build up a tolerance to it and it doesn't take long the opioid epidemic is a huge problem and people are eager for any alternative ways to try to ease the problem research in general has shown that cannabis is effective for treating pains but what we don't know is how to really use it effectively what we're trying to understand is if a person takes 10 milligrams of THC or a person takes 10 milligrams of CBD how is that going to affect their symptom of pain CBD is short for cannabidiol and it's a compound found in cannabis plants which includes both hemp and marijuana and unlike THC which is another well-known compound found in cannabis CBD won't get you high we know for sure that when people take opioids over time they need to take more in order to get the same effect and we also know that they have withdrawal if they don't have opioids on board so those are two physiologic aspects to opioid dependence that we don't have with cannabis so that tolerance and the withdrawal so the opioids occupy specific receptors which are called opioid receptors and THC and CBD occupy endocannabinoid receptors now the real question is whether if you occupy the endocannabinoid receptors do you get enough pain relief that you don't need your opioid receptors occupied so most likely what will happen is that there will be some people who will be able to taper off opioids because of cannabis and there will be a lot of people who are not able to I think people dealing with chronic pain it's about managing the pain so that you can live your life and be functional on a scale of one to ten ten being the worst how would you rate your pain while on opioids on a one to ten scale I'd probably say three or four on average on the heavy opioids so what's it like now on CBD and now it's probably consistent five which for me with everything that I'm dealing with from injuries and illness that for me is manageable I served active duty in the Navy for four years I was injured right off the bat I tripped over the catch wire carrying roughly a hundred and eighty pounds worth of tie-down chains so I basically destroyed my left knee and my lower back simultaneously when were you first prescribed opioids or opiates in 2000 when I destroyed my knee and for how long did you take them 13 years so I had gone from basically naproxen to tram it all to vicodin and oxy and in the end I was taking morphine tablets and for me looking back my mental state just it was like I was there but I wasn't it was just like a shell of me hi here's Veronica but she's not present she's faking it so what I made an appointment with my primary care physician at the time she actually recommended that I go out and get a card for medical marijuana and see if that was effective for me and how high did you feel I was pretty out of it for a while and that was one of the effects that I really didn't like about marijuana so I talked to some of the dispensaries about you know what can I do to kind of mitigate this feeling and they had actually suggested trying pure CBD from the hemp plant and did you feel relief immediately with the CBD I didn't really feel relief right away but I felt like after about 30 days of consistently taking it I started to feel normal again and how do you feel now today um I feel alive you know I don't I don't feel like the world is coming down on top of me anymore and for me that's big it's important to remember that there are effective treatments for opioid addiction and those are things such as methadone but they're not accessible to all people so that's why CBD seems like an appealing option for some other people it's easier for them to just go to a store perhaps and get it and try it there is reason to be skeptical about this no researchers are saying go out and buy CBD and quit your opioids cold-turkey this is going to be great there's a lot of trial and error involved in figuring out if this is going to work my name is Floyd Landis currently the CEO and founder of a marijuana company essentially and we also make products out of hemp and prior to that how do people know Floyd Landis prior to that I was a bicycle racer for a period of time while natori France in 2006 which was followed by some long drawn-out drama in any case yes that was my first career in life was a cyclist you know in cycling it's not that uncommon to just use you know vicodin and things like that for for paying even even during races which frankly is not particularly safe after the 2006 Tour de France I had my hip replaced because I had a bad injury so I was prescribed you know vicodin and Norco to manage it the pain after the surgery over a period of a couple years you know I just increased the dose so yeah it's it's the kind of thing where it doesn't take that long to get addicted to them but it takes a while to realize what it's actually doing initially I started using marijuana because I thought okay this is people are saying this is great for pain and I hadn't really ever used marijuana and you know it's fun to get high from time to time but some people don't function well if they're high and I can't just stay high all day no no I want to be so you know over time we just sort of you know figured out that look you know the CBD side of it has it's just as as much medicinal benefit as the THC side of it and I preferred the higher CBD strains and so you know at some point we decided look why don't we just try CV on its own so take me from the time when you go from sort of user to businessman it took a little time for me to decide because of Who I am whether I wanted to have my name on it or not and I just didn't know what the public response would be I mean the jokes write themselves honestly so I was living in Colorado at that time and marijuana became legal recreationally and so I just started using it and that's more or less how I got interested in being in the business you know I don't I don't know I'm not a great salesman if I'm just selling something for the sake of trying to sell it but it's something that I cared about and it helped me dramatically and so I thought it would be a good thing for me to you know be involved in in almost every state in this country you can get CBD and every one of those labels says something different and people are taking it because they're desperate in fact I discourage them from using CBD that's over-the-counter but I know that CBD is helpful if there were an over kind of over the kind of product that we could trust you know that we could say this is how much CBD is in this many milliliters of this oil and this has been third-party tested and we know it doesn't have contaminants in it and it's safe I would probably feel okay about recommending that so if we knew that I would be fine with that but we don't know that right now it's important not to have too high of an expectation on this as a treatment for your pain and for weaning off of opioids because we really don't know yet if this is going to be effective for most people and I talked to the researchers who were you know looking into this more closely and I asked them why are you researching this and they also said look we can't say that this is going to work but we're hopeful that it will and that's why we're studying\n"