In Indiana, the drugs that nearly destroyed my life were perfectly legal. Doctors administered them through IV lines while I lay in hospital beds: morphine, fentanyl, Dilaudid. I wasn’t chasing a high. I was a patient, and I trusted the system.
Between 2014 and 2019, my life became a revolving door of hospital admissions. I would arrive sick and in pain, get stabilized with powerful opioids, begin to feel normal again, and eventually be discharged. For a while, things would seem fine. Then something would go wrong, and I’d end up right back where I started—another ambulance ride, another hospital bed, another IV line delivering the same medications.
At the time, I didn’t question any of it. I believed the hospital was helping me. No one ever explained how dependency could develop quietly underneath the surface. I thought I was just dealing with an illness that kept returning.
Looking back now, the pattern seems obvious. At the time, it didn’t.
When the Pattern Became Clear
The opioid cycle doesn’t always announce itself. It builds slowly until one day you realize your life revolves around it.
During those years, I watched the opioid epidemic claim people around me—friends, family members, a brother-in-law, cousins, my best friend’s son. Some overdosed. Others disappeared from the lives they once had. I didn’t think my story belonged in the same category. I wasn’t buying drugs on the street. I wasn’t trying to get high. I was a patient.
But by 2019, I was exhausted in a way that sleep couldn’t fix. That’s when I finally started to question the pattern—not just the illness, but the cycle itself. By then, the physical and emotional toll had caught up with me. There were nights when the weight of it all felt unbearable.
One afternoon, I was sitting at home, overwhelmed and crying harder than I can remember. My granddaughter Melody was about two-and-a-half years old. She didn’t understand addiction or hospitals or fear. She just saw her grandpa crying.
She walked over, climbed into my lap, and sat there quietly until she fell asleep. In that moment, a thought hit me that stopped everything: how could I leave this child behind?
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. That moment forced me to face what I had been avoiding. If nothing changed, the cycle I was trapped in was eventually going to kill me.
The Illegal Alternative
Not long after that, cannabis entered my life. In Indiana, cannabis was still illegal. Possession alone could bring legal consequences. At the same time, I had spent years legally receiving some of the most powerful opioids available inside hospitals.
That contradiction didn’t make sense to me.
Still, I approached cannabis carefully. I wasn’t trying to make a statement or chase a high. I was looking for a way to stabilize my life and step away from a cycle that had defined six years of it. Slowly, things began to change.
My sleep improved. My anxiety eased. My body and mind began to settle in ways they hadn’t in years. Most importantly, the revolving door of hospital admissions slowed—and then stopped. Cannabis didn’t erase the past, and it wasn’t a miracle cure. But it gave me something I hadn’t had in years: a way forward.
The drugs I trusted were legal. The plant that helped me was not. The first time I tried cannabis wasn’t dramatic. There was no party, no sense of rebellion. It was quiet. By that point, I had spent years being treated with medications that carried serious risks, all administered under medical supervision. Yet the plant in front of me was the one considered dangerous.
I approached it the only way I knew how—carefully. Not to get high. Not to prove a point. Just to see if it could help me steady myself long enough to step off the cycle I had been stuck in. Looking back, that moment didn’t change everything overnight. But it changed the direction of my life.
The Conversation We Still Avoid
Today, Indiana remains surrounded by states that have moved toward cannabis legalization or medical programs—Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, even Kentucky—while it continues to treat the plant as if the national conversation hasn’t changed.
Meanwhile, the opioid crisis hasn’t gone anywhere. There is no single solution to addiction. Recovery is complicated and deeply personal. But ignoring tools that may help people reduce harm doesn’t solve anything either. I’m not claiming cannabis is the answer for everyone. What I know is simpler than that.
For years, I trusted a system that kept pulling me back into the same cycle. The thing that finally helped me step away from it was something my state still considers illegal. Today, I’m still here. Many people I knew during those years are not.
I still get to hold my granddaughter. That’s reason enough to start having a more honest conversation.
This article is from an external, unpaid contributor. It does not represent High Times’ reporting and has not been edited for content or accuracy.
