In 2003, when Colorado craft cannabis farmer Danny Sloat was 21 years old, he woke up with terrible stomach pains that landed him in the hospital for four days and no diagnosis.
“They gave me Vicodin,” he shared. “That was in September, and by June of the next year I was needing time-released patches at 150 micrograms an hour, 24 hours a day, or 3.4 milligrams total in a day; with 600 micrograms a day of Fentanyl candy lollipops needed for break-through pain.”
Sloat said at the height of his Fentanyl use he was up to 5.6 milligrams a day – more than twice the lethal dose.
“I went through a slew of other medications and ended up on OxyContin and Oxycodone, because the muscle pain gets worse on Fentanyl” he continued. “I was sleeping 16 hours a day on my right side—like I was in a coma. I believe this caused a nerve impingement condition called Thoracic Outlet Syndrome.“
According to the Mayo Clinic, Thoracic Outlet Syndrome (TOS) is a group of disorders that occur when blood vessels and/or nerves in the space between the collarbone and the first rib—comprising the thoracic outlet—are compressed, causing pain in shoulders and neck, with numbness in fingers.
After all was said and done, the final diagnosis was actually a combination of auto-immune issues, including hyper-active immune disorder, asthma, colitis, and chronic muscle inflammation.
“Turns out a high dose of Tagamet could have helped me in the first place, as it calms down the immune system,” he shared. “But, without a diagnosis, in order to quell the pain, I became addicted to these heavy-duty pain killers.”
Sloat was also diagnosed with Acoustic neuroma, a non-cancerous tumor in his inner ear, or auditory nerve, affecting his hearing. To remove it a surgeon cut his valence nerve, with the other …
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Author: Sharon Letts / High Times
