For the past six or seven years, getting your medical marijuana recommendation in California has been ridiculously easy. More often than not, you'll find some sort of advertisement to a "doctor's" office, likely in some sort of industrial office building with a sign that reads "Dr. Green Medical - 2nd floor, suite 246."
Once you get in, chances are some absentminded pothead is working the front desk, at which point you wonder what the odds are that homeboy is paid in nugs. He has you fill out a bunch of standard information about health history and whatnot, all while other people are shuffling in and out of the doctor's office like a line of cars making a u-turn.
After waiting for a short time, you finally make it inside.
"Have a seat."
"Oh, thank you."
"So what sort of issues are you dealing with? Do you suffer from insomnia, glaucoma or pain?"
"Um...yes?"
"Dope, dope. Here you go!"
And just like that, you've got yourself a medical marijuana recommendation. No waiting weeks for it to come in the mail, no approval requirement from any higher ups, none of that nonsense. I mean, I told my "doctor" that I suffer from anorexia, and I probably eat enough junk food every day to shut down a 7-Eleven by 3pm.
So, with all this in mind, I decided to find out what the acceptable reasons are for getting a medical marijuana license in the Golden State. A lot of them were reasonable or understandable; even more of them were just, for lack of a better term, complete fuckery. So with that...
*Warning: these are solely MY opinions on these diseases/disorders and were intended only to be rapid fire reactions to seemingly absurd reasoning in order to most accurately mimic my in-person conversational reactions. This was not intended to mock anyone suffering from these conditions, but rather to poke fun at the lengths these doctors will go to in order to convince you to get your license.
15 Ridiculous Excuses To Get A License
1. Trichotillomania
Trichotillomania is a disorder in which the person suffering has an irresistible urge to pull out their hair. Sounds pretty terrible, right? Smoking marijuana would, theoretically, calm the victim down, hopefully enough to get them to relax. People who suffer from trichotillomania normally have large patches of hair missing from their head, so unless you look like Phil from Last Man On Earth, I'd suggest straying away from this excuse.
2. Anaphylactic Shock
Wait, what? I'm confused. So you're telling me that, while someone is swelling up like a water balloon on a hose, they should pack a bowl and take a good rip or two? I don't know about you, but I tend to focus less on getting baked when death comes a-knockin'. If I'm ever going into anaphylactic shock and somebody hands me a bong, I'm breaking it over their head. Go get me a friggin' EpiPen, you idiot!
3. Writer's Cramp
A writer's cramp is a pain or stiffness you feel in your hand that stems from writing too much. I have a few issues with this bologna: firstly, why writer's cramps? It just seems so randomly specific. Why not just say you're smoking for pain rather than isolating the injury to a small and VERY manageable part of your body? It just seems counterproductive; secondly, who still writes that much anyways? It's 2016, the majority of people are typing now because, well, writing too much gives you writer's cramps.
4. Mania
That's it, I shit you not. I honestly could not make this stuff up. In order to receive a medical marijuana license, all you need to do is suffer from "mania." To put that in perspective, some other synonyms for mania are madness, insanity, lunacy, psychosis and hysteria. I guess I can understand how smoking the right amount and the right strain could make this a feasible reason. That being said, paranoia is a very common side effect from smoking weed. The last thing we need as a society is paranoid psychopaths running around. Mania sounds more like a job for Valium and Xanax.
5. Agoraphobia
Anyone that smokes weed and has been to a concert or some sort of music festival has more than likely smoked a joint or a blunt while there. Hell, I was recently at Coachella and I was chiefing blunts, joints, wax pens, spliffs...you name it, I blazed it. This "reason" for getting a license doesn't make total sense to me because if you are nervous about having a panic attack in a wide open place, would you really be smoking in a wide open place? This goes hand in hand with #4 mostly because of the paranoia aspect. It just seems counterproductive to me to be smoking if you're suffering from something that causes you to easily freak out.
6. Amblyopic Dyslexia
This is just rough all around. Not only do amblyopic dyslexics suffer from dyslexia (difficulty interpreting reading and written words that has no bearing on actual intelligence), but they also suffer from a lazy eye, or "amblyopia." Talk about a double whammy, geez. Still, I fail to understand how difficulty reading because of a wonky eye will be improved or eased significantly enough by getting high. While reading can be fun when baked, watching something is a lot more entertaining, especially since you don't catch yourself reading the same paragraph 47 times because you're seriously struggling to actually comprehend what you're reading.
7. Asperger's Syndrome
Asperger's covers a very wide variety of symptoms, which is interesting in and of itself that it is considered a problem that can be solved through marijuana use. I'm mainly focusing on the one aspect of it that I don't think weed will help: social interactions. Maybe it's just me, but when I'm high, I'm much less likely to pick up on proper nonverbal social cues people make like "you're talking too much" and "put your dick away Sean, we're in church." Random thoughts and short-term forgetfulness are two common side effects of blazing that shit up, hence why I fail to see how this helps people suffering from Asperger's. That being said, I'd be very curious to hear from someone with Asperger's how weed affects them and if it is, in fact, helpful.
8. Chronic Fatigue
This literally sounds like it could mean, "the state one is left in after smoking a huge bowl of some OG shit straight to their dome." Let's ignore the fact that the word "chronic" is conveniently placed in the title for just a moment. According to this doctor's office, BEING TIRED IS A GOOD ENOUGH EXCUSE TO SMOKE WEED AND BECOME TIRED. Yes, I understand that Indica is most associated with eating and sleeping and Sativa is associated with energy and stimulation. But let's be real here...if you smoke enough weed, you are going to end up sleepy and/or hungry anyways. Battling fatigue with fatigue seems silly, but maybe it's just me.
9. Diarrhea
LOL wut?
I'm assuming this is in reference to people suffering from Irritable Bowel Syndrome, but even so...how does being high help with that? Perhaps it's something about THC in your body reducing the amount of pain and gas, and limiting your need to deal with the runs, but I doubt it. I guess being high on grass helps you forget about your ass!
10. Post Concussion Syndrome
The most notable side effect from getting high is loss of memory. Interestingly enough, the most notable side effect from suffering a concussion is, you guessed it, loss of memory. It strikes me as odd that the solution to the problem is the same problem, similarly to smoking weed because you get tired often. I promise you I checked several times to make sure my sources weren't originally Onion articles. THIS SHIT IS REAL.
My Top 5 Favorite Excuses
1. Color Blindness
Let me just reiterate that I am in no way mocking the people that suffer from any of these diseases, syndromes or conditions. With that, I am struggling to stop laughing at the absurdity of this. There is currently no cure for color blindness, which is most commonly caused through genetics. So I guess my question is...what on earth is getting high going to do for your color blindness!?
2. Alcoholism
I legitimately don't understand how this is acceptable. The worst part is that the office's list of reasons not only listed alcoholism as a good reason to get a marijuana license, but alcohol abuse as well. The difference, I've recently learned, is that one person feels as though they need alcohol to survive (alcoholism) while the other can stop drinking, but chooses not to (alcohol abuse). The biggest thing both conditions have in common is that NEITHER SHOULD BE SMOKING AS WELL. If you have a problem like this, I like to think that the last thing you need is to be smoking weed.
3. Obesity
Obesity in America is a serious issue, and unfortunately it leads to heart disease in thousands of Americans yearly, perhaps millions. Obese people tend to be a bit lazier than your average person, as do people who smoke weed, or at least those are the typically associative connotations. Combining the two just seems like a bad idea. Furthermore, as a smoker myself, I eat WAAAAY too much junk food when I get baked. Wouldn't that be the last thing you should eat if you were obese? It seems like enabling to me. And frnakly, the fact that obesity and anorexia are reasons to get your license makes zero sense to me.
4. Cocaine Dependency
Are you serious? Is this real life or am I dreaming that I'm writing this article right now? The fact that alcohol dependence is already on the list is a farce, but cocaine!? One particularly dangerous thing cocaine does is quicken your heartbeat to an ungodly and certainly unhealthy speed, often leading to users who do too much to suffer from heart attacks. Unbeknownst to many, marijuana also raises your heart rate. Combining the two sounds like a pretty reckless move to me.
1. A Cough
Yes, you read that correctly. If you suffer from a particularly nasty cough, one solution is...can you guess? That's right, a couple of lungfuls of weed. BECAUSE NOTHING SOOTHES A VIOLENT COUGH LIKE A MORE VIOLENT COUGH. Not only does this make zero sense at all, it's borderline upsetting. I'm upset that this doctor's office has this listed on their site, but I am more upset that I'm the first one to have anything to say about it and put it these clowns on blast.
I'm beginning to think that you can just walk in and use words to get your license. Just say some words, any words, and you'll get it.
