MEDICAL MARIJUANA SPECIAL REPORT: Meet the wide variety of users

Mike Ellison, 50, has multiple sclerosis.

Former Marine Joshua Johnson, 30, was injured in Iraq.

Grace Midencey, 49, has fibromyalgia.

All three say prescription medications don’t ease their pain.

They are among the thousands who use local medical marijuana dispensaries. Others include a single father afflicted with migraines, a senior citizen with shoulder pain and an extreme skateboarder interviewed by The Gazette.

Medical marijuana? Pot apothecaries? Can they do that?

According to Colorado law: yes.

And no, health insurance won’t pay for it.

Ellison said marijuana gives him instant relief from MS-induced shakes.

“Some days, I can’t get out of bed,” he said.

Johnson said marijuana has replaced the “whole laundry list of narcotics” prescribed for his combat injuries and insomnia.

Midencey said she and her husband moved here from Arizona a year ago for one reason: “So I could legally use marijuana to help me.”

So it goes in this new age of reefer madness.

Amendment 20 allows it for patients, though it doesn’t make any provision for how to get it.

That’s why dispensaries have sprouted up, with names that accentuate “wellness,” “healing” and “natural remedies,” not names suggestive of getting stoned.

Step inside ... and smell the buds. Smoking isn’t allowed on site, but the distinct aroma penetrates the air.

Gone are the two- or three-finger-wide nickel ($5) and dime ($10) bags of the “Cheech & Chong” daze. Going rate for this marijuana is about $400 an ounce, or $50 to $60 for 1

8-ounce.

That’s if you want to fire it up by pipe or joint.

The medicine also comes in pills, creams, oils and “edibles.” It can be chewed, crunched, drizzled on spaghetti, liquefied as Irish crème to pour in coffee. Along with $10 brownies, there are cookies, crackers, truffles and hard candies.

The dispensaries look more candy shop than apothecary. Rows of glass jars filled with green buds boast flavors including blueberry, sweet-and-sour and vanilla. There are colorful pipes for any mood and snazzy stash canisters for trendy tokers. Do-it-yourselfers can take home a potted plant.

Waiting rooms range from dentist-office sterile to man-cave with a big TV and putting green. At one shop, the owner’s baby girl snoozed in a kid-friendly waiting room.

Many dispensaries hold clinics with notaries and doctors to sign the state’s required Medical Marijuana Registry forms so patients can get pot on the spot.

There are two core strains, indica and sativa, used to treat particular ailments.

“Sativas have more of an up feeling,” said Kenny Brock, a former Broadway stagehand who opened Old World Pharm three months ago. “Indicas are heavier in the body, so it’s much better for pain relief, muscle spasms and for MS and seizure patients.”

Midencey, the fibromyalgia sufferer, mainly uses indicas. “Every now and then when I’m feeling blue I use sativa because it makes you get happy,” she said.

She buys the buds at Todays Health Care, a shop in a small strip mall on Uintah Street west of Interstate 25.

She makes her own edibles.

“I put two sticks of butter in the Crock-Pot and let it cook overnight,” she said. “I use it on my toast in the morning. I haven’t found it makes me tipsy. It’s like it knows it has a purpose, and then it goes and relieves the pain.”

Timothy Sneary, 41, a single dad with migraines from a car crash, says a few tokes from a joint and his headaches are gone.

He spends about $80 a month for the “sweet island skunk” blend of buds at Old World Pharm near Peterson Air Force Base.

By contrast, Pure Medical’s North Tejon Street shop is like shopping at a downtown boutique.

That’s where MS sufferer Ellison gets his medicine to complement his pill regimen, which includes anti-seizure drugs. Pure Medical also is where Johnson, the wounded ex-Marine, goes.

Many acknowledge that using marijuana presents unique issues not associated with traditional prescription drugs.

Johnson, a married father of three, said he medicates before he goes to bed, never before he goes to work as an auto mechanic.

“It does impair you mentally,” Johnson said. “There is common sense that has to be utilized.”

And then there’s the issue of explaining his use to his 11-year-old daughter. How does he talk to her about it?

“Pretty much straightforward,” he said. “She sees me in pain. I tell her it’s medicine. It’s legal. I’m not breaking the law. I say, ‘Daddy can use this and not get in trouble.’”

James Zellner, 32, said he turned to marijuana two years ago for relief from nausea and pain from treatment for non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

He mainly medicates by vaporizer, not smoke. He also uses edibles.

“I don’t have any problems driving,” he said. “It’s not like I am getting all stoned.”

Jimmy Nuss, a 61-year-old photographer and landscaper, admits to decades of illegal recreational marijuana use. Now, he uses it to treat shoulder pain.

“I wasn’t aware of the medicinal aspects, all I knew was that it made me feel good,” he said. “I haven’t seen a doctor in over 40 years. I’ve been smoking every day for 40 years. I’m hardly ever sick.”

Matthew Forlines, 30, uses marijuana for pain from 15 years of skateboarding. “It also helps with my depression, anxiety and insomnia,” he said.

With marijuana, he said, he sleeps well. “I wake up and feel refreshed. I feel like a newborn baby,” he said.

It gets the nod of his mother, Cynthia Forlines, who went with him on a recent trip to the marijuana market to get cannabis creams for her 84-year-old mom.

“It helps her,” she said.