Pot isn’t for everyone I realize. I don’t care for the stuff myself after a rather misfortunate bus trip to Nimbin, Australia in college. That was before I got cancer.

The physical and (most surprising to me) emotional effects of chemotherapy are severe. Show-stopping, jaw-dropping, hardest-thing-ever severe. You simply cannot imagine the comprehensive trauma of this treatment. It is a wonder they call it a cure at all.

Many of the effects of chemo are strangley non-specific. The literature given to me before I began treatment stated such vague expectations as “feeling generally unwell,” a staggering understatement. While my oncology nurse tries her damnedest to treat my side-effect symptoms with additional medicine, she can’t realistically solve general unwellness. Add acute, sporadic depression, the kind that can only be explained by facing one’s own untimely, unfair, unexpected mortality, and you’ve got quite a puzzling medical conundrum on your hands.

There isn’t a single non-addictive drug available that combats all these things at once successfully except cannabis. Texas legalized CBD oil in 2015* but has not yet legalized medical marijuana use. I’m fortunate, however, to have access to both THC and CBD products, even though my means are not always legal. I feel so, so sorry for patients who do not.

Let me be very clear. I’m not gazing into a lava lamp while listening to Bob Marley, giggling and eating Doritos. I’m sick as fuck. There is no charm in my drug use.

A dear friend recently visited a farm in Oregon where they are growing organic, medical-grade hemp for use in CBD products to treat patients with cancer, alzheimer’s, epilepsy, and other debilitating diseases. She was able to name one of the rows after me. There were lots of tears when I got the photo of this beautiful gift, lots of tears.

I want to invite anyone opposed to the legalization of marijuana to pop in on a person with cancer a few days after chemo treatment or spend just 5 five minutes in the chemo room with me. I want you to look into the face of anyone with cancer or MS or schizophrenia or any other of the terrible diseases and disease treatments that benefit from marijuana use and see that pain. Your mind will be forever changed. As more and more lawmakers do these things (and more and more citizens demand they do), I doubt very much pot will be illegal in Texas for much longer. I hope that both the restriction and the stigma of medical marijuana are soon a thing of the past.

* While CBD is legal in Texas, DPS continues to make it difficult to acquire, including at People’s Pharmacy where I purchased mine.