I’m going to be completely honest and tell you that for the first time in my life I am a criminal. If I was merely twenty miles down the road I wouldn’t be. I am a criminal in Ohio because I use marijuana.

I suffer from bipolar, migraines and fibromyalgia, and with all these imperfections I have symptoms that have not been eliminated or aided by anything except marijuana, a substance I hadn’t touched since I was sixteen. I wasn’t even as passionate about it when I was sixteen, but then again I was uneducated on the subject matter. When I was personally dealing with my issues (Bipolar disorder, migraines and Fibromyalgia), the medical industry had me on tons of different psychosis medications, anxiety medications and painkillers.

Throughout the following four years, the hideous side effects caused me to be either immobilized or a complete zombie. The worst was my inability to focus on my work. As an amateur screenwriter I sometimes couldn’t write a line to save my life. And it took me nearly three years to complete 30,000 words in my creative non-fiction book. I turned to an offer from a friend to try marijuana again for my ailments. I began to research the medications they had me on for bipolar and the painkillers they had me on for Fibromyalgia and migraines. There were so many cases of deaths from these medications, so many years of life they take away from you. There are an estimated 18,000 premature deaths per year from these medications. So many lives destroyed from overdosing on these medications; nearly 15,000 people die each year from painkiller overdose. Drug overdose was the leading cause of injury death in 2010 among people 25 to 64 years old — drug overdose caused more deaths than motor vehicle traffic crashes. These are the medications that our doctors were handing us to merely mask the pain. I turned my research to medical marijuana – not one documented death, not ONE. I couldn’t believe it that this natural herb had no deaths and has been used sense 3,000 BC.