Riker Chris Riker Magazine Article Writing Profile November 14, 2013 Up The Green Mountain Its the

experiences of moments of uncertainty, where you make conscious decisions not to fail. For example, like in my coma, when I made the decision that I wasnt about to die at just 13 years old. Its what it truly means to feel redemption after

feeling the stiff sting of what failure feels like. Meet JT, Hes not the typical example of what a 23 year-old American man is. Then again, Jesse is a fully-exercising, fullyfunctional, excelling college student at Barry University, in Miami, FL, living with PTSD, as well as mental and physical injuries stemming from a truck accident, leaving him comatose for months when he was a boy. JT and I first met working on bringing medical marijuana to Florida for 2014s upcoming election. Hes a Miami native doing great things for the community at the same time as he medicates himself in a healthy way, deemed dangerous by his government; using marijuana. He responded quite graciously to my request to probe his life and invited me to high-rise apartment in the Brickell section of Downtown Miami. The calm, ocean breeze flows fluidly through this 21st floor postcard factory. The view from the balcony is essentially panoramic. Noticing my awe of the magically teal Brickell Bay, Jesse hands me a fresh-lit rollie, exhales, and explains, The main reason I chose a place so big, with this kind of view and extravagance, is to make sure Im never depressed like I was in Maryland again. I come out here every

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single morning, stretch, intake my medicines, and watch the sun rise. It molds me for the rest of the day, and some days I just feel in tune with the Sun. We rise and rest together and that energy is too strong to not notice after the very first time I felt it. For three months while I was in Maryland, I couldnt even see the Sun, and it really wasnt until I came back home, that I felt all the free Vitamin-D my body was missing. Hes a Caucasian man, standing at about 510 tall, with puffy, curly hair. Hes dressed like a mountain climbing hermit in rock band, complete with a carbon fiber cane with flame designs going up the bottom. His boots are no less than seven years old. His pant legs appear to designed with the purpose of not tearing, catching, or snagging on passing branches. What stands out amongst these quirky clothes, is his shirt. It instantly harkens to something Midnight Oil vocalist, Peter Garrett would wear on-stage, or at a political rally. Currently, his driving cause is to bring marijuana to the legal sphere, especially in the medical community, and to stamp out opiate dependency. He politely smiles when I inquire about his reasoning behind using marijuana after being formerly dependent on Vicodin and Xanax, and retorts, Well, I thought that at first, too, but at the same time, didnt. When I used to sneak off to take more pills, I felt bad. I felt wrong because I knew that I wasnt supposed to be doing that, even though what I was taking was prescribed to me. With the amount of pain that comes with having the top-left portion of your skull removed and replaced, and with re-learning how to walk after a coma, its easy to hide behind the word pain. When you just want to feel better and be able to sleep more than 40 minutes, you start to do things that are out of character. On top of that, I was an

Riker angsty, comic-reading teenager with a cane at a prep school. I didnt last longer than a year there after my accident. Like many patients of trauma or chronic, debilitating pain, Jesse was given opiates to stop the pain by stopping the brain for a routine stupor. According to the National Institute of Health, nearly 10% of the United States population is believed to

misuse opiates, like painkilling heavyweight, Oxycontin over the course of their lifetime, including illegal drugs like heroin. He continues to explain that this need for more Vicodin that Jesse was feeling is neither out of the ordinary nor uncommon for those prescribed these pain medications over an extended course of time. Opiate use usually leads to physical dependence, unlike marijuana use. In essence, this means that a person relies on the drug to prevent withdrawal symptoms. Over time, exponentially growing doses of the drug become necessary to produce a similar effect. Marijuana tolerances only increase slightly, regardless of usage length. One of marijuanas strongest hallmarks is that it causes no physical dependence. Most people would shift their mood, face, or even language choices completely when asked to recount the horrors of a traumatic accident from their childhood. Jesses content smirk and heavy eyes remain unchanged, That is why youre here to talk to me, right? Seamlessly, he begins describing the road around him, the sound of the palm trees rocking with the wind, the memories of joking with his neighborly friend as they ride their bikes along the edge of a road with no sidewalks, as is typical of non-metropolitan areas of Florida. On the way back to my buddys house to drop off the bikes, a truck driver ran a red light, crashing into me. Miraculously, he survived the accident, but unfortunately, he

Riker was left in a coma in critical condition. He sustained broken ribs, glass fragments scattered throughout his body, a broken collarbone, three broken ribs, a broken jaw, a snapped femur, and a ruptured spleen.

He looks off my gut-wrenching faces of horror with a calm, centered nod, as if to suggest that the worst had yet to be explained. Shortly after I woke up from my coma, I felt a more lucid coma and it truly instilled fear in me, but I stood up to it, and continue to now. See, my eyes and throat were swollen shut, I had a feeding tube in my throat at all times, and I was too weak from the coma to move. He couldnt speak nor see, no matter how much he pushed his lungs, or felt the pain of his brain crying. He takes another puff and tells me what it was like not being able to communicate with those around him. With damage to my left-brain, its harder for me to process numbers, new languages, and things like that. When I finally could move my mouth, I dealt with speech aphasia. I would be talking to people, only to forget words like and, or there in a sentence. When I would want to say and, I would start drooling and staring out into space. It took serious, conscious, cognitive psychological practices to have the will to learn to reverse that. Many aphasia patients never do. JT first tried pot for the purpose of treating his injuries at 18 and immediately saw the positive effects it had on his recovery. For the first time since my accident, I could exercise. Vicodin never allowed me the ability to feel like I could go do anything. I was more on top of my work than when I was lumped off of painkillers and my grades rose sharply. I was only smoking two or three hits, here and there, and I was able to function. I wasnt stoned out cold on my couch; I just wasnt in pain. I could concentrate on the rest of my life, without the white noise of constant pain.

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5 Today, JT is well on way to graduating with a 3.6 GPA in psychology. Marijuana

has been ever valuable in Jesses recovery from this experience. One of the main reasons he works so hard to bring medical marijuana to states that dont have it is because as a resident of a non-medical marijuana state, he has been arrested for possession of this controlled substance. JT is no criminal and the millions of patients that could avert harmful treatments of injuries with the use of marijuana arent either. He hopes to work as a clinical psychology helping brain trauma patients like himself. He says, I think the emotional component of pain is what people dont talk about because you cant treat it. Everyone has a different threshold as to whats painful in his or her opinion. Its truly agonizing on the soul to unrelentingly be in pain every day. The breakdown that pain can cause is impossible to anticipate, and psychologically, it wears on you. Marijuana was the tool that JT, and many others use to ease pain as needed, along with helping damaged psyches, which are common after traumatic experiences. The health benefits of using medical marijuana not only outweigh any negatives, but are clearly a better option than the medicines currently being used.