Month: August 2018

CBD Oil for Pain Relief: Legal Status, Side Effects, Drug Tests, Traveling, and More

***APRIL 2019 update: I work as an associate attorney with a civil litigation firm in Cambridge. My boss is always interested in developing new practice areas, so we attended a Cannabis Law continuing education conference. Naturally, it was filled with Millennials… and my boss, who’s meow meow years old. Because of his relentless questioning, Dan (my boss) got the presenters to admit that while industrial hemp is now legal per the federal government’s 2018 Farm Bill, hemp-derived CBD products are not. They are under the purview of the Food and Drug Administration because it is a product actually ingested by human beings. The Brookings Institute explains it best: CBD generally remains a Schedule I substance under federal law. The Farm Bill—and an unrelated, recent action by the Department of Justice—creates exceptions to this Schedule I status in certain situations. The Farm Bill ensures that any cannabinoid—a set of chemical compounds found in the cannabis plant—that is derived from hemp will be legal, if and only if that hemp is produced in a manner consistent with the Farm Bill, associated …

Guest Contributor: The Pain Companion by Sarah Anne Shockley

Published by Jennifer Kain Kilgore

As many of you know, I write an occasional column for the Pain News Network. One of my compatriots there, Sarah Anne Shockley, recently published a book called The Pain Companion: Everyday Wisdom for Living With and Moving Beyond Chronic Pain that everyone who experiences pain or chronic illness should read. She was diagnosed with TOS (thoracic outlet syndrome) in 2007 and has lived with intractable nerve pain ever since. It’s a very easy read and covers the necessary topics for a chronic pain lifestyle manual, such as anger, acceptance, relationships, self-image, and more. It’s the way Sarah writes that stands out; she is accessible, not only because she’s lived it, but also because she can relate her unique experience to other types of pain and offer constructive guidance. My pain isn’t her pain, but she showed me that we’ve been in the trenches together. This talent always stood out to me in her columns for PNN, and it’s translated very well to book form. Since Sarah can say it better than I can, here is …

Washington Post: The Other Opioid Crisis

Published by Jennifer Kain Kilgore

I just stumbled across a great piece in the Washington Post by a former hospice nurse. We’ve heard this story before (“the opioid crisis is harming pain patients”), but it needs to be told again, louder and louder, in bigger and bigger outlets, until we are heard and understood. How many more patients will commit suicide before this problem is addressed?