Veterans Against Opioid Addiction
Story By Amiee Altman
I’m part of a Facebook group called Marijuana Growers Helping Growers. Recently, I was scrolling through their page when I came across a post asking for suggestions on how to transport clones in the cold. The questions was: Can they survive at all in a car in freezing temps? If so, how long? Good question, I thought.
I clicked on the post and wondered where the person posting lived. Turns out, Joseph Fisher lives in Wasilla, Alaska. I’m a curious person. I clicked on his page and came across a fundraiser, titled Veterans Against Opiate Addiction. Naturally, I needed to know more.
Turns out Joseph Fisher had been fundraising to get the money needed to set up his own in-home grow, in order to supply veterans with the starts needed to grow their own marijuana. An effective alternative to what many veterans end up being prescribed as a result of PTSD or pain, left over from service related injuries, some physical, some emotional.
Intrigued, I contacted Joseph and he agreed to meet me for an interview. Joseph is a disabled veteran. He’s also a stay at home dad and a father of 4 girls, with one more on the way! He met me at the Carl’s Jr. play land in Wasilla. Well played, Dad!
Prior to living in Wasilla, Joseph and his family lived in Fairbanks. Up there, it was no big deal for the VA to pass out pain pills like skittles. Joseph was taking up to 12 pills a day to manage his pain. When they moved down to the MatSu valley, doctors at the VA and JBER weren’t as generous with the prescriptions. Joseph had to learn other ways to deal with his pain and due to this, he came across CannaCare.
CannaCare is a volunteer run organization, orchestrated by founder and CEO, Rachel Lake. For the past three years, Rachel has been organizing monthly events with the purpose of uniting veterans with Cannabis and Cannabis education.
At these monthly meetings, Joseph met other vets that were growing their own medicine. He learned he would need about $1,000 to get himself started. Another vet took him under his wing, showing him his own garden and coaching him on what he would need to get himself set up. There was only one problem…Joseph was freshly out of the military when he came across CannaCare; he’s disabled and has a bunch of kids. What he didn’t have was extra money to grow pot.
His first attempt to fundraise went through Go Fund Me, however it was quickly shut down because it contained the word Cannabis in the title. Learning from this, he got clever on his second attempt and went through Facebook, titling it Veterans Against Opiate Addiction. Genius, if you ask me, because who doesn’t want to support that?
Joseph was able to generate the donations required to get himself up and running and he’s now on his 3rd crop. He’s learning with each one. When he started, he literally knew nothing. He thought he would be able to grow in his closet with a 60 Watt bulb. Now, he’s producing enough to take care of himself and to donate clones, edibles, and dried flower to the monthly meetings.