The Leaf THE LEAF January-February 2018 | Page 19

Personal Story:- I’d rather be illegally healed than legally dead’ This Aussie started juicing cannabis leaves in a bid to be pain-free - by Katherine Davison The young Aussie says she would rather be 'illegally healed than legally dead' Prescription medication failed to help ease the pain of Crohn's disease An Australian woman with the debilitating digestive condition Crohn’s disease has opened up about why she turned to cannabis leaves in a bid to ease her pain. Morgan Taylor, 21, penned a heartfelt blog post on the subject which she said ‘has been taboo for way too long’. ‘In the beginning of 2015 my Crohn's disease took a turn for the worst. It was my senior year and should have been one of the best years of my life but ended up being one of the worst,’ Morgan shared. Morgan Taylor has spoken about how juicing cannabis leaves helped ease pain from Crohn's disease After juicing cannabis leaves, Morgan said she felt better than she had for years She said dealing with the stress of year 12, combined with dealing with her chronic illness was something she would ‘never wish on anybody’. ‘I deteriorated fast and had to have surgery for a colostomy bag, being a young girl facing this situation was hard to say the least,’ she said. After prescription drugs failed to help, Morgan described the pain of Crohn’s as ‘indescribable’. ‘I was constantly having to take Codeine or Endone to which I was building a tolerance and only barely masked the pain, which is what led me to cannabis,’ she said. It wasn’t something she did lightly. During her illness, Morgan researched medicinal cannabis and read ‘countless stories of people helping themselves’. ‘I was able to get my hands on some and starting using it for pain, and let me tell you it worked better than any pharmaceutical I've ever tried,’ Morgan said. ‘My nausea was gone, I could eat without pain and I could sleep through the night. ‘There's so much stigma behind the use of cannabis but until you've ever gone through that kind of pain or witnessed a love one suffer you have no right to judge the choices of others. ‘In late 2016 and early 2017 I was able to get my hands on cannabis leaves that I juiced and drank every day,’ Morgan said. ‘There are studies being done that show ingestion of raw cannabis is one of the best ways to get high dosages of the healing cannabinoids. ‘During these few months I felt better than I have in years. I was finally putting on weight, I was exercising and my Crohn's was going into remission, something I had never achieved with pharmaceutical drugs.’ But whilst Morgan claims she has benefited from her use of medicinal cannabis, she said she hasn’t had access to it for almost a year – leading her health to deteriorate.