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Getting Kids High to Treat Autism
With the news just this week that there are more autistic kids out there than ever before, Marie Myung-OK Lee’s story of how cannabis is helping her nine-year-old son couldn’t have come at a better time.
At the outset, the idea is shocking – the family feeds their nine-year-old pot-laced cookies every day.
But Lee’s story of son J’s life prior to the cookies is equally shocking for those of us lucky enough not to have firsthand experience with autism. She relates days when his teachers mark him down for as many as three hundred “aggressive” moments in one school day. She talks of uncontrollable compulsions that cause him to eat his own clothing and bed linens, of the aftermath when his body then has to pass the fiberous fabrics.
When she first wrote about her plan back in May, Lee weathered attacks on her parenting, among them people advising her not to drug her kid . . . but advocating her to work for a cure. Would you tell a cancer patient not to take advantage of something that shrinks his tumor because it isn’t the cure that he could be out working toward?
What makes the difference here? That he’s a child?
A cure would be wonderful for every autistic child, but like the cure for any of life’s currently incurable diseases, it’s a ways off. And yet pot has made the worst of J’s symptoms disappear, allowing a child suffering from a syndrome no cure a semblance of normal life. It is the next best thing to a cure – a treatment that works.
It’s worth pointing out, too, that asking a parent not to “drug” her kid sounds hollow when the other options to pot are all technically drugs as well. Legal though they may be, pharmaceuticals are mind/mood-altering substances as well.
Researchers have already harnessed illegal drugs to treat childhood diseases – what, after all, is the basis of most ADHD medicines but speed? Maybe medical marijuana is next for a child’s medicine cabinet near you.
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[...] aren’t just turning to pot for ADHD, either. We reported a few weeks ago on a mom who gets her son high to manage his autism. Moms have been using it to treat their own severe morning sickness for years, [...]
Medical Marijuana For Kids | Strollerderby commented on Nov 24 09 at 12:59 pmCitizen Mom commented on Oct 06 09 at 9:50 pmI guess I don’t know what to feel. My child is autistic, but not at that end of the spectrum. I hope the family is working a doctor to monitor the amounts he is ingesting.
Ali commented on Oct 07 09 at 3:11 pmYou know it might be a good idea. Pot wont tax your ciculatory system like speed does. I still dont understand why it is illegal.
Knitty commented on Oct 07 09 at 4:22 pmIt couldn’t be any worse for the child than some of the *legal* stuff parents are injecting their autistic kids with. I don’t see this so much as a possible viable treatment but a testimony to how desperate many parents of autistic children are, especially those with children at the severe end of the spectrum.
mystic_eye commented on Feb 10 10 at 10:29 pmIn an ideal world this would be done with marijuana that is produced under the same restrictions/practices/regulations as any edible plant.
And in an ideal world there would be a doctor involved, and a case report, and if things looked up then a small controlled study.
Or perhaps it would start with animal studies and go that route.
But the fact is marijuana is known to be an effective medical treatment for some problems and its not uncommon to use a drug “off label”. Sometimes off-label use proves unsafe (cytotec for labour induction) and sometimes it proves to be safe (errr I am sure there are great examples but I’m blanking)
Marijuana as a drug -should be legal and safe. No question. Let’s leave the recreational alcohol vs recreational marijuana for another day. Off-label use of medications should be monitored, but its going to be done and that’s probably fine particularly when it comes to kids, pregnant women, etc as its considered unethical to test drugs on them directly.
Cannabis4Autism commented on Apr 16 11 at 3:19 amHi,
I believe that children do not get ‘high’ on the same way that you adults do, this is because they have less CB1 receptors in their brains. Cannabis is still very good for young bodies.
I hope they hurry up and develop that genetic test for the 1 in 20,000 children who are at risk of getting psychotic munchies so that the rest of us can get on with benefiting from this beautiful and useful plant.
x
TheAngryArchitect commented on Jun 21 11 at 3:35 pmGiven that THC (the ‘active ingredient’ in cannabis) is a psychoactive chemical–one which, in the long term, alters the chemical and structural makeup of the brain–and that autism presents itself, basically, as misaligned synapses in the brain (that is, to say, genetic errors in the structural makeup of the brain), I’m surprised no one noticed to the connection sooner.
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