For someone who once had a small role in a movie starring Tommy Chong, it would seem like a natural that Adrian Everett would start a cannabis club.
However, the reason the Langdon resident has brought fellow medical marijuana users together online is help educate people and reduce the stigma surrounding those who use the drug for pain relief.
When Everett was 16, he had a role as an extra in National Lampoon’s Senior Trip, and he got to meet Chong, one of the icons of marijuana use.
It’s funny now that Everett is an advocate for cannabis.
“I was supposed to look like a stoner but I had never touched cannabis in my life,” Everett said. “What a super nice guy Tommy is though.”
Everett suffered for many years with two herniated discs in his back along with two failed sacroiliac joints, leaving him in excruciating pain all the time.
It wasn’t until a friend with a similar affliction recommended that he get his cannabis card that he found relief, and the move meant he was off heavier prescription medicine.
“Being on CBD oil now, that’s my primary use, it’s a non-euphoric anti-inflammatory,” Everett said. “I can use it all day without having any euphoric feeling whatsoever. It doesn’t make you high.
“That was going from 10 percocets a day to 10 milligrams of hydromorphine and still been in sheer pain. I go to CBD oil and, all of a sudden, I have my life back.”
What Everett tries to do with his Facebook page — Langdon Cannabis Club — is to educate people who can make use of medical marijuana and what they should be doing. He’s done plenty of research over the years about what works and what doesn’t, and there is still some unknowns from the medical community about how to properly medicate using cannabis.
“The more and more people I met who had cannabis cards from their doctors really had no idea what to do,” Everett said. “With myself, I was a recreational smoker before but coming in as a medical patient, for four years now, it’s still hard to know what did what and what components of the plant I needed to take.
“I wanted to create a place to help normalize cannabis use for medicine. I wanted a place where patients can get together and tell each other what works, explain things like macrodosing and what is CBD, what is THC.
“I wanted to give people a better understanding so they can help themselves.”
Unlike opioids, there is no risk of overdose with marijuana use, as it would take an impossible amount of the drug to do harmful affects.
There is an opioid crisis in North America with ever-increasing number of fatalities from overdoses, so this is a much better alternative to someone like Everett, who just needs pain relief.
“There’s zero physical addiction to cannabis,” Everett said. “Yes, some people can get mentally addicted to it, but you can get mentally addicted to coffee and everything else out there.
“The difference with cannibas is there’s no harmful effects, unless you are smoking it. Now you can vaporize it or take it in oil form. You don’t have to smoke it to get the medicine.
“It’s a much, much healthier alternative. With percocets, you are almost counting till the next minute when you can take the next pill so you can get that good feeling again. Cannibas takes away the pain and just keeps you feeling the same way all day.
“There aren’t the peaks and valleys the pharmaceutical drugs are doing, where I felt great for a bit but horrible the majority of the time.”
