Science Cannabis

168 THE SCIENCE OF MARIJUANAically applied beta-blockers, alpha2-adrenoceptor drugs, carbonic anhydraseinhibitors, and prostaglandin analogues. As the NIH Report onthe Medical Uses of Marijuana (1997) concluded:If marijuana were not to be additive to one of these agents, marijuanawould be obsolete, since these agents have no systemic side effects (otherthan slightly dry mouth in some patients with apraclonidine and bromonidine),and they have a duration of action of 12 to 24 hours.Although glaucoma does not appear to be a particularly good targetfor cannabis-based medicines, some individual patients have reportedthat smoking marijuana dramatically improved their symptoms. Perhapsthe most famous case was the American, Robert Randall who begantreating himself with smoked marijuana in the 1970s, after he had lost asubstantial degree of vision. He gives the following account:Despite my use of every pharmaceutical agent in the inventory, my eveningswere routinely visited by tricolored halos — a signature of ocular pressureover 35 mm HG (millimetres of mercury). On some nights the haloswere muted. On other evenings they appeared as hard crystal rings emanatingfrom every source of light. And then there were nights, not so rare, ofwhite-blindness — the world rendered invisible by its brilliance. Clinicaltranslation: ocular tension in excess of 40 mm Hg. To summarize, thingswere not going very well.Then someone gave me a couple of joints. Sweet weed! That night Imade and ate dinner, watched television. My tricolored halos arrived,which made watching TV less interesting. So I put on some good music,dimmed offending lights, and got into some serious toking. I happened tolook out of my window at a distant street light and noticed what was notthere. No halos. That's when I had the full blown, omni-dimensional technicolorcartoon light-bulb experience. In a transcendant instant the spheresspoke! So simple. Old messages —new context. You smoke pot, your eyestrain goes away.. . . My ever-eroding visual fields stabilized. My slide into darknessslowed, then halted. As my glaucoma came under medical management,other aspects of life began to right themselves. I escaped welfare and took apart time teaching job at a local college.(Grinspoon and Bakalar, 1993)