Hydrolife Magazine August/September 2016 (Canadian Edition)

heal
ILLEGALLY
ALIVE
BY JENN MCGARRIGLE
’d rather be illegally alive than
“I legally dead.” Those are the
words of 16-year-old Coltyn Turner,
whose parents turned to medicinal
cannabis two years ago to treat
their son’s Crohn’s disease, rheumatoid
arthritis and lupus. Cannabis
has allowed their son to live a
normal life again and has probably
saved his life, says Coltyn’s mother,
Wendy Turner. “It works. There’s not
much more we can say about him
or his cannabis use.”
While Coltyn’s Crohn’s disease is
in remission, it was a long journey
for the Turners to get to this point,
a journey that included, at one
point, packing up their lives and
moving to a different state to seek
alternative treatments. Coltyn
was diagnosed with Crohn’s
disease in 2012 after a bacterial
infection developed from a neardrowning
experience the summer
before. Doctors began treating
him with the usual medications,
some of which didn’t do anything
at all, while others had alarming
side effects ranging from profuse
nose bleeds, fatigue, joint pain
and swelling, to drug-induced
lupus, says Wendy.
Coltyn and his parents had
had enough of the standard
treatments for Crohn’s. “We
were tired of the side effects the
medications were giving him and
my grandma, who’s native, kept
telling us to go see a medicine
man,” remembers Wendy. “So we
started researching. We came
across a study from Israel about
cannabis and Crohn’s that was
promising. So he got high!”
The family lived in Illinois at the
time, where medicinal cannabis is
illegal, so in October 2013 Wendy
and her husband, Tommy, made
weed brownies in their kitchen.
They saw instant improvements in
Coltyn’s mood, but were afraid of
the consequences and the trouble
they could get into for the illegal
treatments, so they stopped. “We
waited for our next Mayo Clinic
visit to see what they said,” says
Wendy. “They never came out and
said try cannabis, but they were
not against alternative treatments.
That was our green light.”
In March 2014, Tommy and Coltyn
headed to Colorado, a state that
was in the news quite a bit at
the time for legalizing cannabis
use, to find a dispensary and
make some more brownies. They
met Jason Cranford, a leading
medicinal cannabis caregiver who
makes cannabis oil, and Coltyn
started on cannabis oil pills made
from a high-CBD strain, as well as
THC edibles.
Three years ago, 16-year-old
Coltyn Turner was in constant
pain, had withdrawn from social
interactions and was often
wheelchair-bound. Fast forward
to today, and you meet an active
youth who is doing normal
teenage-boy things, like hiking
and rock climbing, as well as a
few extraordinary things, like
standing up in front of crowds of
people to talk about his journey to
health using cannabis. His family
was happy to share Coltyn’s
remarkable story with Hydrolife.
46 grow. heal. live. enjoy.
Coltyn has been telling his story, advocating the advancement of cannabis research.
myhydrolife.ca
Photo by Destin Michael Photography