Kristen Peskuski feels that raw cannabis saved her life. She went from taking over 40 medicines daily to using just a few prescriptions to treat specific ailments.  She was told she would never have a child yet she gave birth to a healthy baby girl with no intervention and no pain medication. Today, she, and her daughter, are beautiful, glowing, and strong.

Kristen nursing her healthy daughter

Her obstetrician/gynecologist, in spite of originally being extremely skeptical, even hostile to the idea of cannabis as medicine, says now, “She is a miracle and her story needs to be told.”  After he met Kristen, he collected many of her earlier medical records to verify her previous conditions.  According to her records, he said, “she was nearly dead …and all the best medical minds in medicine didn’t know what was wrong with her and didn’t know what to do and then she was referred to William [Courtney] who saved her life.”  Courtney, a doctor who practices in in Mendocino and Humboldt first prescribed Kristen dried marijuana capsules and then eventually began having her juice the fresh green cannabis leaves.Dr. Courtney prepares to juice veggies and cannabis

The results were amazing.  In this month’s High Times Medical I tell her story which is inspiring.  Here is the trailer for it.

But Kristin isn’t the only person that I researched in the course of the article.  Pat Lyda has been a patient since September 2009 at Arcata’s HPRC (Humboldt Patient Resource Center) which offers a juicing program.  She hadn’t had much experience with marijuana.  In fact, because doctors aren’t allowed to recommend a specific source, she actually had to ask a street person where she should purchase marijuana after being prescribed it.  She had asthma and allergies to cigarette smoke that were so severe she would have attacks just being around someone who had been around someone who smoked.  She had lost her sense of smell and would only know that cigarette smoke was around by her reaction to it.  Just driving by the Farmers’ Market caused her to have an attack last year.  But 4-6 weeks after beginning juicing, she regained her sense of smell. “I could identify cigarette smoke so I could avoid it.  It is getting so much better.”  And her pain from various surgeries has subsided.  She still needs Vicodin but she is getting more mobile.

Because of the Center, she has improved her diet, socializes more, and does Ki Gong. All of which contribute to her sense of well-being and to her improved ability to withstand attacks. (She now attends the Farmers’ Market nearly every week in order to buy the organic produce she needs for the smoothies in which she puts her marijuana leaves.) But she still attributes the majority of her improved health to drinking raw cannabis. “I’m not sitting in my chair feeling sorry for myself, taking pills and them not working. This seems to augment everything.  If I hadn’t started on the juicing, I wouldn’t have the energy to do the rest.”Pat Lyda enjoys life again now that she juices raw cannabis

The director of HPRC, Mariellen Jurkovitch, enjoys the improved health of her patients.  She says that smoking marijuana relieved pain for many of her clients and improved the quality of their life but she wasn’t really seeing many get healthier.  Raw cannabis has changed that.  She notes that even though juicing and cleaning a juicer are a lot of work, “People who are doing it are super into it because they see results.”

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The last issue of High Times Medical (Summer 2010) had a recipe for juice from Dr. Courtney.  This issue has Kristen’s battle with what she and Dr. Courtney call cannabinoid deficiency.