An Introduction

Since 2007 I’ve been a member of a number of different collectives in Long Beach.

I’ve volunteered, built websites, taken photos of over 300 different strains of medical marijuana, and grown to care about a number of incredible people.

I’ve also watched one collective after another crumble under the burden of legal fees, changing city regulations and other costs associated with always having to fight to stay open…

My personal history with medical marijuana goes back much further than that however, back to when I first started using marijuana in 1983.

I’ve spent a lot of years watching the medical marijuana story get to where we are today, and in this series I share my motivation for being an activist, talk about being a collective member, and about my own medical use of marijuana.

And then there’s this – RIGHT NOW, in Long Beach, our collectives are facing the prospect of having our city council ban them on Tuesday evening, and all my thinking about this has given me the talking medical marijuana blues – Enjoy!

Talking Medical Marijuana Blues – Part One

Includes the story: The Man On The Other Side Of The Wall

“On Tuesday night, November 18^th, I got home from work, sat in my big chair, kicked back, and for the first time in my life smoked marijuana legally…”

Talking Medical Marijuana Blues – Part Two

I Get By With The Help Of My Friends - a brief look at my personal history with medical marijuana…

“There was a time, not very long ago, when I would often have to wait for days, sometimes a week to get my medicine. Sometimes nothing would be available from the few friends I knew, who knew a friend, who knew a friend who could get marijuana for them…”

Talking Medical Marijuana Blues – Part Three

Talking ‘Bout My Medication – looking at the different ways to use medical marijuana and how I use it…

“I wasn’t diagnosed with Bi-Polar Disorder until I was 33 years old. This revelation – that there was a medical reason, of some kind, behind my most confusing moods and actions – caused a paradigm shift that made me look back over my life through a new perspective…”

Talking Medical Marijuana Blues – Part Four

We Shall Overcome! – talking about the situation here in Long Beach, right now – about the City Attorney’s effort to ban the collectives, and how you can help!

“Rev. Martin Luther King stated over 40 years ago in a speech that “the arc of the moral Universe is long, but it’s bent towards Justice…”

During my long, personal civil rights march towards medical marijuana justice I’ve seen that this statement is true, just as I also believe that one day ‘we shall overcome!’”

Related posts:

© Jon, onehumanbeing for onehumanbeing.com, 2012. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 33 years, bi-polar disorder, city attorney, collective member, collectives, LBCA, Long Beach, marijuana blues, marijuana story, martin luther king, medical marijuana, medical use of marijuana, medication, medicine, mlk, motivation, personal history, photos, revelation, strains, talking medical marijuana blues, tuesday evening, use of marijuana

Continued from The Monster Pill – July 19, 2009…

Last summer, and during August in particular, I went through a really bad depression – I mean – really bad. As you can see from the drawing to the left that I made of my brain in my sketchbook during that time it was not good.

On the same page I made this drawing I wrote the following – I call it…

Jelly Paws

We’re just soft tissue
with sharp claws
hidden in our jelly paws
with anxiety triggers
and stress-blinded attack plans…

Lazy, selfish,
lulled by isolation
into fearful creatures
launching preemptive strikes
shock and awe with sharp claws
and we roll on and on…

A few pages after this entry I made my drawings of The Monster Pill, which I posted yesterday, inspired by the ongoing and eternal prescription medication hassles…

Seriously people, in my opinion, nothing helps Bi-Polar II more than good medical marijuana (and good diet, exercise, sunlight… which I should do more of…) – but I faithfully go through the never-ending (over ten years now) search for a really effective prescription medication.

While I’m covering drawings and writings from last August, here’s my Black Hole Suitcases…

Black Hole Suitcases

Everything I’ve left undone
has stuck to my flypaper mind.
They struggle and die in the place where I hide them away
and come back as suitcases filled with black holes.

Take my suitcases and give them wings
give them life, and flight, and a place to go.
I’m just going to lie down here because it’s all become too heavy for me…

This was just a few pages after The Monster Pill drawings and was one of a several attempts I made to document the depression while it was happening… I continued to struggled with this particular bout of depression through late October, 2008, when I finally got a month or so of good energy while we switched my medications, again.

Related posts:

© Jon, onehumanbeing for onehumanbeing.com, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anxiety, bi polar, black hole, black holes, depression, drawings, isolation, jellypaws, medical marijuana, medication, medications, paws, preemptive strikes, prescription medication, shock and awe, sketchbook, suitcases, The Monster Pill, wings

It may seem like I’ve disappeared, but I’m still here… weathering a long storm of depression.

This storm started back in late April, and has come and gone in waves, in cycles within cycles.

I should be use to this by now, but I never get used to it, always hoping that the blue sky days will last, but knowing there’s always another storm coming.

The spring storms are very unpredictable.

Some years it’s like a rushing, fresh breeze of creativity and new activities. Other years it comes like a cruel north wind, and I find myself tied to the mast just to make it to the early summer break when my next big shift comes.

I’ll be 45 in two weeks, on the 18th.

I’ve had depressions and manias since I was a child (something I’ve come to understand over the last few years), and actively dealing with my mood-swings for the last eleven years.

After all this time I’ve become somewhat familiar with the cycles and seasons of my inner landscape, and the strange weather patterns of storms that ravage and shape that landscape.

But that doesn’t make it any more pleasant at Depression Ground Zero, or help my daily attempt at making something out of the dreams and visions in my head.

So for days I hide out on the sofa, watching shows on the History Channel about UFOs and Ancient Civilizations, reading news stories on my laptop from the Huffington Post, and sleeping, lots of sleeping…

When I have energy I volunteer at a Medical Marijuana collective here in Long Beach called AAC – Apothecary’s Assistants Collective and take photos for a project of mine called The MMJ Project (MMJ is short for Medical Marijuana).

I’m glad for my project and volunteer work because it gets me out of the apartment, and around people.

Of course, there’s more to it than that… but left to my own devices to avoid the pain of depression I will disappear into a world of deep thoughts, MMJ, meditations and TV and ignore the rest of the world.

So, getting me outside of myself is a good thing – especially during these storms.

There’s my update from this last month or so…

Hopefully I’ll reach more peaceful weather soon and be able to write about some interesting visions I’ve had during these storms (the visions are the only rewards sometimes for traveling through these storms) and the stories that have been weaving their way through my daily existence.

Until later, best of health,
Jon, onehumanbeing

Related posts:

© Jon, onehumanbeing for onehumanbeing.com, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: ancient civilizations, apothecary, blue sky, deep thoughts, depression, dreams and visions, fresh breeze, health, history channel, huffington post, inner landscape, long storm, marijuana, medical marijuana, medication, meditations, mmj, mood swings, north wind, spring storms, strange weather, weather patterns, weathering

Catching Up…

I’ve been dusting off the files, photos and various materials of The MMJ Lists to move it closer to how I envision it…

Since January I’ve been taking photos at A Soothing Remedy Collective and more recently, AAC – Apothecary’s Assistants Collective, where I also volunteer as a bud-tender, front desk clerk, joint roller, or whatever else is needed while I’m there for my shift.

Monday (April 27th) I was there for the afternoon and evening shifts… and spent most of the evening rolling joints of White Widow to give away to the members.

AAC gives you a free joint every time you stop by to get your herb… it’s part of the “member-focused” approach to the Medical Marijuana dispensary movement and an effort to slow down the collective-hopping (see below) that goes on.

(read more here…)

Also… I’ve added to the “About” page…

About The MMJ Lists

In June of 2008 I started taking photos and posting menus on WeedTracker.com for a local, Long Beach collective called CCLB, Canna Collective Long Beach.

The whole thing started as a fluke – I just wanted CCLB to keep up with their menu posting because gas prices were soaring and online people wanted to know what was available before they made the long drive – sometimes coming all the way from San Diego – a nearly 300 mile round trip.

My round trip to CCLB was only 10 miles, so during June I started my volunteer gig as the Menu Guy for CCLB. Over the July 4th weekend, through a series of events I’ve written about elsewhere, I officially became an unpaid, community volunteer at CCLB and through October of that year I photographed nearly 80 different strains, some of them several times.

It was almost an overwhelming situation, and it started to seem like I spent all of my time photographing, preparing the photos, posting them and then posting the menu… and by the beginning of November I had to halt the project as it was going, and think about how to present the photographs. (The price of gas had fallen too, so my original reason for posting menus had ended.)

(read more here…)

The link to The MMJ Project is: http://mmj.onehumanbeing.com/

Related posts:

© Jon, onehumanbeing for onehumanbeing.com, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: apothecary, community volunteer, Long Beach, marijuana, medical marijuana dispensary, medication, menus, mmj, photos, postings, rolling joints, taking photos, white widow

Spending Time At The Collective…

Today was my first day behind the counter at AAC – Apothecary’s Assistants Collective – as a volunteer staff member. Before I left home this morning I made a bunch of buttons to bring in with me.

That’s me in the little movie pressing the buttons with my button machine. Tania took the photos and suggested the little movie – nice idea You can click on the moving image to see a larger version…

I’ll be volunteering there several times a week and learning about how a Collective works, from a budtender’s view (note: a “Budtender” is the person who hands the herb and helps members select their medicine) – a different way of seeing my project, and it has already given me some things to think about for The MMJ Project.

You can follow my project about medical marijuana at The MMJ Project – my ongoing art project about this moment in time and the unique world of medical marijuana in Southern California.

As a user of marijuana for 26 years, and a long time legal patient under Prop 215, I’ve become a solid believer in the use of marijuana as a legitimate medicine.

I have an acquaintance through the collective who is a terminally ill patient. She is still alive 4 years longer than her doctor gave her because of the herb – just one of many stories of health and wellness I’ve heard over the years.

Medical Marijuana Is No Laughing Matter

People giggle about marijuana, but for us patients that have found a safe and easy solution to some of our health issues this is no laughing matter…

Unfortunately for us we have to wait for our political leaders to grow-up and stop treating this with a snicker and wink…

And while they giggle more people get put through the legal grinder for making choices that don’t concern anyone but that person and their doctor.

There seems to be something very immoral and irresponsible for leaders like Obama to make a joke about other’s health concerns. I’m still saddened by Obama’s response and I’m starting to view his agenda with suspicion… just another politician.

Meanwhile… back to the Collective

I took a bunch of photos of AAC while I was there today, and I’ll post those over on The MMJ Project later on.

Have a great week, and remember; 420 -  The International Marijuana Day - is next Monday – April 20, 2009!

Related posts:

© Jon, onehumanbeing for onehumanbeing.com, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 420, apothecary, art project, button machine, easy solution, health, health concerns, health issues, ill patient, laughing matter, marijuana, medical marijuana, medication, moment in time, Obama, political leaders, prop 215, tania, use of marijuana, volunteer staff member