Opioid use in the U.S. is the highest it’s ever been. According to the DEA, "overdose deaths, particularly from prescription drugs and heroin, have reached epidemic levels." Dr. Gina Berman or Dr. Ravi Chandiramani from Blue Door Therapeutics shows us how they are using medical cannabis to treat patients.
Water opioid use here in the u.s. is the highest it’s ever been in fact a recent study finds that phoenix ranks in the top 10 for opioid distribution and a lot of people are now turning to maybe natural remedies to get some help including medicinal cannabis ryan is at blue door therapeutics in scottsdale to explain how this is working for some good morning yeah hey
Guys good morning a great team here at blue door therapeutics and we’re talking about opioid addictions folks who have been taking pills for a very long time and need help getting off of them because they are so addictive i want to talk to my friend dr. gina she’s the ceo here at blue door we were talking about acupuncture in the last hour and how that’s helping
People who are addicted to opioids let’s talk about cannabis this time around it’s something that you do use here pretty regularly we do we found cannabis has been really effective for patients who are trying to get through acute and chronic withdrawal when they’re stopping opioid use and how does it help i mean specifically and i know it’s different from patient
To patient but how is it helping them well thc that’s found in the cannabis plant is an effective opioid substitute without using the opioid receptor and so it’s kind of a frontage road to the opioid freeway if you will helping with replacing the neurotransmitters so that patients don’t go through the withdrawal or the sickness that they get when they stop using
Opioids the anxiety feeling like their bodies turning inside out nausea vomiting insomnia etc it helps with those symptoms to get patients through acute withdrawal and then another component of the plant called cbd or cannabidiol helps with a chronic withdrawal and those are cravings or helping patients feel more even-keeled its anti-anxiety it’s muscle relaxant
Helps people sleep so we use the different components of the plants during different times of the process to really help the patient get through the whole thing and a lot of people they think about cannabis to think about smoking a plant they think about a pipe or a bong or some sort of glass to inhale but what you’re working with here is not smoke at all i mean
These are these are in pill form extracts essentially tell me what we’re looking at yeah patients don’t need to think that they need dreadlocks and tie-dye shirt and listen to reggae to use cannabis cannabis has really evolved in terms of the concentrates that are being able that are being made right now marketing i’ll give you a few examples this is a spray it’s
A minty spray it doesn’t taste or smell like cannabis it’s very discreet and every every single pump of that sprays six point six milligrams we know what the dose is interesting we know what the patient’s taking and so we can really help them change their regimen if they need to in order to get through the process they quickly show me the rest of these real quick
Suppositories great for thoracic pain listerine type breath mints that dissolve in the mouth are strips that dissolve in the mouth capsules so there are a lot of ways to use cannabis without putting flame to a plan which doctors will tell you they don’t want you necessarily smoking anything but there’s an extract here jeana thank you so much we appreciate it and
Thank you or wonderful acupuncturist i here at blue door some great ways to go about this i mean this is such a big problem in our country now we need to start addressing how to fix the problem these are just a couple of the ways that they’re using here a blue door it helps that’s for sure thanks brian
Transcribed from video
Medical cannabis used to treat opioid addicts By AZFamily 3TV and CBS 5 News
