How I Kicked OTCs
There are very few of us who have never taken an over the counter (OTC) painkiller. We most likely were given baby aspirin when we were children and probably continued on to specialized extra strength ibuprofen as adults.
OTCs seem benign. They don’t require a prescription or a trip to the doctor. They’re readily available at every grocery store, gas station, bodega and pharmacy. They’re cheap compared to prescription medications. We assume that they are perfectly safe because they are so prevalent.
Most of us probably wouldn’t consume these drugs (or give them to our kids) so readily if we were more aware of how they work in our bodies.
Fortunately, there is a healthy natural alternative out there - cannabis.
My mission to kick OTCs
We’re all learning a great deal about the successful use of medical marijuana to provide pain relief for folks with chronic pain. But, how well does cannabis work for everyday temporary aches and discomfort?
It works very well.
In fact, until marijuana prohibition began in 1937, the US Pharmacopoeia listed cannabis as the primary medicine for over 100 diseases. In fact, cannabis was the most commonly used painkiller in the U.S. until 1899 when aspirin was introduced. In 1906, the Pure Food and Drug Act, meant to target growing morphine addiction in the public, required that any morphine and cannabis be disclosed in ingredient lists.
I’m currently doing an experiment on myself to see if I can use cannabis-derived remedies to directly replicate the experience of using OTCs. For example, whenever I experience any kind of pain that would make me grab an Advil I take something with a similar potency, form and method of consumption.
Here’s why I decided to do this experiment and my take on how well it’s working.
Everyday pain sources
People take OTC painkillers for a myriad of reasons. Some folks only use them occasionally like for an alcohol hangover or to alleviate a fever or body ache when they have the flu. Other people take them daily.
The common sources of pain I am experimenting with are:
Headache
Menstrual cramps
Dental pain
Body ache
Sunburn, skin irritation
This list may look like I’m constantly hurting from one thing or another, but I’m one of those people that won’t tolerate being distracted by pain – even low levels – for any amount of time. I want to completely kill it the moment it’s even noticeable.
OTCs work fast, giving you the feeling that all will be well within minutes, and it generally is. In exchange for the fast relief I’ve chosen to skim over the ingredients and side effects list on the labels. As we’ll see this is not wise for anyone to do.
How OTC pain relievers work
The OTCs I’ve relied on the most over the years are Advil (ibuprofen), anti-histamines and Pepto (bismuth salicylate.) Let’s take a look at how these work in your body.
General pain - Advil, Aleve, Tylenol, and aspirin bring relief by inhibiting the formation of an enzyme called prostaglandin at the site of damaged tissue, blocking the pain nerve signal from being sent to the brain.
GI upset - Salicylate, the active ingredient in Pepto and Kaopectate, slows the flow of liquids into the gut by coating the tissues. Anti-diarrheals contain loperamide, an opioid that decreases activity in the major nerve supply to the gastrointestinal tract.
Skin irritations and sunburn – The active ingredient in Solarcaine and Lanacane is benzocaine, a (powerful) local anesthetic. The “-caine” part is no coincidence: Benzocaine is close enough in chemical structure that it can, and has been, mistaken for a false positive for cocaine.
See a pattern here? The gut remedies and the skin treatment both contain opioid-like compounds. The benign OTCs our culture promotes as “not real drugs” actually are real drugs.
Side effects
Advertisements for prescription drugs are famous for the casual way they present long lists of horrific potential side effects over images of healthy people enjoying life. Ads for OTCs aren’t much different; they are presented as being a guaranteed fix for your family’s ailments, but their side effects are also potentially quite dangerous.
Reactions to OTCs run the gamut from heart attacks to vomiting, internal bleeding, facial swelling, anaphylaxis, rashes and gut issues. There is also a serious concern about interactions between OTCs and prescription medications.
Along with the misconception that OTCs aren’t really drugs is the assumption that you can’t overdose on them. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Acute liver damage is a real and possible side effect of dosages that are too high. Liver damage can lead to liver failure and death within days.
How Cannabis Remedies Work
OTCs manipulate the normal operation of your central nervous system by masking pain signals. Cannabis remedies leverage your endocannabinoid system which is a part of your central nervous system that utilizes receptors in your tissues. The cannabis plant naturally contains compounds called cannabinoids that lock into these receptors to deliver pain relief and reduce inflammation. The ones most often used in common painkilling remedies are CBD, THC and CBN.
How I Made the Switch
The first cannabis pain remedy I used was a lotion to ease muscle aches during marathon training. That lotion turned out to be a game-changer. It was so effective that I soon after I began treating toothaches caused by jaw misalignment using a very low-dose 1:1 ratio THC-CBD tincture during the day and hard-candy lozenges containing a 3:1 THC-CBD ratio at night.
Within the past few weeks, I’ve added time-release topical patches to my recovery for deep body aches after long training runs. The patch I get the most benefit from has 10 mgs of CBN released directly into your bloodstream. My soreness is gone after about 30-45 minutes and it stays gone. I never have to use a second patch, in fact I sometimes cut one in half and the reduced dose still works great.
Finally, I decided to go all the way and use the lozenges as an everyday analgesic.
OTCs’ fast activation is something I’ve had to learn how to replicate with cannabis remedies. In my experience so far, edibles are the go-to for headaches and cramps, however, ingested cannabis can take between 30 minutes and two hours to take effect. This can seem like a miserable eternity when you’re already hurting.
I’ve found that a combination of the edibles and topicals can speed up getting relief. In the case of cramps, I’ve found that THC-CBD muscle salves can quickly relax painful bloating while a lozenge or drink makes its way through your system.
Here’s my formula for the pain I most often experience:
Headache – THC-CBD lozenges or CBD tincture
PMS cramps - THC-CBD lozenges + muscle salve
Dental pain – Tincture, lozenges or pain lotion
Body ache – Patch, bath soak
Sunburn, skin irritations – Muscle salve
I don’t smoke or vape so these aren’t in the mix for me.
Dosage, time to work
When you switch from OTCs to cannabis remedies the same central rule for trying edibles applies: Start low, go slow. I started with very small amounts, around 2 mgs THC and worked my way up to a full dose of 7 mgs THC, both combined with CBD.
Just as with food, it’s very easy to disregard portions when we use OTCs. We think of a dose of aspirin in terms of how many we swallow, not how much of a medicine we took. For example, one pill will stop a headache from coming on, then another an hour later will really make sure it doesn’t happen. If you’re already in seemingly terrible pain, then three pills will knock it right out.
How much active chemical are you ingesting in those pills? Is it even safe?
Why Don’t More People Use Common Cannabis Remedies?
There are a few barriers to using cannabis remedies.
Availability, legality
Stigma
Perception that MMJ is only for very ill patients with extreme pain
Aversion to getting high
This list looks obvious: You can’t take advantage of something that’s not available to you. If you are able to access it but believe that it’s harmful, you certainly won’t try it.
Prohibitionists have done a masterful job of preventing the public from learning about the beneficial properties of cannabis. It’s their little secret that you can easily avoid getting high. Folks you meet outside of the cannabis world are surprised and even skeptical when they find out that there are at least 65 cannabinoids in the plant and only one - THC - is psychoactive. (I have a friend with an MD/PhD in biochemistry and even she didn’t know it.)
Educating the public that medical uses of cannabis are for real, and not just for intense chronic pain or serious illness, is key to bringing it back into our medicine cabinets and into our healthy lifestyle routines.
When I began my personal experiment, I knew enough about food safety to know that the rationale, “if it’s not good for you it wouldn’t be on the shelf” isn’t true. After researching the ingredients in OTCs, I quickly saw just how false it is.
The debate I had with myself after learning the details of how OTCs work in your body was whether or not pain relief was worth ingesting these chemicals. Natural supplements often fall short of what people expect, (and their ingredients can be doubly questionable) which reinforces the belief that OTCs are the only available painkillers that work.
But, cannabis is such an effective analgesic that at one time the American Medical Association (AMA) argued against prohibition on behalf of medical progress. Since the herb is extremely potent and essentially non-toxic, the AMA considered it a potential wonder drug.
It’s a sad irony that the intent of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1937 was to combat morphine misuse, yet today morphine is commonly (over)prescribed and addiction is again an issue in our society. Cannabis got caught up in this same prohibition net and is still illegal.
The more I learned about how cannabis remedies work with your body’s processes, the more confident I am in my decision to eliminate OTCs and trust cannabis remedies.
Sources:
Patients for Medical Cannabis – “Marijuana safer than aspirin”
Cannabis Now magazine – “History of Marijuana in America”
Consumer Reports – “The dangers of dietary and nutritional supplements investigated”
Newsmax Health – “Beware: Over-the-Counter Pain Relievers Can Be Deadly”
Wikipedia – Bismuth salicylate, Loperamide, Benzocaine
Open University – “Pain and Aspirin”