Daniel Boughen is an author/activist/former cancer patient who teaches an online community for medical patients and new growers.  Daniel continues to provide peer support to patients, and to research, learning new and increasingly vital information on the therapeutic use of cannabis for terminal and seriously ill patients for coming editions.
He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Medical Growing

A Garden of Peace

By Daniel P. Boughen

Trine Day LLC

Copyright © 2012 Daniel P. Boughen
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-936296-96-5

Contents

CoverImage,
title page,
Copyright page,
Dedication,
Cannabinaceae,
Foreword,
Introduction,
A Little About Myself,
Cannabis is Good For You!,
Cannabis is Not Toxic!,
What Cannabis Will Replace,
Cannabis Therapy,
Why You Should Grow Cannabis For Your Personal Health,
Legalization Models and Concerns,
Cannabis and Its Place in Society,
A “12-1” Revolution,
Cannabis Indica,
Cannabis Sativa,
Females,
Males,
Tools and Supplies,
The Growing Environment,
The Ideal pH for Cannabis,
Lighting Spectrum,
Photo-Periodic Control Lighting,
Six Schedules for Growing Cannabis,
Air,
Water,
Nutrients for Cannabis,
Seeds,
Deciphering Seeds and Strain Crosses,
Breeding and crossing for seed progeny,
The Super-Start Box,
A Micro-Grow Model,
Building Strong Roots,
Clone Propagation,
Troubleshooting,
Spider Mites,
Maturation and the Vegetation Stage,
Flowering Stage,
Harvesting,
Trichomes,
Curing and Storage,
Butter and Baking,
Modern Methods of Hashish Production,
Making Ice-water Hash in your Kitchen,
Medicinal Oils,
Dosing Medicinal Oils,
Building a Green-Hut,
Harvest Quality Report,
Webliography,

CHAPTER 1

Cannabis is Good For You!

I am about to make the argument that Cannabis is in fact health food, in that its overall effect on the nervous system is one of beneficial easement, while at the same time it is the least toxic natural herbal substance known to man.

Toxic experimental drugs cause incredible damage. The use of Cannabis can replace most of the pharmaceutical drugs being used today. We still wait in vain for science’s unfulfilled promise of the true Cancer cure. Pharmaceuticals have failed to copy what Cannabis has done for thousands of years.

Studies have shown that Cannabis protects the brain, regulates the nervous system, attacks and kills cancer cells, and eases dozens of other aches and pains.

Here are just a few of the afflictions Cannabis safely provides regular symptomatic relief from:

• Chronic pain from arthritis

• Joint Inflammation

• Pain from repetitive workplace injury

• Recovery from alcoholism or narcotics

• Menstrual symptoms

• Wasting diseases related to HIV

• Nausea due to Chemotherapy

• Fatigue

• Migraines

• Fibromyalgia

• Chrohn’s disease

• Multiple Sclerosis

• Erectile Dysfunction

• Even Cancer!

While there may be useful drugs that can help to manage some of the symptoms brought on by these diseases (many by accident), their toxicity and addictive nature remain a serious concern for patients. Their inability to cure disease is not in question, since they do not. Curing disease is not the aim of pharmaceutical companies, they aim much lower at the highly lucrative symptom management market. Frankly, to the CEO’s of pharmaceutical companies it makes more business sense to never cure a disease.

Experimental chemicals designed to treat the many and varied and even imaginary illnesses of humans carry with them the additional risk of creating complications, which may require further treatment with other pharmaceutical drugs.

Patients who are forced into a vulnerable position can be drawn in to an increasingly addictive drug spiral. They can easily end up socially unable to cope and hopelessly addicted to opiates prescribed by their doctors. Families are destroyed by the increasing incidence of accidental overdose of patients on prescription drugs.

When you consider that the Endo-Cannabinoid system has already been present in our bodies for countless eons, a new respect for herbal medicine can be properly appreciated.

Cannabis remains the only herbal medicine able to regulate such a wide array of systems in the body, while providing a non-toxic and non-addictive relaxant. Sociologically, the lasting presence of debate about Cannabis serves to strongly indicate that prohibition is no longer appropriate, and that an educated public doesn’t agree with the DEA’s status for Cannabis.

Now professors, doctors, scientists and health professionals of the highest integrity are finally able to confirm what we have known all along, and help debunk the ridiculous gateway theory and other vain prohibitionist propaganda. The tenor of the debate has risen. Even health and legal professionals with law enforcement are speaking out against racist drug policy, acknowledging Cannabis’s safety and supporting broad legalization.

Reports from patients are empirical; they use Cannabis for pain relief, and it works. Such overwhelming evidence has come to light that no one may ever say it is useless again.

It has now become our moral duty to perform an act of civil disobedience, and grow it in protest of the arbitrary and racist laws prohibiting it. If that sounded familiar it should. Dr Martin Luther King once spoke similar words in support of civil rights for all Americans. Cannabis prohibition is a civil rights issue too, and the thin edge of the wedge. If Cannabis user’s rights can be overridden, then none of us is safe from the whims of the state. Your other rights could easily be next.

CHAPTER 2

Cannabis is Not Toxic!

As a safe recreational substance, Cannabis has no equal. Its gentle resins stimulate our Endocannabinoid system, releasing dopamine we produce our brains, and providing an all-natural relaxation that is absolutely supreme in peace and joy.

Cannabis leaves nothing in the way of hangovers like alcohol. It is nontoxic, and proven non-addictive. Cannabis stimulates creativity, serenity, and well being, inhibits ego, promotes friendliness and peaceful cooperation. Its mildly euphoric effects are easy to dismiss, and 20 to 50 million Americans use it with no ill side effects whatsoever.

Cannabis users are not prone to fighting, foolish, dangerous behavior or violence. Opting instead for cooperation, we are apt to eat fine food, listen to good music, dance with our loved ones, and care for our families, grow a garden, paint a masterpiece, or even draft a constitution!

Family dysfunction and violence that is caused by alcoholism is nonexistent in Cannabis smokers. In fact Cannabis’s relaxative properties have proven an effective remedy for addictions, such as tobacco, alcohol, cocaine, and heroin, and show promise with methamphetamine addiction as well.

Cannabis shows promise as a social remedy to harder drugs, offering a safe alternative for those who wish to alter their collective consciousness, and for whom alcohol is not a viable choice.

To be clear, in five thousand years of documentation on the medical and recreational use of Cannabis, there has never been recorded a single death directly caused by Cannabis toxicity.

In strictest medical terms, Cannabis is the safest food on the planet, with an LD50 rating so ridiculously low they can only estimate its numbers.

Cannabis’s LD50 is estimated at 1:40,000

Consider this in real terms. It means that in order to induce a lethal dose, the subject would need to consume such a ridiculously large (22 to 45 pounds) amount of Cannabis in a single sitting that its sheer impossibility renders the study’s application to Cannabis invalid. Long before the subject reached his goal, he would be overcome with C02 or carbon monoxide asphyxiation.

So, clearly Cannabis can kill you if a 50 pound bale falls on your head, or if you are killed by Carbon monoxide poisoning from a burning bale, but smoking Cannabis even daily won’t come even close to risking your health, and may in fact improve it. Feel free to mock the invalid application of the LD50 rating to Cannabis; it’s being misused.

Obviously, toxicity is the wrong criterion by which to measure Cannabis. The focus of medical study needs to be shifted, and standards of cell, nervous system and endocrine health need to be applied and Cannabis must be given the same due diligence as the LD50 toxicity ratings.

Studies of Cannabis should focus on the benefits of its use on the health of the subject as a target for information gathering. Science in the field of Cannabis has a long road ahead, and the medical community needs to bring focused attention to bear, and make certain it is properly studied to see the real benefits.

Asking what is nutritious about Cannabis may be a more constructive approach to learning. Perhaps this could also be applied as an equal and opposite balancing study to more natural foods and drugs. As it is, the LD50 rating system is only useful as far as its bias allows, and so has a limited application to the expression of balanced scientific research.

At this point, we may confidently and empirically say it is not dangerous. Asking what is toxic about Cannabis is just disingenuous.

The LD50 for Cannabis is a crock! Created in 1927 by J.W. Trevan, the LD50 rating is used by science to determine the toxicity of substances. Every drug is given this rating, and Cannabis is no exception and yet, to date, no one has been able to accurately determine Cannabis’s lethal dosage.

CHAPTER 3

What Cannabis Will Replace

What else has the government lied about?

Stock held corporations have been the eternal buzz-kill since time began. Charles Dickens’s dire warning about corporate slavery in A Christmas Carol, and the notorious and omnipotent Big Brother of 1984 by George Orwell featured chilling examples of corporate control gone amuck. Even in the new media, stories like this still serve as warnings about the dark potential of so-called ‘corporate culture’; a term cooked up by corporate public relations in a pathetic attempt to sanitize greed. Lets face it, business is all about profit. You buy something, and you sell it for more. There is no humanity in an entity whose programmed purpose is to make money for its shareholders to the exclusion of every other consideration. Any such corporation is soulless and undeserving of existence.

When government (whose sworn interest is to protect the people) acts like a private company or presumes to take on a pseudo-corporate role, and joins in collusion with the interests of corporations and money, there is an inherent social conflict of interest since the people who elected their representatives can no longer trust them, (for you ‘politicians’ who still don’t get it, it is called treason!).

Many politicians, agencies and corporations lined up to lie about Cannabis and rape the economy. They not only shut down the hemp industry and took over medicine with chemicals, but they also systematically raped the environment for profit in housing, fiber, and energy instead of using environmentally friendly Cannabis.

This monumental corporate greed culminated in April 20, 2010 with the British Petroleum spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but let’s not forget the remaining environment worldwide. Whole areas are now uninhabitable, millions are in prison, and obedient prescription junkies walk the earth, blindly doing as they are told. The government has used drug enforcement agencies and the people’s free press to slander Cannabis with bald-face lies and racisim, to attack a far superior product and gain market advantage for petroleum and pharmaceutical companies. they are poisoning our bodies and our world.

Moguls like William Randolph Hearst and Dupont wished to dominate the market and fiber industries with their petroleum-based chemicals and timber products, so they lied to the world. They employed social terrorism in their phony articles about ‘reefer madness‘, and targeted the weakest and most vulnerable members of society with yellow journalism so they could appear to be protecting public morals, while the government of the day passed oppressive or unconstitutional laws designed to limit citizen’s freedoms and choices and consolidate power.

All along the way, this corruption has controlled the media and used it to confuse the public with propaganda campaigns run on television, on the one hand touting experimental drugs and better living for all through chemical science, while on the other supporting a pseudo-moral call for an imaginary ‘drug free society’.

They’ve succeeded only in polluting and destroying land, air and sea, and destroying lives with human experiments, all in the name of progress – but progress may go backwards when there is talk of the EPA being defunded. Cannabis can replace all of that, and I and all those who write after me can prove it.

You Can’t spell ‘Pharmaceuticals without ‘harm’ Thalidomide In the late 1950s and early 1960s, more than 10,000 children in 46 countries were born with deformities such as phocomelia, as a consequence of thalidomide use. (ref. Wikipedia)

CHAPTER 4

Cannabis Therapy

Using Cannabis for addictions withdrawal:

Cannabis has been used for centuries for symptomatic relief from cocaine and heroin addiction, even before the arrival of powerful mu-opioids anti-psychotics and mood enhancing pharmaceuticals which now flood society. Many of the most popularly used and vigorously advertised pharmaceutical drugs come with a sharply addictive profile and a long list of side effects. Once prescribed patients may be on them for years or even the rest of their lives.

This often puts people’s health in decline as the side effects of years of use accumulate, weakening the body’s systems and eventually shutting down the Endo-Cannabinoid system.

Cannabis may be used to ease withdrawal pains during a patient’s convalescence. When combined with practical advice and peer counseling, Cannabis provides a safe and non-toxic alternative to addiction relapse, and has the potential to be more successful than the traditional ‘cold turkey’ treatment programs.

Recreational drugs can also cause addiction, the most common being alcohol, and illegal drugs such as heroin, methamphetamines or crack cocaine, but so can prescription drugs.

With alcohol, constant low-level poisoning effects self esteem, suppresses the natural immune system, and its use is highly addictive. Without the means to ‘chemically decompress’, the person trying to break his addiction may easily suffer relapse.

A simple Cannabis treatment for severe addiction from opiates or other medications may take as little as four weeks, starting with oils or tinctures for the severest symptoms, and symptomatically selected buds for relaxation and mood enhancement through a patient’s initial decompression period.

Legal acceptance of Cannabis as medicine will go a long way towards offering people in trouble a means to win. Once a person has declared his desire to end his addiction it is our duty as his fellows to assist his efforts, and respectfully facilitate an exit strategy for him. Cannabis is one of the best.

Addiction counseling could be offered on a voluntary base or if needed, in combination with psychological counseling and guidance.

In our own hands

The simple knowledge of the healing power of Cannabis puts control back in peoples hands. We are now acutely aware of the danger and power of addictions, and the negative effects they may have on our lives. The friends we have lost wait for us to share this information, and many long to use Cannabis to help them back from the dangerous world of hard drugs and highly addictive substances.

Recovery from an addiction is a difficult journey. Patients suffer psychological as well as a chemical imbalance in the body. Addictive substances such as heroin, alcohol or prescription drugs directly cause the suppression of the Endocannabinoid system present in our bodies, and in order to restore health, the dormant Cannabinoid receptors need to be reactivated.

A patient may need a highly potent dose using oils or tinctures at the beginning of treatment to reawaken these receptors so they may work to reinforce the immune system and restore the body balance. The psychoactive and relaxant qualities of Cannabis initially allow the patient to rest, help control craving and prevent relapses.

The ‘Munchie Effect’ Cannabis produces encourages the patient to begin eating, so gradually, vitality can be returned to the body as protein, minerals and vitamins are returned to normal levels.

Once the initial ‘decompression period’ has been concluded, the patient ceases oils and tinctures in favor of the appropriate titration of vaporized or smoked Cannabis, reinforcing the patients ability to avoid relapse.

Drug rehabilitation is an ongoing process which may take years to accomplish. Although Cannabis is not addictive, long established addictive habits may be difficult to break, and former addicts may opt to use Cannabis the rest of their lives. Still, this constitutes legitimate medical use, and not drug abuse. In the context of balancing the Endocannabinoid system there can be no abuse of Cannabis whatsoever.

CHAPTER 5

Why You Should Grow Cannabis For Your Personal Health

The three-letter government agencies have made us all the chattel of vast corporate conglomerates, which devour resources and churn out endless piles of crap for us to consume; and we, the willing participants, run until we die like a hamster on a wheel.

Our role in this dark and macabre production is to work at social slavery jobs for money to purchase the crap that the corporations sell us, thereby completing the circle of consumption. They bribe us with bright and shiny consumer goods to keep us quiet, so they may go on raping the world for money and power with our cooperation.

Without your help buying products and validating the corporate bottom line, they cannot exist, and using Cannabis instead of pharmaceuticals or as a social relaxant is a serious financial attack on those corporate profits.

(Continues…)Excerpted from Medical Growing by Daniel P. Boughen. Copyright © 2012 Daniel P. Boughen. Excerpted by permission of Trine Day LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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