Hi everyone,
My name is Brian, I'm 32 years old. I was diagnosed with Crohn's when I was 13 after about a year of symptoms. I've never been part of any support group for Crohn's and honestly I don't know much about the disease, other than it's something I have to live with. I was lucky to have some of the best Crohn's doctors when I was a kid. After wrestling with prednisone and pentasa for a couple years I eventually got onto Imuran and Asacol and managed to get into remission for the rest of my teenage years. I started having flare's again during my first year of college but I managed to get those under control after a short time on prednisone. During my sophomore year I was feeling pretty good until one fine day I started having this new kind of pain, like someone was grabbing and twisting my intestines in knots, and by the next morning I was in the hospital. After 10 days on antibiotics and nothing by mouth, I was feeling like a million bucks and ready to get back to school. I went home that night and had my first real meal and within a few hours I was feeling worse than ever and puking black and green. My parents took me to the ER and they did a cat scan and found my colon completely blocked. The surgeon removed 8 inches of my lower intestine that had been badly scarred during my teenage years. They installed a colostomy bag which was the most humiliating and humbling experience of my entire life. But after six weeks they reversed it in a second surgery and I was extremely grateful to be back in one piece, so to speak. That was in 2000.
After the surgery I still had flares but I gradually got better at controlling them. I had a major breakthrough when I learned to avoid any foods containing hydrogenated oils. Hydrogenated oils are in all kinds of processed foods; cookies, cereal, candy. I have always been allergic to milk products and a lot of milk free substitutes for butter and milk, ice cream, etc... are based on partially hydrogenated oil. I started paying attention to cooking oils, if I ate at a restaurant where they used crisco or pam I would feel worse within a few hours after. I became vegan for a while. I think I felt best during that time, but couldn't sustain it because I love meat too much. If I was feeling really bad sometimes I would go on a diet of gatorade and instant oatmeal and sometimes chicken broth.
Since that time I have managed to stay out of the hospital and off of prednisone. I've never experimented with any of the newer drugs like remicaid. I've never had any side effects that I know of from Imuran or Asacol and I don't really want to mess with that combo. My biggest problem has been staying on my meds. When I feel good I tend to think I'm invincible and stop taking them and then I start to feel bad again, but once I stop I don't start taking them again until it gets really bad. For example, a few years ago I went off my meds for a whole year and dropped 25 pounds and felt like crap, and then had to double my dosage of asacol and I've not been able to lower it since. I don't know why I do this. It's a dumb behavior that I am trying to grow out of.
So what brings me to this group now? Well, another factor in my story is that I have been a habitual marijuana user for the last eight years, since I started my professional career. I am a software developer and I get extremely wrapped up in my work, and smoking pot became my way of detaching from work and letting my brain unwind. I always saw this as being an unhealthy habit; ie I SHOULD have some other way of releasing stress that doesn't involve drugs. Also I don't like that pot messes with my memory leaves me feeling groggy, and I feel more socially inhibited when I've been smoking pot. So in march this year I moved from new york to colorado to change my lifestyle and get outdoors more, and be more physically active. I quit using at that time. But what has happened is that I am again struggling with my Crohn's even though this time I have been really good about taking my meds. Meanwhile I've been hearing that some people think marijuana helps with Crohn's, and beginning to wonder if it has actually been helping me stay out of the hospital for all these years. When I think back to the times when I had the worst flares, they were times when I had made lifestyle changes, like changing majors, changing jobs, moving, etc... but they were also the times when I had not been using pot at all. So, I don't know, I'm curious to compare notes with other people who have used marijuana as a treatment for Crohn's. But most importantly I feel like it's time to get serious about feeling better, whether that means making more adjustments to my diet, medicine or lifestyle.
My name is Brian, I'm 32 years old. I was diagnosed with Crohn's when I was 13 after about a year of symptoms. I've never been part of any support group for Crohn's and honestly I don't know much about the disease, other than it's something I have to live with. I was lucky to have some of the best Crohn's doctors when I was a kid. After wrestling with prednisone and pentasa for a couple years I eventually got onto Imuran and Asacol and managed to get into remission for the rest of my teenage years. I started having flare's again during my first year of college but I managed to get those under control after a short time on prednisone. During my sophomore year I was feeling pretty good until one fine day I started having this new kind of pain, like someone was grabbing and twisting my intestines in knots, and by the next morning I was in the hospital. After 10 days on antibiotics and nothing by mouth, I was feeling like a million bucks and ready to get back to school. I went home that night and had my first real meal and within a few hours I was feeling worse than ever and puking black and green. My parents took me to the ER and they did a cat scan and found my colon completely blocked. The surgeon removed 8 inches of my lower intestine that had been badly scarred during my teenage years. They installed a colostomy bag which was the most humiliating and humbling experience of my entire life. But after six weeks they reversed it in a second surgery and I was extremely grateful to be back in one piece, so to speak. That was in 2000.
After the surgery I still had flares but I gradually got better at controlling them. I had a major breakthrough when I learned to avoid any foods containing hydrogenated oils. Hydrogenated oils are in all kinds of processed foods; cookies, cereal, candy. I have always been allergic to milk products and a lot of milk free substitutes for butter and milk, ice cream, etc... are based on partially hydrogenated oil. I started paying attention to cooking oils, if I ate at a restaurant where they used crisco or pam I would feel worse within a few hours after. I became vegan for a while. I think I felt best during that time, but couldn't sustain it because I love meat too much. If I was feeling really bad sometimes I would go on a diet of gatorade and instant oatmeal and sometimes chicken broth.
Since that time I have managed to stay out of the hospital and off of prednisone. I've never experimented with any of the newer drugs like remicaid. I've never had any side effects that I know of from Imuran or Asacol and I don't really want to mess with that combo. My biggest problem has been staying on my meds. When I feel good I tend to think I'm invincible and stop taking them and then I start to feel bad again, but once I stop I don't start taking them again until it gets really bad. For example, a few years ago I went off my meds for a whole year and dropped 25 pounds and felt like crap, and then had to double my dosage of asacol and I've not been able to lower it since. I don't know why I do this. It's a dumb behavior that I am trying to grow out of.
So what brings me to this group now? Well, another factor in my story is that I have been a habitual marijuana user for the last eight years, since I started my professional career. I am a software developer and I get extremely wrapped up in my work, and smoking pot became my way of detaching from work and letting my brain unwind. I always saw this as being an unhealthy habit; ie I SHOULD have some other way of releasing stress that doesn't involve drugs. Also I don't like that pot messes with my memory leaves me feeling groggy, and I feel more socially inhibited when I've been smoking pot. So in march this year I moved from new york to colorado to change my lifestyle and get outdoors more, and be more physically active. I quit using at that time. But what has happened is that I am again struggling with my Crohn's even though this time I have been really good about taking my meds. Meanwhile I've been hearing that some people think marijuana helps with Crohn's, and beginning to wonder if it has actually been helping me stay out of the hospital for all these years. When I think back to the times when I had the worst flares, they were times when I had made lifestyle changes, like changing majors, changing jobs, moving, etc... but they were also the times when I had not been using pot at all. So, I don't know, I'm curious to compare notes with other people who have used marijuana as a treatment for Crohn's. But most importantly I feel like it's time to get serious about feeling better, whether that means making more adjustments to my diet, medicine or lifestyle.
