AN AMERICAN STORY

LET’S TALK ABOUT RECOVERY AND CIVIC LEADERSHIP

Hola, my name is Rico, I am a veteran of the United States Army Military Police Corps. Recently I was asked by a friend to share my experience with “traditional” treatment methods employed by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and how they led to my use of medical cannabis. In July of 2005 I was in a fog of war having just returned to the states from a long, hard tour in Baghdad, Iraq. I had been overseas for a little over two years and my life at that point was a series of semi-conscious moments that were getting increasingly harder to string together into anything meaningful, productive, or coherent. Suffice it to say I was in serious need of multiple interventions. One of these interventions occurred shortly after my redeployment back to Germany when I had been provided valium for what I would later learn were panic attacks. It would be months after that initial prescription before I actually sat down to open up about what it was I was feeling, and experiencing. My hesitancy to speak on these mental health concerns came largely from knowing that if/when I did, my military career was as good as over. If it weren’t for my wife at the time I more than likely would have kept my mouth shut about all of it and continued to lash out in increasingly unhealthy and dangerous ways.

My primary form of self-medicating was through alcohol consumption. I would drink from the time I woke up until I passed out on a regular basis, and when I began going through therapy, there were prescriptions being added. The combination of pills to “help” with sleep, depression, anxiety, and pain in and of themselves produced worrisome side effects, adding them to my existing regimen was almost deadly. The next three years left a trail of fights, emergency room visits, psychiatric wards, jail, probation, divorce, a home foreclosure and finally a family intervention bringing me back to my hometown of Tucson, Arizona. I will forever be grateful that my family stepped in, and I cringe thinking of where I would have wandered off had it not been for their love, compassion and assistance. As helpful as their actions were, being back in the room I grew up in was a mental game I wasn’t prepared for. I felt like I had come full circle into a situation I intentionally left. I quickly became suicidal. One day at the pit of my despair, I wrote letters to my parents and estranged wife, pulled out my handgun after placing blankets on the ground to soak up my blood, and then went about moving the weapon from my temple, back into my mouth. Every cell of my body felt electrified, and the feeling in my stomach was like being at the top of a steep roller coaster when a thought overwhelmed me: I pictured my parents coming home from church to find their son dead. In shame I threw my pistol across the room, and in the fetal position I cried on the floor until I fell asleep. 

When I woke up I had made up my mind to move out of my parent’s home, and to wean myself from the pills that had me feeling like a zombie; then I talked with my therapist at the VA about what had happened. Moving into another place and putting the prescription narcotics down was easier than I thought it would be. At the time there were plenty of places in town to rent, and as a substitute for the pills I began using cannabis. Finding a reason to get out of bed every morning came in the form of getting back into school, and then volunteering with other veterans at the University of Arizona (UofA). I have been truly blessed with a faithful family, good friends, and a quality hospital to assist in my recovery and transition back into society. My military pension took care of my rent and other needs, I had the G.I. Bill available that took care of the university goals, and growing up where and how I did afforded me access to quality cannabis. I do have to say that I didn’t just jump into academia. I got my feet wet at Cochise Community College before I applied to the University of Arizona. When I went in to speak with my VA therapist she suggested that I look into a new program getting started at the UofA called “V.E.T.S.” (Veterans Education and Transition Services). Accepting her invitation and attending an event on campus the next week on the Marine Corps birthday (November 10th) completely altered the trajectory of my life.

In the spring of 2010 I began taking classes at the University of Arizona, studying Public Management and Policy, with an emphasis in Criminal Justice. I also sought a minor in Military Science and Leadership, while volunteering my spare time between classes at the VETS Center. The transition onto campus wasn’t as seamless as I am implying here in this summary, but with my mental health toolbag from the VA in hand to continue working on my rough edges, I was able to maintain an even keel. My use of cannabis was, in my opinion, nobody's business. I never felt the need to disclose to anyone, outside of visitors to my home, what was in my medicine cabinet. It just didn’t come up. I lived, and still live, close to campus, so I would walk to school often. Before classes I would medicate, in between classes I would walk home and medicate, and after classes before my volunteer work I would walk home and medicate. Cannabis was by far the most useful tool in my toolkit, and the record I have on campus, within the city of Tucson, the state of Arizona, across the United States, and internationally speaks to my productivity. Volunteering, giving back to my community, and showing up for my brothers and sisters who were suffering through some of the same issues I had been going through turned out to be another major contributing factor of my post traumatic growth.

In 2013 I applied for, and was accepted into a Fellowship with the Flinn-Brown Arizona Center for Civic Leadership, and subsequently began working with Dr. Sue Sisley at the University of Arizona. Dr. Sisley is a researcher who was at that point, leading the nation’s first federally approved study investigating the safety and efficacy of cannabis when used to treat treatment resistant post traumatic stress. Until I began working with her I had always done my best to remain neutral on the subject of cannabis publicly. I was serving in various leadership positions, representing people and an organization who held a variety of opinions on that subject matter, and I didn’t feel it was appropriate to prosthelytize my own personal beliefs. In my newfound freedom away from campus I saw no need to hide what it was I felt, and had personally experienced. However, that meant I had to actually become a medical patient in the state of Arizona and stop securing my medication through the illicit traditional market. Within six months of me beginning my work with Doc Sisley and MAPS, she was fired from the UofA, and again everything I thought I knew, got flipped on its head. What was on the horizon was a battle that has lasted up to this day, almost a decade later. To summarize and conclude this already extended summary, the difference between my life before medical cannabis and now is remarkable beyond words. In many ways they’re incomparable. The two paths deviate from each other in such an extreme way, leaving anyone (myself included), confronted with the confusing comparison questioning how one could ever have been a part of the other.

Thank you for taking the time to read my story, I hope it inspires you and provides a glimmer of hope. 

-Ricardo “Rico” Pereyda

Tucson, Arizona