Medical Marijuana? Hmm...

A court-ordered client who was attending group - while under the influence of marijuana – said he had a "legal right" to do so.

Then, he proudly displayed a "medical marijuana" card he'd obtained from a doctor here in Arizona who’d given it to him for “chronic pain.”

The problem with this – regardless of whether he had a medical marijuana card – is we don't allow clients to use opiates or mind altering drugs of any kind. Even with a legal prescription. After all, there are many legal substances that are not compatible with recovery – alcohol being among them.

Further to this thought, we have a policy of not allowing clients to use, other than on a short-term basis, opiate-based pain killers. On occasion, when clients are injured, we allow them to use prescribed drugs. But clients taking opiates for chronic pain – even though they have a legitimate injury - are referred elsewhere. Some programs allow clients to use drugs of most any kind, as long as they pay to be there.

Also, we’ve had clients who smoke spice, or use bath salts. They try this because they know the tests for these drugs are expensive - that many programs don't have them. .But, guess what? We spend the money for these tests. And we sometimes find clients who are under the influence of these substances.

As I’ve often written, we have no issue with those who want to get high; just not at TLC.

As a philosophical aside, I have trouble understanding those who want to get high - but also be in a recovery program. What's the point? If one wants to get high, go for it. Many of us at TLC did it for years until it didn’t work.

We simply want to run a clean program that gives those who want sobriety to have the best opportunity to do so.