Marijuana cured his blindness !

Cannabis instantly restored his sight !

  "I had never been able to make out facial expressions at the movies, even on cartoon characters, but when that 'joint' kicked in I began to see those  subtleties for the first time in my life!"  

Healing Visions in Jamaica

by El Jefe. Posted on Thursday, August 21 2008 CC Magazine

I was born totally blind in the fall of 1960, afflicted with a neuralgic brain disorder that causes rapid and random impulses from the optical nerve, continually refocusing the retina (formally called congenital nystagmus). I first began to react to bright light when I was nearly three years old, and from that day forward my life was focused on a quest for better vision. As fate would have it, I was born as a true “child of the sixties” and my life would be set during both the pinnacle of experimentation in modern medicine and the renaissance of herbal and homeopathic healing.

I remember from an early age my parents and I being obsessed with pursuit of a miracle cure. Throughout primary school I was fitted with all sorts of crazy eyeglasses, having tri-focal lenses ranging from coke bottle bottoms to pyramid prism shapes. In 1971, my ophthalmologist began prescribing 5mg Valium® and 65mg Phenobarbital® in order to slow down the rapid eye muscle spasms, thereby improving my visual acuity. This treatment actually worked during the short periods I could stay awake. It was around this time that I became very close with my older brothers who had “turned on, tuned in, and dropped out”, and were living in a hippy flop house with twenty of their closest friends. The relationship helped introduce me to some interesting treatment alternatives, daily yoga, eye exercises, and mega-dosing on beta-carotene and other herbal remedies.

In 1974 at the local drive-in theatre with my oldest brother, I smoked my first marijuana joint while viewing the full-length feature cartoon “Fritz the Cat”. We lit up a few minutes into the movie, and I’ll never forget it; until then I had never been able to make out facial expressions at the movies, even on cartoon characters, but when that joint kicked in I began to see subtleties for the first time. The sarcastic grin on Fritz’s face and the gleam in his eye suddenly made the movie much more entertaining. When I later described this revelation to my doctor, his response was as to be expected. Though the ophthalmologist acknowledged marijuana would likely slow the nystagmus vibrations and improve my visual acuity, the use of marijuana was too controversial and/or not studied well enough. He felt that Phenobarbital and Valium pills were much safer forms of treatment.

Even as a 14-year old adolescent, the irony from this line of reasoning did not escape me. I immediately discontinued taking my prescriptions and immersed myself in intensive marijuana research, experimentation and advocacy. After reading the “Jamaica Report on Ganja Use Amongst Primary School Children”, the first long-term scientific study documenting both benign and beneficial properties in cannabis, I vowed to all of my friends that I would head to Jamaica upon graduation. Most of my friends weren’t even thinking about high school, much less what they’d be doing after graduation, but I knew I had a quest ahead of me. As it turned out, my graduation came earlier than expected due to estrangement from my parents and troubles at school, both stemming from my continued advocacy for cannabis; at the beginning of my junior year I was given a diploma and asked to leave quietly. So, 17 years old in December of 1977 and in pursuit of a dream, I found myself on the island of Jamaica.