Healing Green: How Cannabis Transformed My Migraine Management

I closed my eyes, enjoying the minuscule relief the darkness brought to my pounding head.

I blew out a breath, massaging my temples like that would magically make my migraine, and the slew of secondary symptoms it always brought with it, go away. 

“How long ago was it that I had taken that over-the-counter migraine relief medication?” I thought.

I checked my watch – almost one hour. At this point, I was even considering trying the prescription migraine medicine that would make me so drowsy that the rest of my evening would be spent trying to stay awake. But I had things to do, and I did not want to take that option if I was honest with myself. 

I blew out another breath and groaned as I leaned back against the couch. I wasn’t sure why I expected ibuprofen to suddenly bring me relief. 

Why would it? With migraines this bad, it barely ever took the edge off the blinding pain pulsating behind my eyes. Not to mention the nausea in the pit of my stomach or wanting to turn every light and noise off in my house just to get a tiny bit more relief. 

What had brought my migraine on this time? Who knew. Maybe it was hormones or the weather. It was January, after all. 

Stress was also a potential culprit, thanks to the demands of being both a full-time property manager and deep into running my own small writing and author business on the side. Both jobs required a ton of brain power, which made migraines that much more debilitating to my work life. 

Through the pounding in my head, I tried to recall when my migraines had become so frequent. I had always been prone to them even in my younger years. 

But now that I was deep into my thirties, it seemed a slight change in the wind was enough to trigger them.

I turned my cell phone to the lowest brightness setting possible and began to scour the internet’s vast knowledge of all things migraine relief. Most I had tried, tested, and already vetoed. 

However, there was one thing that caught my attention this time. It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen or thought about this option before – because I had. It was something I had used on occasion in the past.

My thoughts suddenly went back to last July, when I took my annual trip to Michigan with my husband to meet up with our close friends for a 4-day country music festival. It was always a great time of tent camping, having a few drinks, socializing with friends, and lots of incredible, albeit loud, live country music. 

Michigan had legalized recreational cannabis a couple of years prior, and the image of my friend who had brought a few edible cannabis gummies along the prior year flooded my memories. 

“It’s great for hangovers, and it really takes the edge off the headache. I prefer this over drinking anyway,” my friend had said the prior year. 

She was on to something, and I figured what could it hurt? That following year I had my husband stop at a dispensary that was on the way to the country music festival so we could buy some edibles of our own. 

What I didn’t expect was the game-changing experience I had that July because of that one choice. Normally, I was in a constant battle with my body because of migraines – I was in the summer heat, drinking, staying up late, and constantly having loud music blaring in my ears for four straight days. It was the perfect migraine potion.

But this time, I had a new secret weapon, and that secret weapon gave me relief from migraines that I had never experienced during a time when they should have been at their worst. 

When we returned home to a state that does not have legalized recreational marijuana, however, it was back to an uphill migraine-fighting battle for me. For months after that, I continued to struggle through them as I always had. 

Then, on this seemingly ordinary January day as I internet scrolled, I was reminded of that relief and the thing that had been a game changer months before. Of course, I was still in the same predicament of it not being legal in my state. 

This began my deep dive into all things medical cannabis. At first, I wasn’t even sure if chronic migraines were a qualification. I had always been under the impression that people with much worse pain than mine were the ones who qualified. But the more I researched, the more I began to have hope that it might just be possible to get an MMJ card of my own.

Then, I stumbled upon Veriheal. It was like a light had turned on at the end of a very dark, migraine-filled tunnel. Now I didn’t just have a glimmer of hope – I had an actionable plan and the laid out steps they provided to get the relief I so desperately needed. 

It was only mere days from the time I found Veriheal’s website that I received an email that changed everything for me. It just took a few hundred bucks (that I would have paid double for at the time) and a quick appointment with the doctor who prescribed it to me, all without even leaving my living room. 

The way it felt to walk into a dispensary in my hometown with my new card and the freedom to be able to buy something I couldn’t before that would give me relief like nothing else did is unexplainable. 

It’s been months since that day, and now I can sometimes stop migraines when they start or keep them from progressing to what they used to be. All those pesky secondary migraine symptoms are instantly gone, thanks to the card Veriheal helped me get so painlessly. 

Today, migraines no longer have to ruin an entire day – and for that, I’ll always be grateful.