To this day, Amanda Cribbs doesn’t know how her accident happened. She was working at FedEx at the time, probably telling her co-worker some of her famous dad jokes. Normal day. Normal route. She was riding shotgun in her company Sprinter van. As her co-worker took a turn, the door came dislodged and Amanda was thrown from the vehicle at a high speed. Her co-worker stopped the vehicle and ran to her, only to find her struggling to breathe through the blood that was blocking her airways.
She doesn’t remember any of it. Heck, she doesn’t remember anything at all until a month later when she regained full consciousness in a hospital bed. She had suffered serious bodily injuries, a brain bleed and a traumatic brain injury. The pain was unbearable.
As she healed, the only solace she could achieve was through the morphine drip controlled by a handheld button in her bed. She came to rely on it to cope with the suffering when the hospital staff wasn’t around, sometimes finding herself wishing for more to get some semblance of relief.
When she was finally able to leave the hospital, she traded one bed in for another. She slept constantly. She had to move in with her father because her mobility was so limited and her mind so foggy. At one point, Amanda recalls taking 17 pills in the morning and another 10 at night. The effects left her confused and exhausted.
Amanda was prescribed opiates to continue her pain management and quickly became reliant on them, just as she had been in the hospital. She knew the risks and knew she couldn’t allow herself to keep using them more and more. Then she heard a familiar voice caution her from beyond the grave.
“I heard my mother warn me,” she said, “She said (opioids) won’t make your pain better, they’ll only make it worse in the long run.”
“I HEARD MY MOTHER WARN ME, SHE SAID (OPIOIDS) WON’T MAKE YOUR PAIN BETTER, THEY’LL ONLY MAKE IT WORSE IN THE LONG RUN.”
-Amanda Cribbs
Amanda Cribbs | Easy Mountain
Her mother’s warning rang deeply true. Decades earlier, her mother had experienced a serious opiate addiction during the 1970s. At the time, addiction wasn’t discussed like it is today, especially not when prescribed by a doctor. Her mother passed many years ago, but her presence in Amanda’s life never left and she heeded the warning.
With a renewed focus, she went back to her doctor and shared her desire to leave painkillers out of her treatment plan. The cocktail of medications was too much for her to live the life she wanted. She had tried returning to work, but couldn’t contribute in the way she desired and was still relying on her father’s home as a place to aid in her healing.
Her doctor made a suggestion she didn’t expect to hear. He suggested she try cannabis.
“Everyone smoked weed in high school,” Amanda said, “but it wasn’t something I’d tried in a long time.”
She decided to give it a try. She got her med card and planned a trip to see us on the Mountain.
Amanda did her research and came in seeking a balanced hybrid. She landed on Bubba Fett and went home to start her cannabis journey, equipped with some advice from our staff to take it low and slow at first. She quickly found that cannabis helped her focus. Since her injury, she would regularly find keys in the fridge and milk in the sock drawer. Cannabis brought her peace of mind.
After a few months, she was off of all of her former medications.
The prescription drugs never really stopped the pain and only seemed to compile new conditions on top of what she had already been through. Cannabis didn’t take the pain away, but it did provide relief in a way that her 27 pills couldn’t.
She was able to move out of her father’s home and live independently again. Now, she begins the day with a little smoke and gradually smokes more throughout the day to maintain the relief to her tension. She is able to work, concentrate and live a life that more closely resembles her pre-injury situation.
She talks to people as often as she can about the impact cannabis has had in her life and she uses her humor.
“You don’t have to take all this medicine,” she recalled sharing with folks, “Cannabis makes me feels so good about my life I don’t need all the Zoloft, Progesterone and everything else.”
“YOU DON’T HAVE TO TAKE ALL THIS MEDICINE”
-Amanda Cribbs
She wants to see the world love again and she’ll keep trying one dad joke at a time.
“Why is it so cheap for a haunted house to throw a party?” Amanda said with a smile, “Because the ghosts bring all the boos.”
A solid, solid dad joke, Amanda.
If you’re starting your own healing journey with medical cannabis, we’d love to help you find the products that are right for you. At Easy Mountain, we’ll greet you as if you’re part of the fam from day one. We’re all about how we can help our patients find relief.
Located in the heart of the Ozarks, Easy Mountain exists to educate and support our communities through the power of cannabis. We believe in being good neighbors, treating folks with respect, lending a hand where we can, and having a good time while we’re at it.
We call Republic, Missouri home to our medical marijuana dispensary and empower our friends in the community through education and good old fashion conversation. Our focus on providing the best Missouri medical marijuana products paired with one-to-one customer service ensures every single one of our customers feels comfortable, respected, and cared for. With a long-standing generational history here in the Ozarks, we pay homage to the history, culture, and people of our land in everything we do. From sourcing the best Missouri-only produced cannabis products to our focus on promoting local artists to the community gatherings in our own dispensary’s backyard, embodying the spirit of our home is the only way we see fit to do business.
Above all, our passions lie in helping folks. It’s vital to preserving the heritage of our Midwestern roots. Being a good neighbor. Giving folks a square deal. Helping people when they need it. Being a loyal friend. These things make us who we are. And finally, after a long day’s work, we love nothing more than sharing a few good laughs in reflection. We hope to see you soon.
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