Episode Transcript

Trevor:   Kirk, we're back.

Kirk:  Hey, Trevor, how's it going, man?

Trevor:  Really good. So you're back on the road again with Van Hoot, and this is in the Edmonton-ish area.

Kirk:  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I went off, I think, in past stories I explained how I went to visit family and friends for a memorial in Victoria in April-May. And on my way home, our friend, my friend Kala Knudslien is a cannabis nurse in Edmonton redefining her career. And also redefining how nurses work with cannabis. She's developing a nurse-led clinic in Edmonton. The foundation of their care is holistic approach to wellness, but cannabis is a big part of the tools that they use. She showed me around town. I felt like a rock star. I went visiting old friends of the show, Ripley. We went and visited Ripley and I visited her new project, which we'll have a story about. But in this regard, Kala basically wanted me to meet Rob Sipes. He's a real character in her world, a very good friend of hers, but they met as professionals. I mean she met as a nurse, he was a patient, through that a friendship developed and she arranged me to meet him, so... We went to his assisted living. I don't even know it's not assisted living it's an apartment building and I walked in and I met meet a guy who's uh who's obviously got respiratory issues he's attached to a nasal cannula he's got a tube and he had a friend also in the room uh just finishing up on a massage and we will meet we will need her as well so we got two stories. And what's really important is the individual who speaks first.

Trevor:  Natalie Forche.

Kirk:  She actually turned out to be a very important person in the greater story of Kala's work. She is the president of Safehouse Science. And this agency in Edmonton provides veteran-centric wraparound health care services. She is a savant with finding, veteran affair related services for veterans. So people that live in the Alberta Edmonton region get a hold of this individual. She knows the veterans affairs portfolio. She knows the services that veterans deserve to have. Kala describes her as the heart of the organization, a veteran advocate. She's connected vets to services. And basically when you consider that these individuals have given to our country. I mean, in the current state of the world, military people give back to their country, and these people have. And Rob is a man that truly has paid with his health. And he'll speak to that a little bit in the conversation. But so I found myself immersed in Veterans Affairs and how cannabis helps individuals. So this is their story.

Trevor: All right, so before we get it in there, we'll do the thing we always forget. I'm Trevor Shewfelt. I'm the pharmacist. You are.

Kirk:  Oh, yeah, I'm Kirk Ntquist. I'm the registered nurse and you have found Reefer Medness - the podcast. Keep on listening. This is a really cool story, how cannabis helps a community of people.

Trevor: All right, let's go. Let's listen to some service members for Canada.

Natalie Forcier: So my name is Natalie Forcier, and I served in the military as a medic for 14 years, a couple of deployments to Afghanistan. And so my journey with cannabis started when I got out of the military and basically was buying black market cannabis out of some creepy guy's hotel. But, and then got introduced to the medical side of things. And I was... At the time retraining to be a massage therapist.

Kirk:  Okay.

Natalie Forcier: And so I had my reservations about being able to go to school and use cannabis in a medicinal way. And that's where the adventure of finding out what worked. I was subsequently diagnosed with PTSD and didn't realize it.

Kirk:  You were in combat? You were combat?

Natalie Forcier: I was in combat, yeah. I was an Afghanistan as a medic, So, world three. Where all the, basically all the casualties of the country were coming in. We had a surgical team and then I went back in 2010 and worked as a dismounted medic living out of Kandahar city. Okay. So, saw a few things.

Kirk:  I bet.

Natalie Forcier: But was in denial and I assumed that I was a medic so I would know if I had PTSD. Yeah. So it was a bit of a shock when I finally got diagnosed. But, utilizing cannabis. Helped me sleep, my grades, I maintained a super high average in my schooling, so I realized that it wasn't this dysfunctional medicine that, you know...

Kala Knudslien That your small town told you about?.

Natalie Forcier: Yeah so,.

Kirk:  So you never, you were never a wrecked smoker before the military? Yeah, high school never did cannabis.

Natalie Forcier: High school I didn't because I grew up in a town of a hundred people where my parents would know.

Kirk:  And where and where do you mind me asking where it was at?

Natalie Forcier: Northern Saskatchewan, a little French town called Saint-East d'Als-de-Belvie out by Batache where they had part of the Riel Rebellion.

Kirk:  Yes, okay.

Natalie Forcier: So, and I dabbled in it when I was in the military, but because you got drug tested if you were deployed, so I dabbled. So kept that secret. But everybody I knew smoked weed in the militaries. So, before it was legal. So, but it helps me sleep, helps with pain, helps regulate my mood, helps the anxiety. And so... It was understanding what to use and when to use it. So, and then as a massage therapist, I have some clients that use their cannabis lotion and one in particular, I have a friend who was blown up in Afghanistan and he was not a fan of cannabis, but I had another friend who gave me this jar and said, you gotta use this Nat. And because I'd used cannabis lotions in the past, and I didn't find them effective, I used this cream on him, just at my worst case scenario kind of thing, and treated him at noon, and he messaged me at 6 p.m. that night to say, like, I'm still not in any pain Nat. And so that changed his perspective on cannabis, and it's one of those door openers where I work with veterans, helping them navigate veterans' affairs. And RCMP, most of them have significant reservations and would prefer not to, but introducing them to a topical where the reassurance of not being high or incapable of going through their day by getting significant pain relief.

Kirk:  Uh huh.

Natalie Forcier: Has changed their lives.

Kirk:  I want to talk about the veterans, but just as a massage therapist, you belong to a college? Like you're a registered massage therapist?

Natalie Forcier: Yes.

Kirk:  Okay. So, are you allowed to use?

Rob Sipes: Oh, not currently. Not currently. Oh.

Natalie Forcier: I'm no longer. I don't have my license anymore, but as a massage therapist, you're not

Kirk:  That's what I was going to say. Are you allowed to use infused cannabis oil as a massage therapist?

Natalie Forcier: No.

Kirk:  I didn't think so. So you're doing this now, I guess, as a non-registered massage therapist for your friends.

Natalie Forcier: Yeah.

Kirk:  Okay, cool. What brought you to medical cannabis? How did you discover it? Through friendships? Through someone like you were a rec smoker?

Natalie Forcier: Yeah.

Kirk:  And then what brought you the medical side?

Natalie Forcier: So I had other veteran friends that had their cannabis covered through Veterans Affairs and encouraged me to get my prescription and get it covered because basically if you have a medical condition attributed to service you can get your cannabis covered.

Kirk:  Okay.

Natalie Forcier: So that's where I started.

Kirk:  Okay.

Natalie Forcier: So and back then it was basically the only way you could get it was the the flower.

Kirk:  The flower, okay.

Natalie Forcier: So. It's since changed where there's capsules, oils, topicals.

Kirk:  Yeah, yeah, I'm learning learning and puffers and all this sort of stuff and and and your story sir.

Rob Sipes: My name is Rob Sipes. I was a medic as well for 26 years. I wore the Navy uniform, spent 10 years on ships and 16 years with the Army as a medic. I served overseas in 91. I did a world cruise and served in the Gulf War for 10 and a half months. And I served in in 1994 as a medic with the engineers doing demining.

Kirk:  Sure, okay,.

Rob Sipes: And Yeah, I use Because of my health I can't smoke so I use everything but smoke.

Kirk:  Okay,.

Rob Sipes: So I I Tried the bath bombs. They're amazing. I've done I use the cream Well at least twice a day three times a day depending on how I'm feeling and I use gummies at night time for sleep and I also have, because of my health, I'm not drinking anymore, so once in a while, you know that day you feel like crap that you say, oh I could use a drink, well now I have what I call my daytime gummies. When I order my drugs I get a small supply of my daytime gums, for that day I felt like crap and I'll come home and take some daytime gummys and veg watching sports.

Kirk:  Okay, and what got you into medical? When you were ever Recreational smoker.

Rob Sipes: So, I'm 62 now, but when I was 15, yeah, when I was 15 I used, actually I used too much, I used weed, I did LSD, I did microdot acid, I was that kid. My friends drank, but it took too much for me to get drunk. Like I'd have to drink a 26er to get drunk, and as a 15 year old kid I couldn't afford that. So weed was cheaper, drugs were cheaper. So that's why I did it. I had an extreme tolerance for alcohol.

Kirk:  Interesting.

Rob Sipes: Yeah, so I did that as a kid. But when I joined the military, I was 17. And my dad was military and he walked in my bedroom and said, give me your drugs. And I told him go fuck himself. And he said, Rob, you're in the military now, you signed the dotted line this morning, and I can throw you in jail as a warrant officer for drugs. So give me your drugs.

Kirk:  Thanks, Dad.

Rob Sipes: So I called my buddies and I gave them my drugs, and I promised my dad that day I wouldn't do it anymore. So 30 years later, I can't sleep because I got PTSD. My doctor tried every sleep and pill possible. And one day, this civilian doctor looks at me and says, have you tried marijuana? And I said, well, I made a promise to my dad I wouldn't do marijuana. And he says, I think you should. I think I'm gonna write you a script for it. You do what you want with it. So I called my dad and I said dad, I'm going to try weed, but prescription only. So before all these pop-ups, I know you did a tour of Alberta recently, but you can get weed anywhere. But there's also about five distributors in Edmonton alone that are strictly for military and first responders. And they help you work through getting your prescription, getting you on a platform, and dealing with VAC to pay for it, because Veterans Affairs will pay for.

Kirk:  And that's your service?

Rob Sipes: They're one of like five.

Kirk:  Okay.

Rob Sipes: CannaConnect is one.

Kala Knudslien Veteran Farmer.

Rob Sipes: Veterans farmer, the what was your old? Rendezvous, like there's a ton of them here, that they'e all service all purpose is to get you on a medical platform. So before those platforms were all readily available here in Alberta, I was dealing with a civilian company and I was paying for it.

Kirk:  Okay.

Rob Sipes: And I was doing gummies because of my health and I was doing high THC. And then when I got connected with these ladies Um, they explained to me that, uh, I was doing it all wrong. Okay. I was under the old school of Indica is going to get you sleep and that's it. Indica the couch, right? So that was the way I believed it. And I was taking some pretty high dose THC just to not have my nightmares, not have the dreams and get some sleep, but I carried on. And then, once I've got... Once these platforms came here, I joined one of the platforms. I think I'm on my fifth one now, because their products change and things like that, availability and shit. I have my favorite and it's hard to find, so I keep trying to find other ones that work for me. And recently, and I'm talking in the last year, I'm finding out that more CBD and CBN and CBG is better for me than the high dose THC. So I'm not taking the high-dose THC gummies anymore for sleep. For sleep, it's a lower-dosed THC, but a higher dose CBN is CBG.

Kirk:  Did you, did you both go down the pharmaceutical route? Did you go down to traditional pharmaceutical?

Rob Sipes: I tried everything and I hated the hangover. Okay, I don't care. Yes, they knocked me out.

Kirk:  Yeah.

Rob Sipes: But then you felt like shit for the day, right? You just had an eight-hour power sleep, right, you feel like Superman, you'd think, and you just felt like you were hung over and dragging your ass everywhere because of the side effects of those meds. And I tried three or four different ones. My doctor was writing a different script all the time. I'd walk in and say, that one was crap, and he'd give me something else.

Kirk:  So was it the same doctor that finally got you?

Rob Sipes: Yes, I dealt with the same family doctor. My family doctor retired from the military, same time I did.

Kirk:  Interesting.

Rob Sipes: So he's been my doctor for 30 years.

Kirk:  So he eventually got the cannabis. How did he get there? Like, did he, did he just say,

Rob Sipes: He just said, Rob, there's this clinic, I don't know much about it, but I'm hearing good things about it.

Kirk:  Okay.

Rob Sipes: I can write your prescription, you go to that clinic. So it actually wasn't a prescription because he wasn't licensed to write one, but they treat it as a referral to the doctor at that clinic, that clinic's actually not open anymore, the one I went to, and I went that clinic saw a doctor there who wrote a script. For me and then Veterians Affairs would pay three grams a day for me so my script was three grams per day and they set me up on a platform. I think the first one I used was Spectrum and my favorite one was Shoppers. When Shoppers had one, you could get any product. And that was my favorite one when they had Shoppers because I could try everything.

Kirk:  Is shoppers still doing it? They stopped it.

Rob Sipes: They stopped.

Kala Knudslien They stopped

Natalie Forcier: They sold.

Kirk:  Is that funny?

Rob Sipes: Yeah, they sold their their list and the company that took over the list only had half the products. Yeah. My favorite is wanna quick.

Kirk:  Okay,.

Rob Sipes: But they're hard to find.

Kirk:  Wanna wanna.

Rob Sipes: Wanna quick so the wanna brand is available anywhere.

Kirk:  Okay.

Rob Sipes: But they have a line that is water soluble water soluble.

Kirk:  Okay.

Rob Sipes: That's wanna quick and they fast active.

Kirk:  Okay.

Kala Knudslien Nanomulsified.

Kirk:  Okay.

Kala Knudslien Yeah. So 15 minute action. Oh yeah.

Rob Sipes: Oh yeah. And out cold. I take those and I'm out for a good eight hours.

Kirk:  So how long have you been using cannabis now? As medicine.

Rob Sipes: 16 years.

Kirk:  Okay, that's a long time.

Rob Sipes: 2010, 2011.

Kirk:  That's a long time and it's and it and it is helping.

Rob Sipes: Yes.

Kirk:  Yeah. yeah

Rob Sipes: But you have to, you have to change. You have to accept change. Yeah. Right. Because it's either the drugs aren't available or you've,.

Kirk:  We're just talking about that.

Rob Sipes: You're building up a tolerance for it.

Kirk:  Do you ever take a two week break?

Rob Sipes: I haven't, but it's been suggested I should.

Kirk:  Yeah, yeah.

Rob Sipes: Cause I'm up to taking two packs of gummies to get to sleep now.

Kirk:  Two packs of you might want to take a two week break.

Rob Sipes: So I'm taking 20, THC 20.

Kirk:  Okay.

Rob Sipes: Yeah, I'm taking the 10 THC 10s when I take a pack of gummies, but I'm taking two to get to sleep.

Kirk:  Kala, you'll know this, like when you take the break, it reboots the endocannabinoid systems, is that what does?

Kala Knudslien Yeah, the CB1 receptors in the brain where THC binds if they see THC repetitively, they pop inside the cell and we have less binding ability less efficacy. And so yeah, a two week break can definitely help reset receptors, but also at a 20 milligram dose. And if it's working,.

Kirk:  ya then why bother.

Kala Knudslien Like if it gets to a point where it's no longer working,.

Kirk:  Then Oh, okay. Okay, so 20 milligrams total so a pack okay, so.

Kala Knudslien 10 each.

Kirk:  Okay, all right

Kala Knudslien So 20 milligram doses, they really say tolerance really starts to build like anecdotally around like the 30 milligrams.

Kirk:  Okay,.

Kala Knudslien So I say if it's working now or if it not quite as working as well then I encourage people to increase their fat intake when they take the gummies so that you have increased metabolism of them. But it's hard like I don't want to take a break. I love to sleep at night.

Kirk:  Yeah yeah

Rob Sipes: Yeah, it's really hard, and especially if I don't sleep, I'm a fucking ass. I'm one cranky bastard.

Kirk:  So how long has veteran affairs covered cannabis?

Natalie Forcier: Oh, I don't know if I know the answer to that is it not 2000 like early 2000s. Yeah, they started

Kirk:  Okay, so it's so it since medical cannabis was was allowed

Natalie Forcier: Oh, yeah.

Kirk:  So why, why is veteran affairs so progressive and health Canada is not?

Kala Knudslien They're not progressive, a vet took them to court.

Kirk:  Mmm.

Kala Knudslien And he won the court case saying, I'm using cannabis, medical cannabis for my pension condition. Because I'm pensioned for this, you have to cover my treatment for it. So that's what opened up the benefit of like this coverage. And when they first opened up, the benefit, there was no cap on it. But then of course, industry gets involved. And everybody was getting 10 gram a day scripts.

Rob Sipes: 2017.

Kirk:  2007.

Rob Sipes: I just googled it

Kirk:  So once again, the government was forced by the justice system to recognize medical cannabis.

Kala Knudslien Yeah, they weren't they didn't want to and they still don't want you, they have to.

Natalie Forcier: And it create limitations. So basically they capped off So now it's max three grams a day without an exemption letter. So if you need any higher you got to go through a psychiatrist and okay And then now they've just dropped what that will pay per gram. So that again affects us.

Rob Sipes: It affects big time, because they used to, there was, they just paid for the grams, okay? Like, but medical grade weed, man. So I can walk into that drug store across, the weed store across the street, and I can get some weed for five bucks. That same pack, but the medical grade, is 8.95. Okay? Well, the rates that VAC will pay is the 5.95, So, when you do the calculations, so in the end, I'm getting less weed in my prescription covered by them because they put a dollar value on a gram, but they didn't do the same in the stores.

Kala Knudslien So the rec market ended up driving the price down of cannabis, but the medical platforms didn't respond the same way. And so now our veterans have been cut from 8.50 a gram coverage down to six. And so with their three gram coverage doesn't go that far anymore. So now we're just working, like more people are going through the exemption program to get more. But these medical producers want to make money off of our veterans.

Kirk:  So, but this is, is this another way the government is sort of pushing the medical industry out and forcing you to go to a rec store? I mean, is, like, I mean are they thinking that deep? or am i that paranoid.

Rob Sipes: I can, if I wanted to, go to rec stores and get reimbursed, they have a reimbursement program.

Kala Knudslien Not from rec stores. It has to be for medical.

Rob Sipes: They don't have medical grade stores, they're all platforms.

Kirk:  Yeah, but, but cannabis, again, cannabis is cannabis is cannabis. Medical cannabis is the same cannabis as rec cannabis.

Rob Sipes: You and I believe that. The government does not because somebody else, a company says that they have different inspection levels and different things like this at their platforms. If they're selling medical grade.

Kirk:  Do they? They don't. I don't think they...

Kala Knudslien But it's just like, it's this game, right? Because our medical cannabis program in Canada is funded by our veterans. It's funded by their federal coverage. And they saw it as a moneymaker. And so I've had clients that I interacted with that say, my company calls me, the licensed producer site calls me every month and says, you better order, otherwise you're gonna lose this script. But what it is, is that this licensed producer is gonna lose their profit.

Kirk:  Because they're not selling enough.

Kala Knudslien Yeah, where people are like I just want to use what I use don't force me and then so I'll say they call in over the phone. So they don't want to used the internet. I want four four bottles of this oil and then they show up on their doorstep and they have an entire package of 90 grams of cannabis for the month when they only wanted four bottles.

Kirk:  Right.

Kala Knudslien Because the company wants to charge back for it

Kirk:  Okay, yeah, but then they're only but you're you're making up the difference because because VAC is paying for it

Rob Sipes: No we're giving it away.

Kala Knudslien Or they were, before until that.

Rob Sipes: Before now because of the cuts no we're not getting enough now but before i used to have cupboards full of stuff.

Kirk:  So you gifted.

Rob Sipes: It well i can't because it's.

Kirk:  you're not allowed to.

Rob Sipes: It's a prescription yeah but it was like wow if they go stale they're going out you're throwing them out yeah but like because gummies do go stale yeah yeah

Kala Knudslien But it was just this open benefit that people got money and signs in their eyes in the industry and they took advantage of it. And now we're seeing cutbacks and now we are seeing it reprimanded now.

Rene: All right, it's Rene back here in the studio. That's where we're going to stop this conversation with Rob and Natalie that Kirk had. Fascinating conversation with two veterans. And we're gonna continue this conversation in the next episode, as well as Trevor and Kirk's wrap up and observations about it. So thanks for listening. Make sure to go to reefermed.ca and check out a very, very searchable database of past episodes and make sure to tell friends to please. Like and share like they say. Cheers.