I am a former CH sufferer. My son has them now and we have run the gamut of fast abortives with mostly failing success, until this.

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My son indicates that within 5 minutes of smoking 1/4th of a pot cigarette, it completely aborts the CH headache.

My son is not a recreational drug user at ALL. He hates the way any drug legal or illegal make him feel, but it beats having the pain he says.

He has been testing this now for over a week and at every single onset, the CH is completely and totally aborted within 5 minutes of inhalation of a tiny amount of pot and every single time his headache starts to come on. Every single time.

I have never condoned use of illegal drugs and this is not reversal of my position. However, desperate times often mandate desperate measures. We all know how horrific these hurt and the helpless feeling when we're in one.

As an alternate delivery method to smoking, marijuana glycerin tinctures show some promise in our early trials. A few drops of tincture under the tongue and it's absorbed into the blood stream within 5 minutes. You can Google these glycerin tinctures and find the ways to make them should you consider this method. The glycerin base is the key to rapid absorption.

I just thought I would pass this on. I know first hand what CH are all about and while I out grew mine and now I'm almost 60 years old, the remembrance of the pain, the agony and those thoughts of desperation still linger. Watching your son go through them is even worse and particularly when you're helpless to stop his pain.

Of course I can't say this will work for everyone, but what I can say and without any question whatsoever, is that this works miracles for my son, and when all the other abortives have had mixed results and absolutely NONE have not stopped the pain as fast as pot.

I hope this post does not get deleted as it may actually help some. I am not an advocate for illegal drug use, simply an advocate for CH relief and the scientific research done so far seems to substantiate my sons claim.

Should you live in a state where Medical marijuana is obtainable, consider speaking with your doctor. There are also doctors listed on the NORML site by state who support it's use for medical purposes ONLY.

My hope in posting this is that it actually helps someone, so I took my time to post this. This is just an alternative to consider should you deem necessary or appropriate to take more drastic measures.

As far as an abortive goes, if pot works for him, he would be a one in 10 million case. Vaso constrictors have the best track record of aborting CH. If Marijuana, a vaso dialator, aborts his attacks....it would truly make him an unusual case.

Joe

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       Kinder gentler Potter

Has he tried O2?  It's less expensive and legal...

I would say that 99.9% (that 0.1% would be your son) of us would say that ganja triggers clusters.  End of story!

I also never heard of a "former" cluster sufferer.
You're just in a LONG remission my friend.

Chad

This thread should be re-titled: An abortive that actually worked for my son.

i dont get it.
How can you be so sure in only a week's time that it works?
How do u know if its not a low cycle or just heavy shadows?
Your son isn't curious about getting in this site himself???
how come you dont ask anyone if they have ever tried this???
aren't you curious yourself???
if this works as you claim in a only a week's time how come you
weren't here previous week when nothing worked?? 
what kind of medicine is sansert??is there any similar under other brand name?care to discuss?
and finally what are your intentions??not implying anything
just direct question.

Don't try to be overly cynical sounding Black.

We truely want these people to stick around and try not to scare em away.

..............Yet


(Just my positive spin of the day)

black wrote on Mar 18^th, 2009 at 3:03pm:

Sansert is a brand name for methysergide maleate, and it is NOT used as an abortive, as was implied by MartinL. It is used as a preventative.

I'm on it right now - 2mg 3x/day. And it can be gotten in the US - it's just not manufactured by a big drug company anymore. One has to obtain it either through Canada (I got a one-month supply several years ago for about $120), or through a compounding pharmacy.

I believe it was developed about 50 years ago by chemists to have the same type of headache preventing effect on neuro-receptors as LSD did without the psychadelic side-effects. It has some side-effects of its own (increased risk of fibrosis of the kidneys and heart valves), therefore you need to take a one-month holiday every 6 months you take it.

My only concern reading this topic is the ADDICTIVENESS of any pain relief medication, especially cannaboids or opiods.

Here we are discussing the use of an illegal and HIGHLY ADDICTIVE chemical as an abortive. Its not a preventive, its an abortive, meaning that it needs to be used again and again, at each and every headache attack for it to work for the length of the cycle.

We all know that during a high cycle, one can get as many as 6-8 attacks a day, with most having around 4. The cycle often lasts several weeks, or even several months. For a person to not use any preventive, but only cannabis as abortive, will need to use it 5-6 ... 8 times a day every day for several weeks ... that person will develop a very strong addiction to cannabis.

We also know that like nicotine, once the brain is addicted to cannabis, it will change structure with new neural pathways and extra receptors developed. If it is found that the hypothalamus of a CHer has a higher number of cannaboid receptors, guess what the development of more of those receptors will do to his CH ? Yes, it will make his CH worse.

Martin, I strongly suggest that you follow up on your son's headaches very closely. Ask him, or you yourself, keep a diary of the headaches and of how much cannabis he is using, noting down any changes in the characteristic of his attacks. My bet is that you will find after the first couple of weeks, he will get more attacks ( some would be rebound headaches ), the attacks will be more severe and he will need more and more cannabis to control the situation. In the later date, once the addiction has started, he will get phantom headaches just so he can use more cannabis.

This is what happens to people who use opiod pain killers to control the pain of CH.

I know that cannabis is used widely as pain control in terminal conditions, but here the major difference is that these people are TERMINAL. They dont have much more than a few months to live, so it does not matter if they develop an addiction to anything, they are dying anyway. An episodic 28 years old should not be treated as terminal.

Now if we compare it to the other also illegal substances used for CH like seeds or shrooms .... They are different because they are used as PREVENTER not as ABORTIVE. From what I understand, you use seeds or shrooms to break the whole cycle and/or to block all attacks, you dont use it each and every time you get a headache. I am sure if one uses shrooms or seeds purely as a abortive, ie several times a day for days on end, one will end up with a much worse problem than CH to start with.

I would rather recommend your son try oxygen as abortive, its safe, its effective, cheaper, not illegal and most definitely non addictive. Oxygen does not alter the structure of the brain, cannabis does.

Painfree wishes to your son.

Potter, I appreciate your kind commend and personally I have never used cannabis so I dont know how addictive it would be to me.

From what I have read, learnt, observed, talked to people from all walks of life who use cannabis, however, is that yes it is definitely addictive. It is not as bad as say cocaine or crack or ice, but it is addictive.

Cannabis is considered the softer drug, the less harmful drug. Many people starting out with cannabis tend to move from it to harder core drugs. Once they have tried the likes of cocaine or meth, they look back at cannabis and see it as nothing. Those who stay with cannabis though, do experience withdrawal and craving, which are symptoms of addiction.

I am sure the degree of addictiveness varies in different individual and from what you have posted through the years here I believe that personally you have found it not as addictive as other substances, ie you could stop it more easily than others but that would be your personal experience only.

The concensus out there would be that yes cannabis is addictive.

Potter wrote on Mar 18^th, 2009 at 5:59pm:




Indeed, I have said what I wanted to say in this thread, I will be quiet now