Observant readers of The 420 Times may have noticed I was away for a week or two. Well, you may have heard some rumors, and they’re true. I was more than just “away”, I was gone. Not like “real gone, man”, but like “dead and gone” (twice, even). But I got better.

In case you want to read the details, they’re on my blog. But I didn’t really come here to freak anyone out with medical details, as much as share some of the things I learned in the afterlife about real-world 21st century medicine as it’s practiced here in America today.

First of all, even supposed state-of-the-art medical science — you know, the stuff that you pay high medical insurance rates for, if you’re lucky enough to get any — is often a crapshoot. Despite my being checked and monitored regularly, my own cardiologist was surprised that I had such a serious heart attack. In fact, he’s told me that people have passed cardiac stress tests with flying colors, only to drop dead the next week.

That’s not to say that all the “regular” (i.e. non-marijuana) medicine being practiced is a complete waste of time. It saved my life, for one thing. But there’s something seriously wrong with a system when your own (good!) doctor can’t even tell that you’re at risk for dropping dead at any particular minute.

And now we can talk about drugs. I knew that a lot of FDA-approved Big Pharma-style drugs have a lot of bad side effects; in fact, I’ve often ranted about it. But going through this whole hospital thing brought me directly up against some heavy warning labels, and even I was shocked by what I found out.

So I’m going to start a little series of articles comparing some popular or well-known pharmaceutical products to more gentle products that perform similar functions; this will generally be cannabis, of course, but I have some interesting surprises in store. I’ll include my personal experiences with them, and will be happy to hear yours too!