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HALF AN OUNCE OF HEALING
The Desperately Ill Members Of A Santa Cruz Marijuana Club Aren't Growing
Pot To Get High Or Make Money. They Just Want To Find Some Relief.
DOROTHY GIBBS IS LYING IN BED in her trailer, barely able to move. It is a gorgeous Saturday afternoon in Santa Cruz, the October sun as full as
July's. The curtains in Gibbs' room are half open; she is squinting as
though the light stings her eyes. But her 90-year-old face, framed by a
snowy froth of hair, looks cheerful, almost youthful. "I woke up in pain
this morning," she says, "but then I took the marijuana and it made things
better."
She reaches for an eight-ounce bottle of brown liquid on a bedside tray and
takes a swig. The tonic, a concoction of soy milk and marijuana known as
Mother's Milk, looks like the muddy sand in a child's pail. "It doesn't
taste like much of anything," she says with a shrug. "It just makes me feel
better."
Ten years ago, Gibbs, who had developed polio as an infant, was stricken by
postpolio syndrome, leaving her arms nearly useless and her nerves on fire.
Two years ago, at the suggestion of her full-time visiting nurse, she tried
pot for the pain. ("I tried smoking it first," she says, "but it hurt my
throat.") Now she is one of about 200 members of the Wo/Men's Alliance for
Medical Marijuana, or WAMM, a Santa Cruz, California, cannabis collective
run by and for people who are very ill.