I was tired of being sent off with pills that gave me more side effects which would require more pills to combat the side effects of the originals – leaving me feeling more like a nauseous zombie and less like a 20-something year old “healthy” graduate student. When I began using cannabis regularly on the weekends to unwind, I began putting my grad school skills to the test and paid closer attention to the symptom relief I was getting while I consumed – finally feeling more like myself, or the person I felt I was on the inside. For the next 5 years I monitored my consumption practices and taught myself how to manage my symptoms with cannabis – allowing me to get off of 90% of the prescription medications that the doctors and specialists had prescribed for me. At the time Ohio did not have an established medical marijuana program – so I was left to navigate this process on my own and perform my own self-study trials with whatever cannabis flower I could get from my “dude” – not actually knowing what I was getting as it was from an unregulated/untested market, so I depended heavily on my own notes – running little “trials” with each new batch to get a feel for how that particular strain affected me.