By Ethan Benedicto
Battling chronic pains, depression and anxiety in the last few years, Berwick local Christopher Filer has called for broader awareness and a bigger push on legalising cannabis after immense improvements with his medicinal doses.
Chris, back when he was in his early 60s in 2012, slipped and broke his lower spinal disc in four places.
This led to four consecutive surgeries, and while successful, left him with immense chronic pain that mired the remainder of the decade with constant hospital visits.
What made it worse, however, was the opioid medications that Chris had been on, which he said was supposed to be ‘pain-relief’ turning him “into a zombie”.
Not in the literal flesh-eating sense, but Chris recalled becoming a shell of what he had once been.
Now in his 70s, he acknowledges that he can only base it off his own experiences, yet Chris remains steadfast in advocating for more avenues of access to medicinal cannabis.
His support is behind any who would push for the legalisation of cannabis, agreeing that more good than harm can be done for the wider community – especially those experiencing chronic pains.
“Well, the picture of me is worth a thousand words,” he said.
“From taking all that shit and making me bump into things, collapsing – a lot of my life is gone because of it, this is better.
“I can only go off my own experiences, but if it helps people like it helped me, then why not?”
When speaking to a Star News journalist about his experience with opioid treatments, he had to pause, adding that “these drugs, my brain’s not as good as it used to be”.
“I’m a highly qualified person, I’ve got my degrees, but since taking all these drugs, I forget things.
“When I went back to the clinic, they told me, don’t worry Chris, you’ve only started the basic level of medication, we can up them all the time.
“So they did that, and I was walking around like a zombie, falling over, and I used to live in my own unit but I also used to have a lot of falls because I was taking all this shit,” he said.
It was only in the last two years, when Chris switched to medicinal cannabis, both oils and flowers, that he saw improvement.
Currently residing in an aged care home in Berwick, he recalled when he needed to have his walker to move around, but ever since he began taking the cannabis oils, all he needed was his trusted walking stick.
After some time, he was referred to a different clinic, his current one that administers his medicinal cannabis doses.
Here, he remembered the doctor looking at his medical sheet and saying, “‘*** me’, so I guess that’s how intense it was”.
“They gave me the oils and flowers, and they’ve helped me immensely.
“I take Panadol here and there, but it’s been fantastic; there’s some small pains, but the oils deal with the rest of it.
“I’m steady on my feet, even if I’m using a walking stick, and I still have my walker, but I rarely use it,” he said.
While legalising cannabis is one thing, doing so, Chris said, could just as easily provide a greater platform for its medicinal properties.
However, before the transition, he had a year-long battle with depression and anxiety, the onset of what he said was caused by post-ketamine treatments, something that, while undergoing it, Chris said kept him up for over a week.
“I was sent to a hospital for treatment, but (ketamine) had the opposite effect on me,” he said.
“What they do is they put an initial drip in and turn it into certain amounts per day, and every morning and night they would change it.
“So I was there for eight days having ketamine pumped into my body, and I was awake for most of it,” he said.
While he did come out of it with some level of relief, not all the pain was gone.
Chris recalled being unstable, both physically in the sense that he kept falling, with times where he crashed into his mirror closet, and at some point he had passed out in his kitchen floor “for God knows how long” until his son found him.
To mentally, where he spent a year struggling with his own mental health and personal grief of the coming to terms with his condition.
While Chris still has regular visits to his psychiatrist for his mental health, he takes the days one step at a time, eager to return home now that he’s feeling better.
Currently, Chris takes 0.5ml of prescribed cannabis extract twice a day.
“There were so many times that I could have killed myself with my falls, but I’m here,” Chris said.
“They’re not cheap, the medicine, but I’d pay $500 more if I could; it just keeps me normal.”
