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symbioidljIn July 1982, doctors told geologist Stephen Jay Gouldwhose mind dwells in prehistory and who measures time in billions of years that he had eight short months to live. With his career in full bloom, he was diagnosed with a rare and incurable cancer called abdominal mesothelioma.
A case study in determination, Mr. Gould was one of the first people on Earth to beat the disease, thanks to surgery, radiation, and years of torturous chemotherapy. But the "most important effect upon my eventual cure," he says in hindsight, was the illegal drug, marijuana.
...
An academician who hates to fog his prodigious mind with any kind of substance—he doesn’t touch alcohol and hates drugs—Mr. Gould smoked marijuana to reduced the otherwise uncontrollable nausea that came with the chemotherapy that saved his life.
"I was miserable and came to dread the frequent treatments with an almost perverse intensity," he wrote of the chemotherapy.
"Absolutely nothing in the available arsenal of (anti-nausea medications) worked at all."
Marijuana, on the other hand, "worked like a charm."
A case study in determination, Mr. Gould was one of the first people on Earth to beat the disease, thanks to surgery, radiation, and years of torturous chemotherapy. But the "most important effect upon my eventual cure," he says in hindsight, was the illegal drug, marijuana.
...
An academician who hates to fog his prodigious mind with any kind of substance—he doesn’t touch alcohol and hates drugs—Mr. Gould smoked marijuana to reduced the otherwise uncontrollable nausea that came with the chemotherapy that saved his life.
"I was miserable and came to dread the frequent treatments with an almost perverse intensity," he wrote of the chemotherapy.
"Absolutely nothing in the available arsenal of (anti-nausea medications) worked at all."
Marijuana, on the other hand, "worked like a charm."
