ABSTRACT
Chapter 3: Becoming a Patient draws on patient interviews to elaborate how individuals decided to use marijuana for medical reasons. Stories from patients help to disentangle the choice to use cannabis medically from the choice to register as a patient with the state. Stories from Travis, Eileen, Jason, and Gary illustrate different paths by which individuals came to officially registered patients with the state. Some patients “test” whether cannabis will mitigate symptoms before seeking a recommendation; others waited for official patient status to experiment. Recommendations were sought out based primarily on four starting points: a doctor suggested cannabis; friends and family suggested it, patients heard about it through the grapevine and investigated further; or patients sought recommendations for nonmedical reasons. This chapter also emphasizes the collective nature of decisionmaking around health, which makes most treatment decisions a process shared with family, especially spouses.
