A disclosure; I’ve never known anything about marijuana, hemp, or any of the other words people have used for this stuff over the decades. I subscribed to the old belief that it was a dangerous drug, and I didn’t take drugs. Heck, I didn’t learn how to swallow pills until I was in my mid 40’s; I’ve never had a drink, never smoked anything, and I always thought marijuana smelled bad, so I stayed away and never looked back.

CBD Oil Drops

Then we get into the 2010’s, and suddenly there’s a lot more information on cannabis. Turns out it was initially banned by fear of Mexican immigrants, then to try to keep black people in check. It turns out that it wasn’t as dangerous as I’d been taught since I was a child. There were medicinal uses for it that were safer than other medications. I did a bit of reading and came to the conclusion that, even if it was safer, I’d stick to over the counter medications I already knew about.

Then Mom moved in with me, and I was worried that she wasn’t sleeping well during the night. I tried a few things to make her more comfortable, and she slept a little better with those changes, but she was still waking up during the night and staying awake for hours. I decided it was time to explore CBD oil as an option for her to get some sleep, and I wrote this article about it. It seemed to work well for her most of the time, but to tell you the truth, the only reason I bought it was because our local grocery chain, Wegmans, started selling it. I’d trust Wegmans with my life 97% of the time (that’s high praise from where I sit), and it worked out well.

When my mother passed away in September, I was struggling to stay asleep throughout the night. Falling asleep was easy; waking after 2 hours and not being able to sleep was problematic. That’s when I decided to try it on myself to see what happened and how I’d react to it.

The first night I took half a dropper as a test. I didn’t sleep much that night, but I knew it was half of the recommended dose. I tried it the second night… and got 8 hours of sleep! I was hopeful that I might have found a permanent solution to my sleep issues… but it was premature. After that first night of 8 hours, no matter how much I took (never more than a full dropper), I only slept more than 6 hours once over the next week or so, and 3 times I slept less than 4 hours. I haven’t tried it again, mainly because I felt it was too expensive for me to continue hoping it would help me sleep. Maybe it doesn’t work the same for everyone… like everything else.

CBD Cream

Still, I have other issues, mainly with my feet. I have neuropathy in both of my feet, moreso my left foot than my right. Most of the time I can’t feel any of the salves I’ve tried putting on my feet for relief except for Capsaicin; that stuff burned my feet and left me in distress for 5 days, and I only tried it once!

I decided to do some research on CBD relief cream that Wegmans sold. The stuff I chose is in the image above. The thing you learn about creams of all types is that the stuff in them that’s supposed to help you feel better is minimal by law; this stuff contains .3%, or 3mg, of Tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. It’s recommended to start with a low dosage before moving up, and it was the only type that my Wegmans had.

I couldn’t wait to try it, hoping for some relief. It’s a small jar, and you’re not supposed to put a lot on, which makes sense as you’d run out of it pretty fast. I immediately felt a tingle, which I thought might be a good sign since I usually don’t feel anything. I rubbed it into both of my feet and it felt good… for about 4 minutes. After that… nothing, back to my normal pain. I rubbed a bit more onto both feet, but after the first dose I felt nothing.

Like with the drops I gave it a week to see how it would work. The first dose of the day I felt something, but after it wore off that was that. Over the last month I’ll try rubbing some into my feet, because this little jar cost $18. It’s the same each time, so I’m not holding out a lot of hope for it… but 3 or 4 minutes of relief is at least something.

The question for me is if a higher dose will be good or bad for my feet. I don’t want to deal with anything like that Capsaisin again, but if there was something either milder than what I’m using now, or only gave me the same tingle but worked better because of the milligram count, I might be willing to try it.

But I have two issues regarding it. One, I don’t want to spend a lot of money up front for something that might not work. Two, I don’t have the understanding about things like that; my health care knowledge is on the financial side. For instance, I found this:

* CBD isolate: pure CBD, with no other cannabinoids or THC
* Broad-spectrum CBD: contains most cannabinoids, but it generally doesn’t include THC
* Full-spectrum CBD: contains all of the plant’s cannabinoids, including THC

Gotta admit this doesn’t help much. It’s way beyond my field of expertise, but I’m not sure I trust the marketers in the CBD stores all that much; isn’t that a shame? Do I trust Amazon enough to buy something off their site since they sell a lot of different hemp creams? And are hemp and CBD creams more different than similar?

No idea. Still, I’ve given these two things a shot, which means my mind is at least a bit more open than it used to be. I guess we’ll see what I do as time goes on; maybe someone I know and trust will help me, but I don’t know anyone using any of this stuff (that I ‘know’ of; we shall see lol). Time will tell…