Dana May is suffers from severe nerve pain following work-related injuries. He lives in Aurora, one of Denver’s bedroom communities. He began using marijuana two years ago in a desperate attempt to control the pain that had removed him from being able to participate in his children’s lives. Now he is an active dad, however a raid by the DEA involving dozens of armed agents this past summer almost kept him from one of his most important prescriptions.

My problem is I have Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome. Which now they are starting to call it something different- complex regional pain syndrome type I. It’s just a nerve disease and basically it’s main purpose is keeping me in pain. Other than the pain, the sympathetic nerves control the blood vessels in your body. So all of a sudden I’ll break out sweating or go into chills. The blood vessels in my left leg here are wide open all the time, so my feet dry up and crack away. I have to keep lotion going all the time. The bad thing is the pain and the pain is just incredible.

When I first got this, when it was first starting up, I thought, “Oh my God, this is terrible, I’ll never be able to live with this.” Now I wish I had those days back because it’s really gotten worse over the last nine years.

What happened was, I got involved in an accident loading a tractor on the back of a flatbed and the ramps collapsed and I got pinned underneath the tractor and it kind of crushed my sciatic nerves. They were dealing with that and then all of a sudden one day the pain switched from a burning pain down my leg to my skin becoming hypersensitive. I mean, just brush up against something and the pain was so severe, you just couldn’t take it.

Apparently the neurologist knew exactly what it was as soon as they got going. They tried some things that can help people in the earlier stages of it, but it didn’t help me. Everything just escalated for nine years. I am waiting for the ceiling to hit at this point- to see where the top of the pain is, apparently I haven’t reached that yet.

This isn’t a genetic thing. They say it starts up with people who have had nerve trauma. Before the accident I had had three back surgeries. So I had had some problems before. But this isn’t something you get from your parents or anything you get from the drinking water.

I was a truck driver and I blew three discs out in my back and they had to deal with that. I went back to driving again afterwards.

Q: Describe specifically how this affects you.

The feet are the worst- hypersensitive. If anything were to lightly brush up against my feel it’s the worst pain. If I were to grab them real hard it wouldn’t be so bad though. From my ankles down I have the real bad pain. It is milder as it goes up the legs. The feet are the killer part. It’s just incredible.

Q: What did your doctors try for you?

There are different things that they do at first. At first they tried spinal blocks- sympathetic blocks. I’ve probably had 200 of those over the last nine years here. It got to the point where they just weren’t effective anymore. I think it was because of all of the scar tissue building up from the injections. Then they did a sympathectomy- where they snipped the nerve running down the left leg. That was supposed to stop the pain signal from going up and down. It worked pretty well but the insurance company was having fits over it. So we didn’t do the right side. It worked pretty well for about a year, but we have found that the nerves have hooked back up somehow. It’s like they are seeking each other out.

After that, we tried an intra-thecal morphine pump. It is about the size of a hockey puck that they put underneath your belly. Then they put in a catheter from there that goes down in your spinal column and it is supposed to deliver small amounts of morphine to stop the pain. But within two weeks I was completely infected, my whole belly was red. So they took that back out. They waited to get the infection done and they went in and put it in on the left side, but for some reason, my back kept spitting this catheter out- it wouldn’t stay in there. So they went in and took that one out. Then they sent me to another doctor to try this again. He said, “oh yeah, I can get this done…” I did that and the scar- the incision on the back, the spine there- was healing, it didn’t close up and I had fluid leaking out of me like a slow drip on a faucet- it was spinal fluid coming out and I got spinal meningitis. That was the end of the medical stuff so far. Now I am basically nothing.

They said if I wanted to, they have these spinal stimulators, but I’ve had such bad luck with everything, I just don’t think I can do it anymore. It takes so much out of you each time you have one of these surgeries. They don’t know if they’ll be able to keep anything in me with all of the infection and rejection stuff. I’ve had so much bad luck with the medical interventions I don’t have faith in the system anymore- I’m not willing to invest that time. Each surgery I had would set me down a little bit lower and lower. When I was in my 20’s, I’d get up and within a month I’d be doing fine, but now, I am down for about six months afterward.

I’ve had, one…two, let’s see… three, eight. Eight of them.

Q: How did marijuana enter the picture?

My neurologist and I talked about it. We hadn’t found anything that was effective. I had been on all of the narcotics and I just have such a tolerance to them- I can take handfuls of Percocet or morphine and it just doesn’t do anything to me anymore. So she said, what about this? And I tried it. I gave it a shot and went down and got my permit and registry card. I found a person with some pot because I didn’t! I was in my 40’s. I didn’t even know anyone who smoked pot. Finding it in the first place was difficult. I tried it and I was sitting there and smoked about half a joint and I just started bawling, crying. It worked so well, it was just this huge release of pent up negativity. I hadn’t had anything working and I just… I just, it still makes me cry. It works so well. It was like Christmas to me.

So I got to that point and then I wasn’t going to be able to afford to buy it on the street. Around here it is about 400 an ounce for anything good. I knew I couldn’t do that every week so I hooked up with a person here in Colorado who became my caregiver. He was growing his own and the goal was to make me self sufficient so I wouldn’t have to be dependent on him. That way he could go on to help somebody else. So I started growing my own and got better and better at it until the DEA showed up.

Q: Had you ever smoked marijuana before?

I had smoked as a teenager in the early 70’s. But it had been 25 years since I had. Where I grew up, everybody smoked pot as kids. The effect that it had on me in a medical situation and the effect it had on me back then were completely different. It wasn’t the euphoria anymore- it was the changes in the levels of pain and how I was dealing with the pain. Marijuana is easily twice as effective as anything else I’ve had. At least, at least. It’s the only thing that has had any long term effect for the better. That’s just it. Nothing else has been able to do what it has been able to do.

I got excited about it and did all the reading I could about growing it, researching it. I ended up getting pretty good at it. Now I try to help take care of other people. But this raid I got from the DEA didn’t just affect me. It affected me and a couple other guys with MS I was helping. It was this big chain reaction down the line. Man, it was going so wonderful, so smooth until they showed up. Hopefully now I’ll be back on track though.

Q: How does marijuana help you?

It just, it’s weird. Nerve pain is different from other kinds of pain. Nothing takes the nerve pain away, but marijuana dulls it for me. It takes it down to a level where I can function. A lot of times my pain was so high I couldn’t get out of bed, I couldn’t do anything. I would be down for the count and generally when that happens I would go to the emergency room and they would inject me full of narcotics. Marijuana has allowed me to function out in society. I can go to the kids’ plays at school and my girl’s soccer games. I can go places and do social things with my wife. It has allowed me- it dulls the pain enough where I can function.

Q: Do you work? Are you on disability?

No, yes.

Q: And your wife?

She’s a sales rep for FedEx.

Q: Without marijuana where would you be?

I’d be dead right now to be honest with you. Before I started taking the marijuana I attempted suicide before because I couldn’t deal with the pain anymore. It wore me down. Marijuana was the saving grace that way- it gives you just enough hope- a big enough crack in the window to just be able to function. If this had not happened I just don’t see anyway that I could have kept going.

Q: How did you attempt suicide?

I tool a bunch of sleeping pills. I had just gone in for a sympathetic block and it wasn’t doing anything. It wasn’t working, I was so desperate. I just couldn’t deal with the pain any longer. I took all these Halcyons. I was at my house and my mother was over there keeping an eye on stuff and apparently I blacked out and my mom stepped outside for a second and the doctor who had given me the sympathetic block called me at the house to see if it was doing better or not and apparently I picked up the phone and was talking to him and he said you know, ‘I am going to call 911,’ because he said he couldn’t tell what was going on with me. So the firemen and ambulance showed up at my house and said, you know, my mom answered the door, “Oh no, everything’s fine here,” but they asked if there was another person in the house and they found me. I don’t remember any of that of course.

They took me in, did a mental hold on me for a while and then kicked me back out. You know I think about how if my mom had been inside and picked up the phone- she would have said I was sleeping. Or if the doctor had decided not to call at all… there are so many little things that could have happened for this to have not worked out.

After a while, when you get through with the morphine pumps, I realized there wasn’t anything else out there anymore. I had to make that decision- are you going to live or die- are you going to live with it or not? That helped me because I realized if I was going to live with it, I needed to learn how to deal with it. When you have pain like this, you’ll try anything- oh yeah, let’s do that and this… I went through all that crazy stuff, but all of a sudden there weren’t anymore carrots out there. This was it. That’s when marijuana came in. I’m glad it did. I am so glad it did.

If I had lived in a state that didn’t have medical marijuana laws, I would have never have done it. I wanted to be legal around my kids and set a good example because it affects them as well.

Q: How has this affected your kids?

Well, the whole thing with this pain and everything affects them because before marijuana I never went out to see their school stuff or sports. Dad never did anything with them. They were used to going places with my wife. I would always step out of stuff.

When we got the marijuana we talked to them about the difference between recreational and medicinal uses of it. I wasn’t saying go out and use marijuana. I was saying it was a medicine for me and it works for me. That’s all they care about- that dad can do stuff. I don’t smoke it around them. I’ve got my room downstairs where I grow it. I’ll go downstairs and grow it. A lot of times when they are around I won’t even do it. It’s a balancing thing about how much to use, when to use it. It all runs pretty smooth now. I know when I can use it and how much.

Another thing, just doing this, just growing the marijuana has become a hobby. It is something else I can do and get better at and perfect. I enjoy the actual growing part as well. And I enjoy the fact that I can help somebody else who was in that spot I was in. I get a lot of satisfaction out of that. It has really had a lot of blessings. When all of this stuff happened, it was all negative, negative, negative. Once the marijuana came along it wasn’t all negative. Now I can be at home and be a part of the kids’ life. They have a parent in the house like they would in an old traditional family. It is the silver lining around all of it, being able to watch my kids grow up. So now, I just take the good parts that I can out and go from there.

Q: Ok, so tell me about this raid.

Ha ha ha. I was standing in the entryway there talking on the phone and saw a cop car which is kind of bizarre because we live on a cul-de-sac. Then a second one came around the corner and then they were coming in twos, side by side, down the street. Marked cars, unmarked cars, the whole cul-de-sac was full of cars. There is an apartment complex behind the house here and they had people out there in case I was going to run. Like I could run! I couldn’t jump the fence if I wanted to.

There were 10 or 12 vehicles, over 20 police officers here. They came jumping out of the cars, they had their guns out.

Q: They had their guns out??

Oh yeah, aiming at me, hands in the air, the whole nine yards, you know, turn around… They said do you know what we are here for? And I said, “No, I don’t.” And they said, the basement. And I said, I have a medical marijuana permit for that and the DEA guy said, “I don’t care, it doesn’t affect us. We have a warrant so you can either let us in or we’ll kick the doors down.” So that’s it. They patted me down and brought me inside.

Everything was locked up downstairs of course and they were going to kick the door down and I said, you know, I have a key. So they went down and just trashed the place. Just trashed the place. You’ll see. It’s still not picked up. They yanked all the plants out and carried them out. Took all my equipment. They loaded up a truck. Took me off to jail. Booked me.

My wife came down and we went through this whole process. I have a book of it all [shows me scrapbook]. I just got tired of screwing with it. I was at a point where I just got tired of screwing with it.

I got an attorney who said he was willing to do it. I wasn’t worried about the prison or any of that, I just thought it was ridiculous.

I finally filed suit against them, actually against the city of Aurora. The city of Aurora had no defense against me in that case because I am perfectly legal. So the city must have told the DEA either to drop it or they wouldn’t work with them anymore. So the DEA said they would give the equipment back but not the marijuana which I knew anyway.

So I said, fair enough. So I got it back and just now I have some plants a couple weeks old.

It was the 27 th of May. I was just getting ready to get out for Memorial weekend. I was loading the trailer out in the driveway. I was home alone, it was 2 o’clock in the afternoon. I was about to go pick the kids up from school when they showed up.

They let me call my wife so she could go get the kids at the school. I just wanted to make sure they weren’t going to end up back here. It was all very surreal. I kind of think that in my head why they were here. Why they were doing this to me. I didn’t even know why I was on their radar screen. I couldn’t comprehend why they would be doing this to me. It was all confined right here. I had this big argument with one of the DEA guys. He said, you know, we have DEA guys getting killed over this stuff. And I said, but I am not affecting anybody outside of my own nucleus here- it doesn’t affect the borders, anyone else except me.

Q: How did they find you then?

They said it wasn’t an informant. What they said was that they saw my car at the grow store where I get my equipment to grow. They followed me from there back to here and they got my address from the plates. They followed me back and then they started going through my trash. On trash day when I put stuff out there, they would take part of the trash with them. They found a couple of plants in the trash and that they gave them enough for a warrant for my power bills and then they came and raided me.

Actually, the plants in the trash was positive for me because the county of Arapahoe, the DEA asked the county to prosecute me, and they looked at the law here to see if I was trying to comply, and they said obviously I was trying to comply because I was throwing male plants out. And I was. I was all legal. I had just what I was allowed. So the county said there was no way they could prosecute me because I hadn’t done anything wrong.

Q: So you think the DEA didn’t know you were a medical marijuana patient until told them on your sidewalk?

I don’t know. It’s weird because there were four or five of us medical folks that were busted within a few weeks’ time. So I don’t know. They said it wasn’t a medical thing. To me, the coincidence is too strong. It is hard to think they did all of these raids and everyone just happened to be medical marijuana people. I just don’t know.

Q: Did they do raids that weren’t medical?

All of the ones I heard of were medical. In fact, I talked to people in the newspaper, the Lawrences,

“I’ve been married 22 years, I have kids, I am a home owner. I am not some dead head growing pot.”

Q: So how was your stuff returned?

Apparently the judge said- a couple of things happened. When the county said they wouldn’t prosecute, that was a big thing because now the DEA is saying we won’t even prosecute, but we’ll keep all of his stuff. Even the DEA guy finally said it appeared I was doing everything legally in one of the newspaper stories. So even from their point I would have been a hard one to prosecute. I was the poster boy- I was doing everything as I was supposed to. The parameters and everything were in there. I’ve been married 22 years, I have kids, I am a home owner. I am not some dead head growing pot. I think they just didn’t want to get in that battle.

So when the county wouldn’t prosecute, we went to the DEA to get our stuff. But they said they would keep it under forfeiture laws even though they weren’t going to prosecute. So we decided to sue the city of Aurora. The city had nothing- no grounds to stand on. I was doing everything right. I thought we were going to go through this huge big deal over this stuff. We filed suit and within 48 hours or so, the DEA said fine, we’ll give the equipment back. They said the marijuana was all in San Francisco in the labs or something for analysis so they couldn’t give it back.

My attorney was a hell of a guy. He did this pro bono- Rob Koury----. From the civil standpoint he said he would do everything pro bono. I really got lucky when I ran into him. He believes in this and that makes a huge difference when you are out there. We were a very good team.

Q: What are the implications of your case?

They had never done this before- return equipment. So this case opened the door for a lot of other people to say, “Hey, this guy got his stuff back.” So it was huge from that standpoint.

They said in the paper, that there was no misunderstanding what I would do with this equipment- I am not growing tomatoes. They knew what they were doing. I think it shows a spot where if you are doing it legally as far as your state laws are concerned that you are on so much better footing that the DEA doesn’t want to take these cases into court because one time it will go through a court and the court will find in favor of the defendant. It is a can of worms they don’t want to open up. What are they going to do? Put me in prison and leave my kids without a father? Pay my medical bills in prison? They would basically have to put me in a hospital the whole time I was locked up.

I think they know we are kind of on the verge of getting passed this federal-state thing. It’s got to happen here pretty soon. They don’t want to force the issue- they don’t need a poster boy up there doing it right. They don’t want the DEA to be the big bad guys.

Q: You went public after the raid? People know now?

Yeah, ha ha. People know. When I told the DEA guy this doesn’t affect anybody but me, I meant it. My closest friends didn’t know I was doing this. They had to open up the paper to hear about it. I had buddies over to play cars or for barbeques and they didn’t even know I had a garden downstairs the whole time. I was just trying to take care of my pain. But it became very public. Everyone knew, the schools with my kids… I haven’t had one negative response from anybody. Not one. Not one. Not from teachers, friends…

I pulled up at a 7-11 one day and an Aurora police officer pulled up next to me and looked over, “Hey, aren’t you that medical marijuana guy?” I said, yeah I am, and he said “We could save each other a lot of trouble if this never happened. As far as I am concerned, we should leave each other alone.”

Q: Have kids had a hard time?

Uh uh. No. I have a 15 year old daughter and 9 year old twin boys.

There hasn’t been any of this teasing- you know- your pothead dad, etc. I was worried about that happening- them going back to school after summer, I wasn’t sure what would happen, because this happened while they were out. I had teachers that didn’t even know me that would come out in the hallway and shake my hand. Come out and say, “Good luck,” “Keep going…” My wife was so afraid she would end up getting fired. That this would come back to her boss. That we would be this pariah family out there. It has been completely the opposite. It has all been extremely positive.

The thing is, a lot of these people have seen me go through what I have gone through over the last nine years. They have seen the hospital stays and the surgeries, the depression. A lot of them had seen this and actually got kind of mad when the DEA’s attorney came on the television and said the only reason medical marijuana patients were doing this is because they were life long smokers who just wanted to smoke pot. They sparked some outrage among people who know me. They had to backtrack off of that.

Q: Since people do know now, how many friends come over for some bud?

Ha, ha. None. No- no, and I wouldn’t do that. I am serious when I said this stuff has to be done legally. God forbid I sell a friend a quarter ounce and he got busted. I would be all over the papers. I take this pretty seriously, especially now that I have been in the spotlight. It is really important for me to do it the right way.

Q: What do you want the everyday Am out there to know about this?

I want them to know this really is a medical benefit. But the pharmacology, the narcotics people get on, get addicted to, misuse... Marijuana is so easy. I can grow it myself in the backyard. I don’t have to worry about the financial end of it. It is the most effective medication I have ever had. I want them to realize this is not something I do to get high. I don’t like to get high- it makes me feel stupid. I am not doing this because I want to smoke pot. I hold back on it. I don’t understand how something that is so safe, that has been used for so long by so many people, people aren’t dying from it… I think we went through this Reefer Madness thing and now everyone has this dark image of it and it’s just wrong.

Marijuana has some serious medical benefits. You have to wonder if this is not because of the pharmaceuticals. They are not going to make any money off of me growing marijuana. If I can do that instead of using dilaudid or morphine, where does that leave them? I think there is a big push to keep things the way they are now.

Everyone in power now are people that grew up in my era where everybody smoked pot- they know this isn’t something that will lead me to heroin, like I will become a junkie stealing from everybody. I thought this would have been done and over with by now.

It’s given me a new life. It has opened the door to where there is joy in my life now. My kids get their dad back. Instead of lying in a fetal position in bed on narcotics, I can move around, be a contributing member to this little community I live in, help my kids. It’s changed everything.

It was a lot of very dark years going through this disease until pot came around.

I know it is not going to take this nerve thing away. It is not going to take all the pain away. But at least I know that on some level I will be able to function and give my kids a father back. It’s like, you know, my father in law had to take the boys on their scouting camping trips because it was something I could never do. But now I can- if the feds would just leave me alone.

Q: Do you consume by smoking?

Yes, I smoke.

Q: Have you tried a vaporizer?

I haven’t, I’d like to though. I am a pretty conservative person, so all of these things are new to me.

Q: What year did you first used?

I first used in 2002.

The feds’ idea was that I should use Marinol.

Q: How much would a bottle of Marinol cost you each month?

About $800. It’s very expensive. Very expensive. All this stuff does to me is give me a really bad headache. It doesn’t have a pain killing quality like marijuana. I don’t know what they’re doing or how, but it’s not the same.