Just kickin’ the old gong around…

Seriously, though, I didn’t enter into this decision lightly or even for fun. It happened that a tooth I had a root canal done on a few years ago went “bad”, so now I had to endure (as well as pay for) an extraction on top of the “fun” of the original root canal.

I still remember the root canal from four years ago, and not pleasantly. Avoid them if at all possible, folks!

But an extraction is no fun either. I had my wisdom teeth out many years ago, but luckily  I was completely unconscious for the entire process. These days, any kind of anesthesia is a much more serious issue. Plus my heart problems mean that I’m on blood thinners, so there was an interesting “fight” between my dentist (who wanted me to stop the blood thinners for three days so the clot would heal quickly) and my cardiologist (who’s more worried about me dying from an internal clot). I think you can guess who won that one!

But I was quite anxious before the procedure, and I wanted to minimize my discomfort as much as possible. The trick, as usual, was to come up with the right mixture of strains and the correct dosage. My worry was that, if I took too much, I’d get too high and then be sitting there in the dentist’s chair imagining all kinds of stuff, which would definitely be a Bad Thing.

My solution was to take two of my extra-strength Harlequin capsules for pain and two indica capsules for the anxiety, but I split them up so that I took one of each type two hours before going in, and then the other two an hour before. That way, no matter how long it took the capsules to start working, some of them would have enough time to kick in for sure.

Well, the timing was perfect, even though I wish I had taken an extra indica at the outset (because I really was pretty nervous). The second dose kicked in just when the dentist was giving me the second injection of local anesthetic, and kept me high enough to be calm and relatively happy, but not so high that I was in danger of freaking out (you do not want a sativa under these conditions!). And the Harlequin helped insure that I felt no pain for 4 to 6 hours.

Unfortunately, the Harlequin and the local anesthetic both wore off simultaneously, which meant that I suddenly had a very serious impossible to ignore pain all over my mouth. So even though I had really wanted to go with more Harlequins and stay with cannabis for the whole thing, I figured it was time to break out the big guns and try the Vicodin.

I’m glad I did, because it took only 20 to 30 minutes to start feeling woozy and all the pain subsided. Frankly, I’m not even sure the Harlequin could have handled this level of pain without taking enough of them to feel high either.

See, the dentist had run into a little problem with my tooth. One of the roots was stuck, and I heard various ominous things like “Fetch the surgical burr” and “We’re going to have to try something else”.

It took quite a while. At one point I was tempted to tell him I had a hydraulic jack at home.

If I was just a bit higher, I might have closed my eyes and imagined the dentist and his assistants all holding onto a pair of forceps and me swinging them all back and forth around the room by my tooth, because that’s what pretty much what it felt like while he was trying to take it out. But luckily that image didn’t come into my head until later.

At the end, it was an anti-climax because the thing just literally popped out onto my chest. The tooth, the whole tooth, and nothing but the tooth.

Anyway, I took the Vicodin three times — every 6 hours — and all the pain went away just 24 hours after the original visit. It took another day for the clot to form properly, though, but everything went fine.

So how does Vicodin compare to cannabis? I was taking a single pill with 5 mg. of hydrocodone and 500 mg. of acetaminophen, and it got me to approximately a level [4] on the highness scale, but it felt much more like being drunk than high on weed, and I wouldn’t have dared attempt to drive a car.

They’re great on pain, but when you consider you could get addicted to Vicodin in only a week or so, it makes you very cautious. They’re good to have around in emergencies, but they’re ultimately way too dangerous for regular use.