From Person to Patient: For Most Of Us, Luck Decides

The Myth of Control, the Limits of Manifestation, and the Case for Compassion.

By Leila Simpson, United Patients Alliance

In 2022, I was ready for a night out in Lisbon, but I broke my arm and was unexpectedly hospitalised for a week before invasive surgery. Medical cannabis helped me manage the pain. I didn’t see that one coming!

The Illusion of Control

I attended a New Years Visioning session a few days ago, where we had to imagine two possible futures at the end of 2026 - one positive and one negative. We then were asked to consider what it was we had done during the year to facilitate each outcome. Many people left with a feeling of inspiration. I, however, was struck by how much control it was assumed we had over our lives. 

I’m not presenting an argument against intention or agency here - both can be very helpful, but confusing them with control has problematic implications. My negative vision involved those I loved dying, losing my job, falling ill(er) or experiencing significant injury, losing my dearest friend and furry companion Romeow the cat… but most of these things have already happened to me (thank goodness Romeow has endured!), and I had very little to say about it, much less the immediate opportunity to change it.

When Life Contracts Around You

Sometimes life contracts around you, and no amount of positive thinking or manifesting can change some inalienable truths. Accidents happen, death happens, other people’s decisions and actions can have an enormous impact on your trajectory, and wonky genes can start expressing themselves anytime - all of which can drastically change your life. 

Assuming you have control is comforting in one way, because humans really don’t like to be confronted by the lack of control and instability that truly exists in the world, but it is also incredibly problematic to take too much responsibility over things that aren’t in your control. When bad things happen, you can torture yourself for years asking how you could have possibly averted them (speaking from experience!) and when good things happen, you risk an overblown ego and a distinct lack of compassion for people who have not had such good luck - because fundamentally, a lot of life does come back to luck, or lack thereof.

Accident, Illness, and the Search for Relief

Most people I’ve encountered on my social justice rampage around the world did not choose what happened to them. I shall highlight a couple of examples I’ve enountered from the world of medical cannabis below.

Christopher who I work with regularly was living a fairly normal life, working on a building site when he slipped and fell. For some people, this fall may have resulted in a strain or sprain - painful, but fixable and with the potential for a full recovery and return to the life they were living before. Chris could not have known at the time, but his fall would result in him developing a condition known as Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, meaning something as benign as cutting his toenails, years later, would require days of incapacitating painkillers. This diagnosis led him to experimenting with treatments and medicines and thus finding out medical cannabis was effective. This in turn led to him advocating for this medicine for others, including engaging with parliament and becoming a core team member of UPA.

His story is not unusual at all. I remember putting a call-out for stories from the community some years ago. A courageous man sent in a video and shared his story. He was living his regular life one day when a car swerved into his path, causing brain injury and dramatically changing the course of his life. When he recovered, he was left with Tourette’s syndrome. Again, he experimented with treatments and medicines, finding cannabis was incredibly effective at controlling his tics (this is what his video was of) and giving him back quality of life.

When It Happens to You

For me, my life changed irreparably when both a workplace and a relationship became unsafe at the same time, causing me to have to leave my home and move countries to start again with little support. I could never have predicted this. The impact on my mental and physical health was significant and I found that medical cannabis helped, although I have personally had a complicated relationship with it.

My point is that anyone can face adversity they could not have foreseen. From diseases like MS switching on at some apparently random point in your life, to accidents that can trigger epilepsy, to life circumstances that laugh in the face of your old coping mechanisms, many people are forced to live lives they never imagined.

These lives require a different approach. To reduce your pain and suffering, sometimes you are forced to look outside the box and consider things you wouldn’t have previously. When you are faced with enough pain, it doesn’t matter if Joe Bloggs next door thinks you’re a hippy stoner. What works, works. And for some people, when you find the thing that works, potentially after years and years of needless suffering and dead-ends, you want to sing it from the rooftops.

From Person to Patient

If you’ve never experienced a fork in the road of your life so dramatic that it’s made you reassess fundamental attitudes and assumptions you have long held - lucky you. Or perhaps not lucky you, because then you also have not had the chance to be truly humbled and develop deep compassion for others who have also faced adversity that they didn’t have a hand in causing. Or perhaps they did, but that does not disqualify them from compassion. Humans are only animals doing their best.

So - have compassion, have respect for others’ journeys, allow yourself to be inspired by tales of love and survival and healing from the world of medical cannabis advocacy, and remain aware that you could be walking down the street tomorrow, and turn into a medical cannabis patient.

It’s likely that one day, for a multitude of reasons you can’t predict, you will cross the line from person → patient, and when you do, you will be glad groups who have fought for your rights for decades like UPA exist.

If you are already on this journey, or if stories of overcoming adversity touch your heart and stir something in you, please join the United Patients Alliance and support our work, so we can touch more people’s lives, and build a more compassionate world.