My name is Bruce Buckner. I am a 48-year old computer pre-press technician and webmaster from Seattle, WA. I play music with a couple different bands for fun and profit as well. As a child of the sixties, I've smoked pot recreationally (or so I believed) since my teenage years.

I remember my first bouts of abdominal cramping and diarrhea around the age of nine or ten. I was told I was suffering from colitis, that it was just a "nervous stomach." It was always particularly bad on days I woke early to go somewhere, so the "nervous stomach" diagnosis kind of made sense. The cramping and frequent bowel movements continued. I was going to the bathroom a dozen times a day. I was always of slight build but by the age of twelve my weight had dropped off the "low normal" range of the height/weight charts. I became drastically underweight. (I am a 48-year-old male who weighs 114 lbs.)

While attending the University of Oregon in Eugene, I was suffering from a particularly bad flare-up. I developed psoriasis, and started getting little red bumps on my lower legs, which I scratched into sores. I was very fortunate that the young doctor I saw was very familiar with Crohn's (his wife had it). He was able to diagnose it right away, although he still made me undergo a colonoscopy the following week, which confirmed his diagnosis.

He started me on sulfasalazine. This caused severe nausea and vomiting. The cure was much worse than the disease. The doctor gave me steroids (prednisone). This made me lay awake all night sweating. I was making all kinds of stupid mistakes - I backed my car into a light post, I lost my temper easily, I couldn't handle the sleep deprivation and stopped taking the steroids. In 1972 my doctor told me his wife found that smoking pot helped. Whenever I was cramping, I smoked a couple joints from that point on.

Through the seventies and eighties, I worked in the music business. My occupations allowed me to wake slowly, work late hours, and smoke lots of pot. Coincidentally, my Crohn's was in almost total reemission.

I still had occasional bouts of leg sores and cramping and diarrhea, but the cramping and bowel movements would subside after a couple hours and I would be OK the rest of the day. I was still underweight, but I could eat two or three times a day.

After changing jobs and suffering through several years of flare ups, I realized smoking a little pot helped lessen the cramping, increased my appetite and helped me feel a little better. But smoking a lot of pot (a big joint every hour and a half) would keep the disease in a state of almost total remission. I would have only one to three bowel movements in the morning, minimal morning cramping, I could eat any food I wanted; even my leg sores would go away.

I have several relatives with Crohn's Disease. Every one of them has had major surgery. Every one of them has had complications from the steroids and immune suppressors they have been prescribed. Most no longer have functioning excretory systems and are wearing pouches.

I went to a specialist who stated "Frankly, I can't believe you could have gone thirty years with Crohn's without major medical intervention, I have to question whether you really have Crohn's." He ordered an "enteroclysis" (a horrible procedure that I wouldn't wish on anyone) which showed definite scarring and narrowing in my terminal ileum. The doctor had to admit that I did have Crohn's and that I had kept the disease in control with marijuana.

I am firmly convinced that I would be in the same condition as my relatives with Crohn's, if I hadn't used pot. The medical use of marijuana has saved my colon and my quality of life.

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