I saw this thread come up last night and couldn't bring myself to post in it. Not yet ready to own up to this condition. But I have it, too. I have it in my neck and the start of it in my lumbar region, too. I had nearly 5 hours of surgery to have the disks between C5-6-7 removed and the vertebrae fused exactly two months ago today. I'm just a week and a half out of the cervical collar and back behind the wheel of a car. And I'm having to come to terms with the fact that I may always have some pain from the spinal stenosis and from muscle spasms downstream in T and L where the not-yet-bad-enough-to-operate disks are bulging and the vertebrae spondylosing. I have had good luck with tizanidine (Zanaflex) for the spasms and from physical therapy. Everything I've read has indicated THC alone is good for neurological inflammation, but unfortunately the act of smoking it is not. Smoking anything is, among other things, dessicating to those disks. I'm about to try fairly good-sized doses of glucosamine/chondroitin for a few months to see if that'll lube things up a bit. I would get a lot of relief from ibuprofen, too, but it slows bone fusion and I'm not supposed to take it. (I've cheated three times with a single capsule.)

^^Up above? That recommendation to see a chiropractor? I've had three neurologists, two neurology professors and three neurosurgeons tell me not to go anyplace near a chiropractor for the rest of my life with this condition unless I wanted to take a bad situation and make it far, far worse. Acupuncture is fine. But in the wrong hands, chiropractic manipulation can leave folks like us with permanent spinal damage. I don't know about you, but I already have some of that. Not going to tempt the fates into giving me any more.
birdgirl73 Reviewed by birdgirl73 on . I have Degenerative Disc Disease anyone else I have DDD, 5 herniahated discs and sciatica, and I use cannabis to help with pain and muscle spasms with pretty good results but I am finally towards the end of my educational training(college) part of my commercial airline pilot license and in '08 will start my flight training and obviously I will not be able to nor want to smoke anymore with that kind of responsibility but also do not want to go for any of the major medical procedures for the pain and do not want to go on the PRESCRIBED pain Rating: 5