Medicinal cannabisMedicinal cannabis: what a veteran should understand
What it is, what it is not, what the research can and cannot tell us yet, and how to raise it with your own doctor without being brushed off.
7 min read
A nonprofit education project
Saving veterans witheducation, not sales.
We help veterans living with PTSD and other conditions — and the older adults who have been on pain medicine for years — understand what their options actually are, so they can ask better questions of their own doctors.
Free to read. Nothing sold. No products, no promises of a cure, and no stake in what you decide.
In crisis right now? Dial 988, then press 1 — or text 838255.
Three places to begin
You do not have to read all of this. Pick the one that sounds like your week.
Learn
Read it in plain language
Short, honest pages on medicinal cannabis, what opioids do over years, PTSD and pain, and the questions worth bringing to your doctor.
Open the education libraryResources
Find the right line to call
Crisis lines, VA benefits help, caregiver support, legal aid, and trustworthy reading — plus a printable list of questions for your next appointment.
See the resourcesTalk to us
Ask a real person
Write to us or call. Tell us what you are trying to figure out and we will point you toward the information, the office, or the person who can help.
Reach out
The words on our emblem
Why the emblem says Saving 22
Twenty-two is the number our emblem carries. It has been used for years to count the veterans lost to suicide each day — a figure that has been revised and argued over, and that has never once been just a number to the families behind it.
We keep it where we can see it. Not as a slogan, but as a reminder that the work of saving even one person is the entire point of this project — and that most saving happens in quiet places, long before a crisis: a question asked at an appointment, a dose questioned, a son told the truth about how the week went.
The POW-MIA banner on the emblem is there for the same reason. Some of our people never came home, and the ones who did are still owed the help they were promised.
Free
to read, always — nothing is sold here
One
honest conversation is worth more than a claim
From the education library
The pages people come back to
General education only. No doses, no guarantees, and a standing instruction to take it to your own doctor.
Medicinal cannabis
Pain and opioidsWhen pain medicine stops helping and starts harming
Why the same dose can stop working, what happens to the body over years of opioid use, and how to have the conversation about changing course.
8 min read
Talking with your doctorQuestions to bring to your doctor
A short list of questions that change the shape of an appointment, and how to prepare so you are not talked over.
5 min read
Who this is for
If you are the one in pain, or the one watching someone you love be in pain, there is a path here for you.
For veterans
What to bring to the VA, how peer support works, and where to call when the day is bad.
Go
For families and caregivers
How to open the conversation, what to put in writing, and where a caregiver gets their own support.
Go
For older adults
Why a prescription behaves differently at 75, and how to get a real medication review covered by Medicare.
GoWhy we started
Because the medicine stopped helping, and nobody said so
Veterans Project began with veterans we know personally — men and women who were given opioids for real injuries, took them as prescribed, and found that after a few years the pain was worse and the pills were doing something else entirely.
Nobody had told them that could happen. Nobody had told them what to ask. So they did what people do when they are left alone with a problem: they stopped mentioning it, and some of them started looking for answers in places that were selling something.
We exist so the next person gets the information first.
What we will never do
- Sell you cannabis, cannabis products, supplements, or anything else.
- Take money from a company that sells them.
- Give you a dose, a strain recommendation, or a promise that something will work.
- Tell you to stop a medicine your doctor prescribed. That conversation belongs with them.
- Pretend the research is more settled than it is, in either direction.
We are a nonprofit. If we ever take a donation, it will be published here, and it will never buy influence over what we write.
In the community
We bring this to your post, church hall, or clinic
Plain talk, about thirty minutes, with no product and no pitch — and a list of questions people can take to their own doctor. Tell us the date and the audience and we will work it out.
Crisis support · 24 hours
If today is the hard day, call now
The Veterans Crisis Line is free, confidential, and answered around the clock by people who understand military life. You do not have to be enrolled in VA care to call.
The Veterans Crisis Line is for veterans, service members, and the people who care about them, whether or not they are enrolled in VA care. More help for veterans.
Not a crisis, just stuck?
Write to us and a person will read it. Tell us what you are trying to figure out — a medicine that is not working, a claim that was denied, a parent who will not talk about any of it — and we will point you to the right information or the right office.