Tim and Chris speak with an old friend of Chris’s, a woman named Elikqitie. She didn’t come to cannabis until later in life – she started using in her thirties. That was before Medical Cannabis was legal in Utah.
Many of her past experiences were casual experiences. [03:50] Maybe she and her husband met up with strangers on a trail, found they had cannabis in common, and eventually became good friends. Tim and Chris’s response to that line of thought implied that such experiences are pretty common in the cannabis community. [06:45]
Elikqitie got her Medical Cannabis card a few months ago. [07:21] She now uses Medical Cannabis regularly to help with celiac disease, chronic pain, sleep issues, anxiety, and childhood trauma. Like so many others, she has discovered that cannabis helps her sleep without creating the hangover effect.
On her first visit to a pharmacy, Elikqitie met up with a pharmacist who used to work at another establishment she frequents. [11:34] The pharmacist already knew Elikqitie’s medical history, making it easier for her to recommend product, delivery method, and dosage. Elikqitie and her pharmacist now have her dialed in to exactly what she needs.
Elikqitie uses multiple forms including cubes, drops, and a spray. [18:42] She micro-doses during the day and takes a therapeutic dose at night. Tim asked if she had ever considered vaping. [26:25] She has, but decided it wasn’t right for her.
The conversation wrapped up with an in-depth discussion of making one’s own edibles at home. [32:02] Elikqitie learned how to do it from a book. The information is out there if anyone wants to learn about it. Meanwhile, Elikqitie has two podcasts of her own. If you are interested in hearing them, you can catch their details at the end of this episode.
Chris Holifield: Let’s welcome everybody out today to episode 55 of Utah in the Weeds. My name is Chris Holifield.
TIm Pickett: And I’m Tim Pickett, medical provider in the cannabis space, somewhat of a medical expert so to speak, I guess Chris. Excited for today’s interview with Elikqitie. I love that name.
Chris Holifield: This is a great one. This is actually an older friend of mine, somebody I’ve met over the years through podcasting. It was nice to bring her on the podcast and find out her story of using cannabis from everything from some of her PTSD issues, to sleeping at night. It was just a fun story to share on the podcast here.
Tim Pickett: Yeah, I think it’s interesting when you are friends with somebody and communicate with somebody for years really, and then you find out, “Oh wow, they’re involved in cannabis, in medical cannabis like I am, or as a patient.” It’s out there, people are using it. They’re finding that it’s helping them. Her story is really good. We talk a lot about lower dosing, edibles, oral methods, not a ton of smoking flower and dab rigs. This is a good conversation for people to listen to who are just interested in this experience from a normal persons perspective, right?
Chris Holifield: Yeah, just everyday use so you don’t have to get completely… a lot of times people think, “Oh, I got to get completely stoned out of my mind with cannabis,” and it’s like, “No, you can take very low doses here and it can help you sleep at night. It can help you deal with some of your stuff going on during the day.”
TIm Pickett: Yeah, absolutely. Yesterday, also I wanted to mention we were at the 420 event with the Cannafest at Dragonfly, that was super fun.
Chris Holifield: Oh man, I was excited just because A, we can have a 420 festival here in Utah, who would have thought? And then just to be out and about. I haven’t got out and about a lot over the last year so it was nice to get out and network a little bit.
TIm Pickett: Yeah, absolutely. I’m excited for the events coming up. We talked to a bunch of different people about events that we can go out back into the world.
Chris Holifield: The world is opening up Tim.
TIm Pickett: Yep. This is a good interview. I guess the only other housekeeping item Chris, is just to remind everybody starting in May, Utah Therapeutic Health Center will have a clinic open in Provo, in the same building as the Deseret Wellness pharmacy down there on Draper. That’s the street name, but it is in Provo. Check us out on utahmarijuana.org/podcasts, with all of the podcasts. I know I checked this morning, they’re all up and this one will be there too.
Chris Holifield: Didn’t we put up some of the videos on YouTube as well? Can people go check those out?
TIm Pickett: Oh yeah. There’s an entire listing of all the podcasts on YouTube. You go to Discover Marijuana, that’s the channel. The channel again, Discover Marijuana on YouTube, there’s all of the podcast episodes are there and some video. We’re going to start doing some more video stuff with the podcast so it’ll all be there. There’s also a ton of other videos there if you want to check them out, a lot of education content about cannabis. It’s a good place to get info.
Chris Holifield: Yeah, go there, subscribe there as well. Make sure you’re subscribed to this podcast in whatever podcast app you listen to podcasts in. Let’s get into that conversation with Elikqitie Tim. Here we go.
Let’s talk about cannabis. I want to dig deep with you here Elikqitie, I want to find out, when’s the first time you ever used cannabis? Can we go there?
Elikqitie: Absolutely. The funny thing is that in high school many, many, many, many moons ago for me, I was what you would call mall rat. I was a headbanger, heavy metal. We would just go to the mall on the weekend, me and like 15 of my closest friends and just hang out at the mall and then we’d usually end up at someone’s house. People would be smoking pot. Actually it was so funny because when I was a teenager I never smoked pot. I was around people who did it and I didn’t care, but I was never into it, smoking weed when I was a teenager. I never did it in college either. Then when I married my first husband, we started going to these, it was just adult parties and that’s actually when I started smoking pot when I was in my 30’s.
Chris Holifield: Really? Talk about these adult parties…[crosstalk 00:04:40]
TIm Pickett: You were kind of later. I guess it depends on your definition of adult.
Elikqitie: Adult parties as in parties with no kids there.
TIm Pickett: Okay.
Elikqitie: It wasn’t an adult swinger party. Not that one.
Chris Holifield: That’s what I imagined. Grown up people having a reasonably good time, and there’s cannabis at the party.
Elikqitie: Yeah, and everybody was adults-adults. Nobody was a teenager there. It was more of like we were sitting around the campfire making s’mores and then my friend Sue’s who we have our parties in her backyard in Florida, and she had this amazing backyard that backed up right against the lake. On her back porch she would have a band and then we would just sit there and just pass a joint and have a good time, eat and just enjoy our private little party with our friends. It was fun. Then we had drum circle and all sorts of cool stuff.
TIm Pickett: Well then the party gets really exciting.
Chris Holifield: Well with the music, yeah.
TIm Pickett: With the music, and the vibe. The whole everybody’s a little more relaxed. Conversation gets good.
Chris Holifield: Did you have a good experience your first time? I know a lot of people didn’t have a good experience their first couple of times.
Elikqitie: Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad experience with marijuana.
Chris Holifield: Really?
Elikqitie: Yeah. I never, ever, ever have. I always… it’s so funny because most of my experience with cannabis and smoking before it was legal in Utah were just my friends had it and they offered it to me. Most of my cannabis use I have not even purchased in my life. It’s mostly been free cannabis from friends which is perfectly fine. It’s so funny because I’ll just start talking to people and they’re like, “Hey, do you smoke?” And I’m like, “Well, not on a regular basis but sure if you have one…” I don’t know. Two months ago we took a road trip, oh my gosh I can’t remember where we took a road trip to. Anyway, we walked to a springs and we were hiking back and these two women that were at the springs, we were hiking back together, we didn’t know them. We just started up a conversation and she’s like, “Hey, you want a hit?” And I’m like, “Sure.” For me it’s not a thing I really would seek out seek out, but if it the opportunity arises and I’m not driving anywhere and I can be responsible then I’m like, “Sure, why not?”
Chris Holifield: It’s amazing how marijuana will bring people together. It’s like…[crosstalk 00:06:51]
Elikqitie: It’s like food.
Chris Holifield: … you can be completely opposites but there’s that one thing, all of the sudden you have a best friend. It’s weird how it works out that way. I’ve been in similar situations where you run into somebody on a hiking trail or you’re out and about camping, whatever.
TIm Pickett: Or a concert.
Chris Holifield: A concert, exactly.
TIm Pickett: Something like that.
Chris Holifield: And all of the sudden you’re just like… by the end of the night you’ve got phone numbers, you know what I mean?
TIm Pickett: You’ve learned about their history.
Elikqitie: You’re following them on Instagram.
Chris Holifield: Fast forward a little bit to medical, how long ago did you get your medical card? Because you got your medical card, right?
Elikqitie: Yes, I have my medical card, I got it about two months ago now and I’m actually coming up on my 90 day thing so I need to get an appointment to renew.
TIm Pickett: We sent you an email, and a text.
Elikqitie: You probably have and I have 700 emails in my inbox right now. Yeah, there was several things that led me to get a medical marijuana card. One was that I have Celiac Disease so Celiac, if you’re not familiar with it, you can’t eat gluten but it’s not just not eating gluten. You get joint pain, you get horribly ill if you do eat gluten for days and days and days. And then it compounds on each other. If you accidentally get gluten twice in the same month, it’s not like it goes away and then it resets back to zero, it’s cumulative.
It’s not just gluten for me, it’s corn bothers my joints and a few other different things like nightshade plants. I’m a writer for a living so it really sucks when I have to type all day and my hands hurt really bad. I’ve been dealing with chronic pain for a while, used to have fibromyalgia and then also more recently I found out that I was a victim of sexual abuse as a child because it’s like when your mind suppresses it and you don’t know for the longest time. I always had a feeling, I was always very weary of my mom and I never knew why until I started having these memories come back. I was sexually abused by my mother. When I started having these memories came back, I had night terrors. I would just sit and shake for an hour. It was really bad.
I’ve been going to psychologist and then I also have a somatic healer that I’m using right now. The other part of having all that stuff come back is even though I’m processing going through all that, the bad negative memories and things that are associated with that, you have a ton of anxiety. Just daily during the day and then certain things trigger you and you don’t know why. The other really bad part of that is I just basically wouldn’t sleep at night so I would literally go to bed at 10:30, 11:00 and if I was lucky I would sleep until 2:00 in the morning and if I was really lucky I’d sleep until 3:30. Sometimes I would go to bed at 10:30 and wake up at midnight and be awake for four or five hours and then go back to bed at 5:00 and then having to wake up at 7:00.
That chronic loss of sleep was really, really, really wearing on me and it’s literally been three years since I probably got any decent sleep. One of my girlfriends was telling me that she also has anxiety and a couple other different things too and she had got her medical cannabis card and she’s like, “Elikqitie, you’ve got to try this. It’s amazing. I sleep like a baby. I feel so much better during the day.” I’m not a big drug use person, I was taking one type of sleep medication and I tried two or three others but nothing really would work because I would take it and then I’d wake up in the morning and I’d feel really like I was drinking all night, but I wasn’t drinking all night and having that much fun so it kind of sucked.
Chris Holifield: It’s like you had a hangover but you didn’t know why. You’re like, “Why do I feel this way?”
Elikqitie: Yeah, I’m like, “If I’m going to feel this way I need to go out and party and have fun.” But the partying and having fun was missing so I didn’t really want to feel that way in the morning. And the sleep medication really doesn’t make you really sleep, it just drugs you to sleep and you don’t get any good quality sleep. She was telling me about her medical card and then she had suggested Utah Therapeutic Center and she’s like, “This is where I got my card, these people were great.” I’m like, “All right, let me try it out, what the heck.” I was literally at the end of my rope, I didn’t know what else to do.
I had tried everything. I used to have a health food store so I’m really knowledgeable in supplements and herbs and everything. I called you guys up and I went to the Salt Lake office and I went and saw, I can’t remember the guys’ name that I had. But any who it was really great because I went in, they talked to me and it’s an application process so just because you go, it doesn’t mean you get approved. I had tried so many other different things to control my chronic pain, my sleeplessness, anxiety and nothing was really working. I got my cannabis card approved and I went and the great thing about it is at Deseret I know all the pharmacies have pharmacists on staff, but I went to the pharmacist at Deseret and it was really great because I knew this whole medical clinical process, so I didn’t know what strains to use or how much to use. It was really great to go in and ask the pharmacist all these questions.
I told her I’m like, “Look, my number one thing is I need to sleep. I’m not getting any sleep right now, what do you recommend?” She recommended something. I think it had… now that the Park City one is open, because I’m in Park City, that’s great because actually Karen Christa who is the pharmacist there, I know her personally because she used to work at Alpine Apothecary and she knows my medical history too which is really great. We have now dialed it down to I got exactly what I need and actually got five nights of sleep in a row. That’s the first time I’ve done that in like four years and that’s only because I’ve had the medical cannabis. I can’t tell you how life changing that is to go from getting 13 hours of sleep a week to…[crosstalk 00:12:14]
Chris Holifield: 13 a day, right?
Elikqitie: To like 60 hours a week. Yeah, I feel like a whole new person.
TIm Pickett: I hear you, especially when you’re dealing with some of the autoimmune stuff that you deal with, when you’re not getting the sleep that you need your body can’t heal. I know that first hand myself. When I wasn’t getting sleep at night either, I was a wreck, I wasn’t functioning during the day. It was tearing down my immune system, everything. Headaches.
Elikqitie: Yeah. The other thing that’s really great about it too, is when I take the Dragonfly cubes at night to sleep, it also helps with anxiety so if I do wake up at night when I’m sleeping, I don’t feel really anxious and I don’t have a lot of the bad nightmares that I used to have as well. That’s really helpful too because then when I wake up in the morning I feel more relaxed, I feel like I got way better quality sleep then if I don’t take it.
TIm Pickett: What’s the dose you take?
Elikqitie: I take a 10 milligram of the Dragonfly at night, yeah.
TIm Pickett: 10 milligram.
Elikqitie: The cubes are in 20 so I just diagonal cut it in half.
TIm Pickett: Were you surprised that you dreamed less?
Elikqitie: I had heard that from other people so since I haven’t had night terrors in a while which is completely different from regular nightmares. If you haven’t had night terrors, be very glad that you haven’t because they’re extremely scary. I’m always, when I go into things because I know everybody is so different and especially with the PTSD I have from childhood trauma and everything, PTSD will literally physically rewire your brain. I wasn’t sure what kind of reaction I would have because my brain rewiring is going to be different than somebody else’s brain rewiring from PTSD.
TIm Pickett: Yeah, it’s one of the most…[crosstalk 00:13:48]
Chris Holifield: We talked about that.
TIm Pickett: It’s one of the most common things that people report is less dreams with cannabis. It helps people sleep, that’s another… it’s gold but it tends to help people at certain doses. Like you said, you find this 10 milligrams kind of works out which seems to be a really great spot for sleep because you don’t get a ton of that psychoactivity yet. Your brains not trying to paint a picture.
Elikqitie: Right and I like it too because not only do I get better quality sleep, I feel much more refreshed when I wake up in the morning and I don’t feel like… before if I would sleep and I’d have a nightmare, or even if I didn’t know if I had a nightmare or my brains processing something, I would still have that anxiety buzz in the morning and I don’t get that anymore. Which is really great. I wake up in the morning and I feel happy instead of waking up in the morning and trying to roll out of bed because I feel exhausted because I’m so anxious already and it’s first thing in the morning which is not a good way to start your day.
TIm Pickett: You said you go to Deseret Wellness out in Park City?
Elikqitie: Yeah.
TIm Pickett: I haven’t been out there yet, how is the pharmacy out there?
Elikqitie: It’s awesome.
TIm Pickett: Is it pretty good?
Elikqitie: Yeah, it looks just like the one in Bountiful because the first time I went, the Park City one wasn’t open yet so I went out to the one in Bountiful…[crosstalk 00:15:02]
TIm Pickett: Provo.
Elikqitie: Provo, yes.
TIm Pickett: Provo, right?
Elikqitie: Provo, yep. It’s just basically looks exactly the same except it’s a little bit smaller.
Chris Holifield: It’s a pretty good location, although it’s in the basement it’s still a pretty good location.
TIm Pickett: It’s in the basement.
Chris Holifield: It’s in the basement but it is…[crosstalk 00:15:19]
TIm Pickett: Got to knock on the door three times and say a password.
Chris Holifield: Tell them the frog, the purple frog.
Elikqitie: Yep. No, it actually is in a great location because it’s in between new Park — if you know Park City anyway — it’s in between the newer area of Park City and the historic area of Park City. It’s actually right next door to my favorite clothing shop which is kind of dangerous for me. But yeah no, it’s in a great location and I love the fact that you can go in and always talk to the pharmacist no matter what because I went in and when I had to change my dosage, I talked to Karen and it’s nice that you have somebody there that knows what… they can direct you in a direction so you’re not just wildly guessing because even though you do have to… there is always some guess work. Even if you go to a medical doctor and you get a prescription, there’s always guesswork because they never know how that prescriptions going to interact in your body.
I love that I can go and get information from a knowledgeable pharmacist and Karen isn’t only knowledgeable about cannabis, she’s also extremely knowledgeable about a lot of different supplements and how they interact and also a lot of prescription because she’s a regular pharmacist as well. One of the things that she told me I was doing wrong, I didn’t realize was taking 5HTP at night and she said that can wake you up so I had to switch that to the morning. That was probably part of why I wasn’t sleeping too good either. It’s been great and I’m so glad I’m getting sleep.
TIm Pickett: Interesting, 5HTP will wake you up, interesting. Years ago I took that stuff, I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that.
Elikqitie: I didn’t know that either because I was taking it at night.
TIm Pickett: How’s the GI stuff? Do you feel like that’s better?
Elikqitie: Yeah. I do definitely notice I’m getting the munchies a little bit more but I notice that my digestive system, because when you have any autoimmune disease but especially with Celiac Disease, little things can really set you off and sometimes you don’t even know what it is and I’m really careful with my diet. I notice my stomach definitely doesn’t bother me hardly at all anymore.
TIm Pickett: That’s pretty interesting, like we were talking earlier Chris about the histamine release and the depression of histamine release with cannabis use, and with autoimmune disorders and the GI system, and it just… gosh it has so many uses.
Chris Holifield: Yeah.
Elikqitie: Yeah actually one of the things I was really glad that they had at the Park City location, which they may have it at Provo now, but there’s one strain that’s called Limone, L-I-M-O-N-E.
TIm Pickett: Oh terpene, yeah.
Chris Holifield: Terpene, mm-hmm (affirmative).
Elikqitie: That’s actually the two main functions of that one is anti-inflammatory and the anti-depressant because one of the things that you also get with Celiac Disease or any autoimmune because any kind of gut disorder can cause depression. If you have a mental illness, it’ll make it worse. It won’t necessarily be the cause of your mental illness but if you have gut imbalances or problems with your gut it can make all that stuff worse. My depression has been really, really, really bad the past three or four months but then I started taking Limone during the day and I definitely notice a difference. It definitely uplifts my mood and helps me get out of that depression fog.
Chris Holifield: That’s good to know.
TIm Pickett: It is, the side effects of cannabis are helping other conditions than what you are normally using it for.
Chris Holifield: It doesn’t give you that stoned feeling probably either, right?
Elikqitie: I’m only taking like two drops, two or three drops of Limone. I do get a little bit tired when it first kicks in.
TIm Pickett: But very micro dosed of it.
Elikqitie: It’s not like… I just drink a cup of tea and I’m fine. It’s not like I’m wanting to go to bed or anything.
TIm Pickett: Yeah, so you’re kind of micro dosing during the day and then using a therapeutic dose at night.
Elikqitie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
TIm Pickett: You’re the perfect patient. You listen to the providers, you talk to the pharmacist, you’re into the discussion of what to try, how to try it. You’re using it really as it’s supposed to be used as far as the Utah system goes. And yet, you’ve allowed yourself to have these social experiences where it’s adult use too, which is reasonably safe. We have a lot of states around us, we’re surrounded by them that allow that. It’s the ideal situation of what we want to see.
Chris Holifield: I don’t know how much you hear Elikqitie, but I’m curious, was there any push back in Park City? It seems like Park City’s a pretty liberal city. They were probably pretty excited to get a pharmacy in there, a dispensary. I was just kind of curious what the community was like.
Elikqitie: I don’t know about anybody else, I was excited. Because of COVID I haven’t been out and about too much lately, I haven’t heard anybody say anything negative about it but again, I haven’t been talking to a lot of people in Park City. A lot of my content clients are outside of Park City amazingly enough, but yeah, I was super excited when I found out that they were coming to Park City. I’m like, “Yes, now I don’t have to drive to Provo,” which I would still drive to Provo anyway to get my stuff.
Chris Holifield: Who was it that we were talking to, or maybe it wasn’t with you Tim. Somebody was telling me that Summit County had the highest voter turnout for Prop 2 or something like that?
Elikqitie: That doesn’t surprise me.
Chris Holifield: They had the highest voter turnout and they have one of the lowest county counts for medical cards currently which was interesting.
TIm Pickett: That’s why I was curious…[crosstalk 00:20:27]
Elikqitie: Welcome to Park City.
Chris Holifield: They can’t figure it out, they vote to legalize it but then they won’t get a card.
TIm Pickett: That’s what I was curious about, they seem like a pretty liberal place.
Elikqitie: That’s the only reason why I moved to Utah. If there wasn’t Park City or Sugarhouse available I probably would have never moved to Utah because I’m a Philly girl so I’m definitely not on the conservative side for sure.
It’s funny because I think… I know a lot of people my age in Park City have little little kids, I don’t have little kids, I have a 21 year old. Well two 21 year olds and two 25 year olds, but our 25 year olds are out of the house. I don’t know, I’m guessing this is just off the top of my head, that people wanted to have access to it but then not everybody’s going to use it. One of the big things in Park City is there’s a lot of teenagers and kids who are in, like my son is in the winter sports, if you’re into winter sports and you’re on the team, you can’t… there’s no way you can do cannabis. I don’t even think medically.
TIm Pickett: Drug testing.
Elikqitie: Yeah, they do drug testing all the time on the kids. You can’t use it. I don’t know because now it’s legal so I don’t know if they would let them or not. That’s kind of weird. I would expect Summit County to vote yes for Prop 2 but I’m surprised that not that many people got cards.
Chris Holifield: Our only thought was just because they haven’t had any place to purchase out there, because they didn’t want to drive into Salt Lake was my only thought.
TIm Pickett: That’s kind of my thought too. That or…
Chris Holifield: Maybe they’re just all using it, they don’t need a card.
TIm Pickett: But yet they’re using it and they’re like…[crosstalk 00:21:56]
Chris Holifield: No it’s great. If I need to go down there, I’ll get a card so I can go buy more. I don’t know. Different counties have different personalities certainly. Summit County, they’re in their own world. Maybe not a lot of people know that it’s there because while the dispensaries in a really great location, or the pharmacy, it’s not easy to see.
TIm Pickett: Do we know the address… you probably don’t know the address of the top of your head.
Chris Holifield: It’s in Kimball Junction.
Elikqitie: Yeah, it’s right on…
Chris Holifield: Just for people…
Speaker 4: I can look it up.
Chris Holifield: It’s all good. We can even add it later. I was just curious.
Elikqitie: If you know where… if you’re going down I think it’s near the intersection of 224 and 248 in Park City. If you’re going down like you’re driving into historic Park City, but then you make a left at the intersection of 224 and 248 like you’re going towards Park City High School. It’s going to be before you get to Park City High School on the right. It’s in a little shopping center with Whimsy Clothing and then there’s a lighting store in there. It’s literally two, a minute and a half from the recycling center in Park City.
Chris Holifield: I have it pulled up here. The address is 1351 Kearns Boulevard, Suite 110-B, Park City. Their number 435-252-1052. That’s one thing I want to do better Tim is connecting patients with these places because I’m surprised how many people don’t even know about all these places yet or even know how to get connected. The only place that I’ve seen is that if you get your hands on a copy of that Faces Magazine that Salt Lake City put together, they have all of them in the back I think.
TIm Pickett: Yep, they have all of the dispensaries, and they have a bunch of listings of Q and P’s from the Utah Patients Coalition, but they have all of the dispensaries. We also have a dispensary page on our website, Utahmarijuana.org.
Chris Holifield: That’s good to know.
TIm Pickett: I think it’s Utahmarijuana.org/dispensary. We have them all listed, all their addresses, links to their sites where you can go and register. But it’s important to keep up on this because there’s going to be a new one in Springfield, there’s going to be a new one in Payson.
Chris Holifield: A new one in West Jordan.
TIm Pickett: West Jordan, yes. South, 103rd south is going to open. St. George will open. Keeping up on where these are going to be, there might be one much closer to your house then you realize.
Elikqitie: Yeah, the other thing too is you can come out, I know a lot of people like to come out to Park City to do stuff because there’s lots of fun stuff to do in Park City. You can just come out, hit the dispensary, go to lunch and go skiing or whatever.
TIm Pickett: It’s right there.
Chris Holifield: Grab some gelatinous cubes and then go hit the slopes with your buddy.
Elikqitie: Chat with Karen for a while.
Chris Holifield: Karen, yeah.
Elikqitie: And the great thing is Sunday they’re almost completely empty because not a lot of people know that that pharmacy is open on Sunday because the other ones aren’t. I think Park City is the only pharmacy that I know of that’s open on Sunday.
TIm Pickett: That’s good to know.
Chris Holifield: That’s good to know too.
Elikqitie: Yeah, definitely hit up some lunch and cannabis on Sunday.
TIm Pickett: Have you run into any problems, one thing we noticed chatting with people here Elikqitie is availability. You’re pretty low, I would consider you a low tolerance, you have a very low tolerance so you don’t need to consume very much. Have you run into any availability problems? Being out of stock of anything you’re used to purchasing?
Elikqitie: No the only thing, I wanted to try the Limone for my depression the first time I came in, and they didn’t have it in the Provo. Other than that, I haven’t experienced any. They were saying, “Oh you can get two ounces per day,” or something like that. I got two ounces and I was like, “Whoa, there’s no way I’m going to use this much in a day.” Everybody’s different right? My daughter who’s 21, she has this weird thing where she has a very, very high tolerance to any kind of medication. They were trying to put her to sleep to do hand surgery and they had to use four times the normal amount of anesthetizing drugs to get her under. For her, she could probably try two ounces in an hour and it wouldn’t effect her, for me I would be dead asleep.
Chris Holifield: Yeah, everybody’s so different. Have you tried any… are you using all oral? All the stuff you can take by mouth?
Elikqitie: Yeah, I’m using the Limone drops in the morning. I’m also at night when I take the Dragonfly fruit, whatever it is…
TIm Pickett: The little cubes, yeah.
Elikqitie: The cubes, yeah, I also take it with 25 milligrams of CBD because it can make me a little bit anxious a little bit sometimes. If I take it with the 25 milliliters, excuse me, of CBD then it helps. That really works really well. I’m sorry, what was the question?
Chris Holifield: Yeah, you’re blending them together. I was asking whether or not you’ve experienced with any inhaled methods, but you don’t need to. If you plan it out.
Elikqitie: I actually was thinking about doing vaping but I know vaping causes… you can get metal particles in your lungs and different things like that. With my autoimmune condition, I just don’t want to chance…[crosstalk 00:26:46]
Chris Holifield: Metal particles? What?
TIm Pickett: There are going to be things in your lungs that you didn’t want in there…[crosstalk 00:26:55]
Chris Holifield: I guess any time you inhale.
TIm Pickett: Any time you inhale a product and it’s atomized and it’s heated up by a metal coil and a little battery, you’re probably going to get chemicals and particles that you didn’t expect. Are they safe for most people? Yes. Are they safe for everybody? I guess I would say we don’t know.
Elikqitie: Yeah, that’s the thing is I know weird things set off my system so I’d rather go the safe route and be smart with it then try to do something new that I haven’t tried yet.
TIm Pickett: And if it works, it works. The drops are long acting, right? You don’t have to take them all the time.
Elikqitie: Right. Actually, the other thing I take I completely forgot is the Boojum spray. I take the cubes…[crosstalk 00:27:32]
Chris Holifield: The little white one?
Elikqitie: Yeah.
TIm Pickett: You spray it in your mouth, it’s like 2.5 milligrams per spray. Perfect dose.
Elikqitie: Yeah, it’s awesome because I take the cubes two hours before I go to bed and then I do two sprays of the Boojum spray a half an hour before I go to bed. That gets me to sleep and then the cubes keep me asleep. It’s perfect.
TIm Pickett: For anybody listening out here, break this down. Here is a patient with some anxiety, some sleep disorder, right?
Chris Holifield: Some PTSD.
Tim Pickett: Some PTSD, you’ve got a GI issue, you’ve got some chronic pain. You’re taking a tincture, 10 milligrams at night therapeutic dose of THC with 25 milligrams of CBD. You’re getting at least two to one ratio, perfect ratio to decrease the anxiety. That’s what everybody teaches, this is science. You sleep better with no anxiety, you wake up refreshed. During the day you microdose which stimulates the endo cannabinoid system to heal yourself. The terpene you’re using Limone in that tincture is perfect for a blue mood and increasing your mood. Helps you with that almost motivation, kind of. This is ideal. This is how the plant is, on the science side, this is how the plant is supposed to be used, from the strictly medical side. That’s what I’m hearing.
Chris Holifield: Yeah.
TIm Pickett: I’m just excited that people are doing it. Is it common to use? I know you’re really involved in the Celiac community, gluten free community. Is marijuana cannabis pretty common to use? Or there’s probably not a lot of talk.
Elikqitie: I actually haven’t heard of a lot of other people using it for Celiac disease although I’ve become quite a cannabis pusher since I started using it. It’s amazing how well it makes you feel without having a lot of really bad side effects. For me, I’m sensitive to caffeine, I’m sensitive to medications and chemicals so I’m really careful about what I do just because I don’t want to overdo it and just crash during the day. But I love the fact that I can take it and I don’t have a lot of horrible side effects, but that I still feel really good.
I haven’t heard a lot of people from the Celiac community taking it for Celiac Disease although the Limone is definitely something if you have an autoimmune disease and you can try it, I would definitely recommend trying it because it’s made a huge difference for me. Another thing that I take too, which is also an anti-inflammatory is called Naltrexone and it’s a compounded anti-inflammatory that is good for any kind of autoimmune condition. I may be able to get off of that with the cannabis, because the one person I saw at the clinic in Salt Lake, she had gotten off of her Naltrexone because she had chronic pain with cannabis.
I do notice I don’t have to take it everyday where before I used to have to take it everyday, so I feel like if I start using the cannabis, the longer I use it and the more it’s in my system, then I won’t have to take the Naltrexone in addition to the cannabis.
TIm Pickett: We’re de-prescribing Chris, this is what we’re doing. We’re de-prescribing. Is this huge? Yeah, this is going to be the movement that is next. Cannabis is really just a tool for the movement but it’s a gateway drug off. It’s an exit drug and we’re using it to de-prescribe other medications that people are using that they might be helping them but they’re giving them bad side effects and long term side effects.
Elikqitie: The Naltrexone actually doesn’t give me a lot of bad side effects, but I feel like the less things I can take, the better. One of the things with any autoimmune thing is it’s kind of like your immune systems always running on a treadmill. The more it’s inflamed, the more it stays inflamed and then it’s always on that… your immune systems on the fight or flight so it takes a long time to get your immune system back to “normal levels”. My immune systems always inflamed so I know I’m not going to get off Naltrexone next week. I may get off of it in three or four months, but if I can get off of it, and just take the cannabis that would be ideal.
Chris Holifield: What about your family and friends, are they pretty supportive of you using cannabis?
Elikqitie: Actually, yeah.
Chris Holifield: Or is this one of those things you just don’t talk about a whole lot?
Elikqitie: Oh no, everybody knows. I am not a person to be like, “I’m doing this cannabis thing.” I tell people straight up, “I’m not sleeping, this is what’s happening so I’m taking cannabis and it’s making me feel so much better.”
It’s funny because I actually did some experimenting with edibles, I found this great edibles book in the City Creek Mall in the, oh my gosh, this note paper shop or something. I walked in just to look around and they had this amazing edibles book which I should have brought and I completely forgot. Any who I was experimenting with some edibles and making my own at home. I wrapped it up and I put it in the fridge and I labeled it happy brownies and I just told my kids, I’m like, “Look, don’t eat these, these are moms brownies.”
They all know and I’m really upfront with my kids. I tell them, “This is why I’m doing it,” and whatever and so everybody is fine with it. Nobody else in my household would probably do it because it’s not for them, but for me it works really, really well. That’s the thing, you have to be comfortable doing it, and it has to be something that works for you with anything that you try. If it’s not, just don’t do it. For me it’s worked out really well. I had a feeling it would work out really well because I do much better with natural supplements than I do with any type of prescriptions.
Chris Holifield: How did you figure out how to make edibles?
TIm Pickett: From the book.
Elikqitie: From the book, yeah.
Chris Holifield: Is it a recipe book?
Elikqitie: Yeah. It’s literally a recipe book. I wish I brought it. It’s literally a recipe book, you open it up and it teaches you how to make canna butter, canna-honey. Canna-coconut oil and then you use those things in with the regular recipes to make other things. The one thing I have an issue with is because I have Celiac Disease I can’t eat gluten so anything that requires flour I have to substitute and figure out what works. There’s always a work around so it just takes a few more steps for me.
Chris Holifield: Back in the day like 20 years ago we would have to try to figure out how to make edibles, I think the only thing was the Anarchist Cookbook or something like that.
TIm Pickett: Now you can go online, you can have the recipe…[crosstalk 00:33:51]
Chris Holifield: To try to figure out how to make edibles. This is way before internet days.
TIm Pickett: Yeah the Anarchist Cookbook. Very cool, very cool. There’s a lot of people that are making their own edibles now. We’ve talked about it before on this show too, and it’s a really good way to know what’s in your product. If you’re concerned at all of what’s in the products that you buy. Even at the pharmacies where they’re tested, you want a pure product, just buy some flower, make your own edibles.
Elikqitie: Yeah, and it doesn’t even have to be pure. For me, the first gelatin cube I took for sleep had corn in it, it had corn syrup but it was a really tiny amount I was taking, and corn syrup is one of the things that really inflames my hand joints. I was like, “It’s a little bit, its probably not going to bother me.” A week in, just from taking it everyday, these tiny little cubes were literally insanely small. That’s when I switched to the Dragonfly because it’s gelatin based and not corn syrup based. For me, because I have so many food issues, making my own edibles is an easy way for me to know exactly what’s in it and I know it’s not going to bother me.
The other thing that I found with edibles, the trick to making edibles… can I say the trick to making edibles?
TIm Pickett: Yeah, sure.
Elikqitie: Is if you’re using flower, you have to put it in the oven for 250, or 265 for two hours to activate the THC. I didn’t know this the first time.
Chris Holifield: Oh to de carb it.
TIm Pickett: You got to de carb it. Yep.
Elikqitie: Yep, and so I did that the second time I made the edibles and my husband comes home, he’s like “Why does our house smell like pot?” I’m like, “Doesn’t it smell lovely?” And he’s like, “No.” He’s not a cannabis fan.
Chris Holifield: It’s always amazing to me that there’s people out there that…[crosstalk 00:35:37]
TIm Pickett: That don’t like the smell.
Chris Holifield: Yeah, how do you not like this?
Elikqitie: The thing is, for him he doesn’t like the smell, and he doesn’t like the way any psychotropics make his head feel. For him, he doesn’t even drink. Everybody thinks he’s Mormon because he doesn’t drink. It’s like, “No, he just doesn’t drink.”
Chris Holifield: Wow, doesn’t drink nothing.
Elikqitie: He’s the only non-Mormon in Utah that doesn’t drink.
Chris Holifield: That’s respect there. Respect.
TIm Pickett: Yeah, do you know how much… is there some sort of calculator that you use to try to figure out how many milligrams of THC is in each brownie? Or is in each dose?
Elikqitie: Yeah, so in the edibles book I use they say to make sure to weigh out everything. I got a scale, just a regular food scale on Amazon that goes between grams and ounces and I use metric because I used to teach science. I just put it on the grams and then you just measure everything out and then that way, if you measure it, it’s pretty good. Obviously everything’s going to vary a little bit but when you measure it you have that accuracy of knowing exactly how much product is in your edible and then you cut it up into 20 even pieces or whatever. So you know how many grams is in your total whatever you make and then however many pieces… say there’s 100…[crosstalk 00:36:50]
TIm Pickett: Yeah, say there’s 100 milligrams of THC in your whole batch, right.
Elikqitie: And you cut it into 20, then you know each one has five. Even in the book, the edibles book, they talk about having cannabis parties and making sure your friends know which things on your food table have cannabis in them. And to keep CBD on hand in case anybody gets a little anxious.
Chris Holifield: Did you ever see, maybe we talked about this on the podcast, that episode of That 70’s Show when they made pot brownies, sold them at a yard sale but the parents didn’t know and somehow they got ahold of them. They didn’t realize they were eating pot brownies or something, go watch an episode of That 70’s Show. One of the best shows ever. One of the best shows.
TIm Pickett: One of the best episodes.
Chris Holifield: The whole show is great. I love That 70’s Show.
Elikqitie: Yeah, that’s a good show.
TIm Pickett: There are some calculators online that will tell you how many grams your flower you weigh, what percentage of THC the flower is, and then how many cups or a quarter cup of oil and it’ll tell you how much is in that oil too. It can get really dialed in within reason, you’re going to be a little off probably always, especially the first few times.
Chris Holifield: Well and a lot of times it’s like how do you really know it’s really evenly distributed amongst all the brownies too.
TIm Pickett: Yeah.
Chris Holifield: Because maybe the squares over on the left side…[crosstalk 00:38:13]
TIm Pickett: They’re a little higher.
Chris Holifield: And I’m sure the same thing happens when you buy anything even.
TIm Pickett: Right, is it all mixed in all the way? I’m sure they try to get it very stable across every dose. But the other thing about cannabis is it absorbs a little differently depending on what you eat too. For you, maybe somebody who watches their diet, it might be a little more consistent. But for somebody like me, I eat widely different, from mac and cheese to salads, you know? Depending on what we’ve got going on. It might absorb, you might get 30% absorption, you might get 70% absorption depending on the day. The more consistent you can be, I guess the better the effects.
Elikqitie: Yeah, I notice when I take the gelatin at night, it’s usually 90 minutes and I know when it hits me because I all the sudden start feeling really tired. I’ll sit on my couch and be like, “Oh, I need to go to sleep.” But yeah, and then also it’s different if you take the gelatin, because you always want to eat some food when you take the gelatin at night, the gelatin cubes, but most the time I do intermittent fasting so I won’t eat between 8:00 and 8:00. But then every once in a while I’ll get really hungry and I’ll eat something after I eat the gelatinous cubes and I notice that definitely effects, depending on what I eat. I make sure I’m not eating something that’s not high in fat or protein because anything that’s high in fat is going to slow the absorption down of anything that you have.
If you want something in your system longer you want to take anything with high fat in it. Just like alcohol, the best thing to eat before you drink alcohol is avocado. What is it I’m trying to think of, when you mash avocado up?
TIm Pickett: Guacamole.
Elikqitie: Thank you. Guacamole, yeah.
Chris Holifield: Best food on the planet.
Elikqitie: If you eat three or four tablespoons of guacamole before you drink, you can still obviously you don’t want to drink and drive, but slows the absorption down of alcohol in your system because all of that fat, it just takes longer for your system to absorb it because you have to digest that fat first.
TIm Pickett: Yeah, good to know.
Chris Holifield: That’s seriously really good to know.
Elikqitie: Yes. Drink lots of water too. I always told my daughters, oh my gosh when my daughters went to college, I knew, it’s so funny because I’m one of those moms that’s like, “Okay, I know realistically they’re going to go to parties when they go to college,” so I told my older daughter when she first started to go to college. I’m like, “Look, here’s the deal, I know you’re going to drink when you go to parties. I know you’re going to go to parties, moms not stupid. It’s just a fact of life. When you drink, drink one glass of alcohol, make sure you always hold it in your hand. You don’t ever give it to anybody else. Drink a glass of water. Just milk it. Never, ever, ever let anybody give you too much.” There’s all these little scientific things that you can do to keep yourself running smoothly.
TIm Pickett: I find that that’s with cannabis too. You got to keep some ice water on hand.
Elikqitie: Ice water.
TIm Pickett: Yeah, ice water…[crosstalk 00:41:06]
Chris Holifield: Get that cotton mouth going.
TIm Pickett: … for some reason I find that when that hunger sensation comes on, to me it’s really thirst. I just don’t recognize it as thirst so when I drink I realize, “Oh wow, I was just thirsty.”
Chris Holifield: It keeps me from… I do the same thing, it keeps me from putting a bunch of food in my mouth.
TIm Pickett: Me too.
Elikqitie: That makes sense because I’ve been really thirsty lately and I couldn’t figure out why and that’s probably it. I’ll just start… I normally drink a lot of water, I keep water at my desk so as I write I’m drinking water but yeah, one morning I woke up and I’m like, “Man, I’m really thirsty,” I just downed two glasses of water. It’s okay, waters good for you.
Chris Holifield: How can listeners get ahold of you? Let’s talk about your podcast, I know they’re not cannabis related but let’s plug them just because they’re great podcasts. What are the podcasts you do?
Elikqitie: I have two podcasts out right now, one that just had it’s three year anniversary February 28th, I’m super excited.
Chris Holifield: Happy anniversary.
TIm Pickett: Congratulations.
Elikqitie: Thank you. It’s been oh my gosh, there’s always times when your podcasting you’re like, “Do I really still want to do this?”
TIm Pickett: Yeah, I know that one.
Elikqitie: Right. My one podcast is Travel Gluten Free and I talk about, since obviously I’m Celiac, I talk about how you can travel and be gluten free and not get sick. If you aren’t aware, if you don’t have Celiac Disease, if you do get gluten you can be sick from five to seven days, which will potentially wipe out your whole vacation. I always love to travel and when I became gluten free six years ago I figured out it was really really hard to travel and be safe and not get sick on your vacation. Nobody had a resource out there that says, “Here’s how you do it,” it was more like, “Hey, here’s 10 restaurants in Salt Lake that are great to eat at.”
It’s like, okay but if I’m not in Salt Lake, how do I find a restaurant? How do I cruise? How do I do a road trip and be gluten free? I created Travel Gluten Free podcast to help people learn the how, it’s kind of like teach people how to fish. Learning how to be gluten free and learning how to do it safely when you’re traveling.
Then my other podcast I have is called COVID Travel Update, and if you haven’t figured that out, I love to travel. I’m talking about all the latest things that are opening with COVID and I’m going to end that podcast actually this summer, yay. Super excited about that, and I’m turning it into the Business of Tourism and Travel where I’m going to talk about digital marketing for people that are in the travel and tourism industry. If you are someone that’s in the travel and tourism industry and you’re a professional and you want to learn about DIY digital marketing and how to get some great content going on your platform, definitely subscribe to COVID Travel Update because it’s just going to flip this summer into the Business of Travel and Tourism.
TIm Pickett: Very cool. Is it kind of exciting to have a project that’s going to kind of end?
Chris Holifield: You’re like, “Finally, there’s an end to this.”
TIm Pickett: You have a finish right? We go into business and we go into projects and we really don’t have an exit strategy. We have an entry strategy but we don’t. Congratulations on figuring out how to make something stop and turn into something new.
Elikqitie: Thanks. And I knew obviously with COVID because I knew it wasn’t going to be around forever, that I would have to change it into something but I figured out what I was going to change it into a couple months ago. I’m really excited about flipping it and I have other projects going on up in the air. But yeah, tune into either one of those podcasts, if anybody wants to get ahold of me, they can get ahold of me through Travelglutenfreepodcast.com or Travel Gluten Free Podcast on Instagram. If you want to find any of my stuff on social media channels, you just have to search the hashtag, TravelGFme. So it’s travel, G-F, the two letters, me. You can find all of my social media platforms under that hashtag.
Chris Holifield: Very cool.
TIm Pickett: That’s very cool.
Chris Holifield: Thank you for coming and doing the podcast.
Elikqitie: I am so excited that I’m here doing it again with you Chris. This is awesome.
Chris Holifield: Yeah, yeah. We had you on I am Salt Lake…
Elikqitie: I think it was 188.
Chris Holifield: Yeah, it was…[crosstalk 00:44:56]
Elikqitie: Many episodes ago.
Chris Holifield: It was many, many episodes again. I’m glad to record another podcast. You’ll have to go back and listen. If you want to listen to Elikqitie’s whole story, go listen to it on I am Salt Lake. Anyway, any other questions you want to ask her Tim?
TIm Pickett: No, this has been a good conversation. I’ve really enjoyed it.
Chris Holifield: Yeah, anything else you want to add?
Elikqitie: Tim, I just want to say thank you for having your clinic because it’s made my life a lot better.
TIm Pickett: You’re welcome. I’m very happy that people are finding their way to choosing something different with their own health and if cannabis is that tool for you, that’s amazing. We really just want to help people find that next step.
Chris Holifield: And utahmarijuana.org/podcast is where you can find all the episodes of the podcast and go to utahmarijuana.org, there’s tons of great articles on medical marijuana in Utah…[crosstalk 00:45:50]
TIm Pickett: There’s great articles, we are going to do… we’re working on a blog article and some information on micro dosing because it’s such an important topic, especially in the medical world where people don’t really want to get high all the time. We’re constantly publishing more stuff, more education in that way. Utahmarijuana.org. Listen to Chris’ other podcast I am Salt Lake.
Chris Holifield: Yeah, Iamsaltlake.com. Go check it out, go give it a listen.
Tim Pickett: All right everybody, stay safe out there.
