Life as a marijuana refugee

[Separation]

I'll start by telling yall a bit about myself. I did 20 physically gruelling years in the military. I am %100 disabled due to injuries. I currently live with my family in Tn. However, for the last 3 months my wife, son and I had to go to California to help out with my wife's elderly mother who ended up in the hospital.

While out there, my wife who is my rock and advocate, suggested that I try marijuana since it's completely legal in California. To say that there ever is a magic button in life that fixes something, this was it. My life after my injuries and retirement left me in 180 degrees of where I was before. I was the unit fitness coordinator, in good health, very active physically both in work and at home. I ended up in a major depression, suffer from PTSD, and could now barely walk to my mailbox due to the amount of chronic pain that I am in.

It was an immediate effect, almost to the point of me questioning if it was real because I was high. My pain relief was not %100 but it was good enough that I was not in constant pain. This had immediate effect on my psyche as well. My wife said she was seeing a person who she has not seen in almost 5 years.

While in California I had to fly home for a pain management appointment. Little to my surprise, the pain clinic I went to called Comprehensive Pain Management CEO was under investigation for taking kickbacks by Medicaid. They told me that their doors were closing in 10 days and I would need to find another Dr. Imagine my horror! I live in a small rural town and there just arent pain management clinics around here.

So I fly back to California and go see a new pain management Dr. I tell him that an electrical stimulator implant that CPS put in me was not working. I told the new Dr. that I had complained of this to CPS and they did nothing. He immediately sends me to go for an xray (because the implant CPS put in me is not MRI compatible, even though they had one that they could have put in me that was). Imagine to mysurprise, my new Dr tells me that the leads for the stimulator are not where they should be! It was like 8 months of me saying it wasnt working to my old Dr just been vindicated.

I told my new pain Dr (in California) that I have tried marijuana and how well it reacted to it. I also told him that my end goal is to get off of the multitude of pain meds that I'm currently on. He agreed with my goal.

So the 3 months of us taking care of my wife's mother is over. We have returned to Tn, but have put our house up for sale. The medical care here is nowhere near what I need, or for my son that is a special needs child for that matter. I now have to choose to either take a risk in getting caught buying weed and thereby losing all of my VA benefits, or go back to the way i was.

Since i would rather eat a bullet then go back to how i was before. I need help! I dont want money or a GoFundMe. What I need is advice. I want to write a book but have no experiance in doing so (other than the wall of text here). I'd like to know if there are any resources that I should be tapping into. Any other people who have had to go through this for morale support etc..

There are a lot of moving parts going on.