Dr. David Udy: Las Vegas’ First Responders Should Have Option to Treat PTSD with Cannabis

Police, firefighters and paramedics could medicate for 60 days before returning to work, he suggests

After the Route 91 Harvest terrorist attack took place in Las Vegas, I was contacted by Dr. David Udy, who was adamant about wanting to spread his message of cannabis as a PTSD treatment on a larger platform. For those that don’t know, Udy made headlines a few years back by getting the state of Nevada to recognize Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as one of the qualifying conditions for medical cannabis, by piling hundreds of pages of research on the desks of state legislators. After many phone calls, Udy’s persistence paid off and the law was written to include PTSD.

Enabled in a wheelchair, Udy himself is a PTSD survivor, having spent time unloading medevac helicopters during the Vietnam war, where he was also exposed to Agent Orange. In his later years, Udy spent time as the Health Services Administrator in Southern Nevada for three of the area’s prisons, which in itself was a hotbed for traumatic experiences, for both himself and the inmates, he says.

In the wake of the tragedy, Udy presents a unique position: police, firefighters, first responders, and other employees that suffer through these experiences should have the right to medicate with cannabis temporarily after the event. Udy bases his reasoning on the fact that studies have shown that the sooner one treats PTSD with cannabis, the better chance they have of circumventing long-term, negative effects on the brain. I visited Udy in his home to speak with him about his personal journey and listen to his theory.

I wonder if you can first tell me about your experience in Vietnam and the post traumatic stress disorder that followed?

Dr. David Udy: I actually signed up to enter the service when I was still in high school, because that’s when the clock started ticking. I had six months in by the time I graduated and I shipped out about eight days later. When I got to Vietnam, I was in kind of a unique situation because I was trained to do some stuff with computers and automated logistics. The situation in Vietnam at the time was that we were the first people to actually take mainframe computers out into the war zones… The medevac helicopters would start flying in, and we would be unloading them from the war zone that we were supplying logistics to.

That’s when I had my first experience with PTSD, because I was assigned the duty of unloading these medevac helicopters as they were coming in. The pressure came from just reaching out under those flying propeller blades and trying to get these desperately injured individuals and then pack them away in ambulances as quick as we could. I began to realize, at that point, that first, it was having an effect on my mental health. Secondly, because of the circumstances of being in Vietnam, I began to realize that I had some relief by consuming cannabis, shortly after I had those intense experiences of unloading those medevac helicopters. I couldn’t wait to start smoking some pot.

I didn’t realize until many years later that that was basically the most preventative thing I could have done for myself at that time. Through that, I’ve had many other experiences related to PTSD, but it wasn’t until five or six years ago when I wrote a paper to get PTSD approved as one of the qualifying conditions here in Nevada for the medical marijuana program. At that time, I had identified some research that the Israeli government was doing. They found the connection between the time of the traumatic experience and the consumption of cannabis is directly related to its effect several years down the road. I’ve been preaching about that issue indirectly for some time. Recently, with some of the experiences here in Las Vegas, I have reintroduced myself into that particular fact as it relates to the use of cannabis generally.

Tell me about your mission to get PTSD recognized on the list of conditions that qualify for medical marijuana.

Initially, my first exposure of that political issue was when I went to Carson City to try to do some personal lobbying to promote the issue of medical marijuana and get some views on the fact that, at that point, there were only a handful of conditions that would allow people to get into that program. I felt that PTSD should be one of them and there was plenty of research to substantiate that view. That was my first effort, but that didn’t work.

Then I took it on personally and reached out to a few of the people who were attempting to move forward to getting dispensaries and other clinics set up. I was hoping to make it a group effort. But I wasn’t able to get the interest that we needed at the time. Out of my frustration, I started putting together a research packet. I think it was about 250 pages of stuff that I dumped on the state medical director and then I repeatedly contacted her every week to two weeks, bringing up new information that was being released at the time. Finally, she did relent, and put that on the list of conditions. Ironically, we just went legal, so a lot of that wasn’t necessary.

On a personal level, do you still use cannabis to treat PTSD?

Yes, absolutely I do. Most recently, about two years ago, I was the Health Services Administrator for Southern Nevada. So I had the North Las Vegas jail, the Henderson Detention Center, and the Las Vegas City jail. So I was putting to bed about 2500 inmates every night for about three-and-half-years. So I constantly push myself on this PTSD issue experimentally to find out where I am at and to learn more about it. That was such a traumatic experience, it finally just broke me completely.

I never consumed at work, but I was basically on the job 24 hours a day there. When I was finished at the end of the day, I just literally could not wait to get home to consume again. When I got into the research and looked at it, I realized that was probably the best preventative medicine move I could make at the time. The pressure of that and dealing with it for a long period of time without some form of relief is detrimental initially and can be prolonged.

It’s hard for people to understand when I start talking about this, so I generally try to re-frame it. If you can, think about it in terms of a pleasurable experience, rather than a miserable experience. So imagine going to a concert, having a great time, and having great memories after that. But I maintain — and everyone is different — but if you do consume some cannabis before you go to an event like that, you likely will have a more pleasurable experience. The bass will sound deeper, the melodies will sound stronger, and it will be kind of a more enlightening environment for you. Because of the effect of cannabis and the classic short-term memory loss stuff, I maintain that while those feelings were vivid at the time and the experience was magnified because of the cannabis, over time, the memories kind of fade, but you certainly remember it as a great experience, but it becomes less and less vivid over time, because of your consumption of cannabis.

So you reverse that and turn it to a traumatic experience, like what just happened here in Las Vegas. I know that if I consumed cannabis before or at the event, over time, my memory is going to less focused on that experience that I had at that time. The time element is the paradoxical thing. People need to understand that if I am using that to make myself feel good and feel happy in a situation, can’t I also use that same kind of time modality to diminish the pain I feel 2, 3, and 5 years after an event like that.

We need to understand that, and in particular, bless their hearts, those people that were first responders to something like that. After an event like that, they need to have some opportunity for relief. I maintain that there should be able to apply for a 60-day moratorium, where there is no drug testing, where they can medicate for 30 days and clean up and get right back to work full speed, with everything moderated to the point that it can be.

I bring these issues up because of the alternatives. I am with the Veteran’s Administration and I love them because they support me greatly. But honestly, if you just roll your windows down in your car, you can just drive by the clinic, and they’ll throw the pills right into the backseat of your car. The opioid crisis is an example of how we’ve just rushed to the manufacturers that keep pounding these medications through the TV screen at us, that are fundamentally and largely detrimental to our health and certainly so if they are abused. There needs to be recognition here that people in Eastern cultures have moderated their medication in totally different ways and have survived fine for thousands of years. But now we seem to be on a literal crash course with our own medications, where we are just forcing ourselves into the most deplorable alternatives. We aren’t putting any resources or any political efforts or lobbying efforts to try and magnify the situation to bring people more in step with what is healthier for them, and not just what is healthy for the bank accounts of the pharmaceutical companies.

How much of the fact that cannabis is still classified as a Schedule 1 narcotic and remains federally illegal do you feel is business and politics? It seems like they aren’t even interested in researching it.

I think it is the forces that are not united on what cannabis means to them. Some of them like it for its medical properties, some of them like the intoxication, some of them like other components of it. But they are not energized enough to make one solid force. These other organizations that oppose cannabis, they can do that because they have lobbyists. So it’s definitely a process that is adamant about something, but not organized, versus being energized by money and consequently being extremely organized. I think that’s the conflict and I don’t know how to get through that other than through more discussion. It’s like the advocacy got us to a point that we can now literally go out 24 hours a day and buy pot, but we need to do more than that.

How do you most people with PTSD treat the condition?

Invariably, it goes into some kind of substance problems. The actual psychological intervention, we’re really lacking in this country. I don’t think we’ve done enough to identify people that want to do dangerous things.

What are the other ways that people can use cannabis to treat themselves?

When you get into the concept and the actual chemistry of cannabis and start to look at the effects the different varieties have, there are several strains that I like, if I am needing sleep, there are several that are great if I want to work or write. I view it like different kind of medications. Instead of taking different pills, I’m taking a different kind of medication for whatever my need is. I’d like to see people get into horticultural therapy and start growing their own medication for themselves and their needs, whether that’s rose hips, ginger root, or cannabis.

What is your goal for 2017 and beyond?

My goal would be to try to move forward to see if I could get through to these police agencies and first responders and make some effort to getting some allocation for them. They are doing so much for us. I would try to push that forward and make sure that after they have some of these terrible experiences they could get a break. I don’t care about right, left, liberal, conservative. That’s not the issue. It’s a public health issue.

Dr. David Udy will join Nevada State Senator Tick Segerblom, Dr. Sue Sisley, Reef Dispensaries CEO Matthew Morgan, and Silent Savasana founder Dray Gardner at the Alternative Treatments for PTSD panel in Las Vegas, NV happening at 7PM on November 1st, 2017 at UNLV’s Greenspun Hall.