Cannabis healed what medicine couldn’t

The prescription was sitting on my nightstand, unopened after the third attempt. Every time I took it, my body revolted; nausea so heavy it eclipsed the pain it was supposed to manage. I had just come out of surgery, I was supposed to be healing, and instead I was curled in a way that made the incision scream, wondering if the cure was worse than what it was curing. Someone I trusted said three words to me, “Try the cannabis,” and so I did. My rising came back.

I tell you that story not for sympathy but for context, because when I walked into Canna Crawl Hamilton on April 18^th at 2:00 pm, eight hours of cannabis culture, community, education, and something that felt unmistakably like belonging. I was walking in as someone whose body already knew what this room was saying.

The location was announced at noon, top secret until the day itself, a detail I have come to love because it mirrors the culture it serves. Cannabis has always lived in spaces that only the right people knew how to find. The event holds onto that ritual, even now, even in its elevated form with 80-plus exhibitors and medical doctors on the main stage; it tells you something true about who built this and why.

What I noticed first was the quality of conversation. Not performance. Not posturing. People talking to each other the way you talk when you have already decided the shame is someone else’s problem. A budtender explaining terpene profiles with the same quiet authority a sommelier brings to wine. A founder at the Evie’s Select Brand table describing their process the way a chef describes sourcing: with care, with specificity, with pride.

I picked up finds from: Christopher Ward, Mary Jane Cones, Evergreen Delivery, and Canna Clips, where I am, I confess, about to test my cannabis growing skills this season. Each vendor had a story behind what they were offering, and each story was, at its core, about the same thing: intentionality. Someone had decided that this plant deserved better than the shadows and had built something accordingly.

Speakers whose words I am still carrying:

Jay Jay O’Brien: Stage 4 cancer survivor, now Executive Director of EduCanNation. He turned the plant that helped save his life into a mission to educate others. I sat with that for a long time.

Dr. Nina M. Hicks, MD: a family medicine physician and medical cannabis consultant who integrates cannabis into patient care, inspired by personal loss. She is the kind of doctor I wish I had had on my nightstand night.

Sarah Anne Kane: a budtender turned educator, whose entire focus is harm reduction and confidence. She is proof that expertise does not always come with a medical degree, and that community knowledge has always been ahead of institutional permission.

Abi Roach: Cannabis pioneer, HOTBOX founder, and architect of the Higher Being Collective mentorship program. She is someone who built access before access was fashionable, and she has not forgotten what that cost.

Here is where I need to say something plainly, because it is the thing sitting underneath all the good energy of a day like this: cannabis culture is moving into elevated, curated, beautiful spaces. Sound baths. Educational panels. Gold sponsors. Medical professionals on stage. That is a genuine shift, and it deserves to be celebrated, especially by those of us who watched people in our communities lose years of their lives to criminalization for the very thing that is now being served in luxury lounges.

The tension I sat with after the crawl was warm, intentional, and genuinely community driven. As cannabis becomes an industry, as it attracts investment and polish and academic credibility, the question that must stay alive is: who gets to be in these rooms? Who built the knowledge base that these panels are drawing from? Are the people who were punished for what is now being celebrated being brought along, compensated, centered?

Canna Crawl Hamilton felt like a room where those questions were at least being held. The speakers were diverse, the founders were grassroots, and the community was not an afterthought. This is what it looks like when it is done with integrity. Now let us make sure it stays that way as the money gets bigger and the stages get taller.

My body healed without the prescription. I found my way to this plant through necessity, and I have never regretted the path. If you are curious and you have not yet been in a room like this one, a room that treats cannabis as culture, as medicine, as community, and as conversation, Canna Crawl is the entry point you have been waiting for. Show up. Stay curious. Ask the harder questions. The plant can take it.