Unless you’ve walked in the shoes of a parent with an autistic child, it’s hard to imagine what prompted one couple’s controversial decision to medicate their son with marijuana.
According to an article in the Huffington Post, Alex Echols, an 11-year-old severely autistic boy from Oregon, suffers from self-injurious behaviour that saw him “slamming his head into walls and slapping his face until it bleeds.”
Needless to say, since there is no cure for autism, the boy’s parents tried every means of therapy and medication on the market. To no avail.
"We tried some swimming for a while,” said his mom, “we had a special sensory room set up in the garage, and we did some stuff at home and at school with communication techniques to try and help him tell us what he needed before he got into a rage fit... We tried a lot of stuff before we considered the group home."
When Alex turned eight, he was moved into a state-funded group home. In 2009 she read some literature about medical marijuana for children with autism, and decided to go that route.
For the first time Alex’s world was transformed, radically. As his father states in his blog, he “explored his world with his hands, something he was very rarely able to do … His hands were the enemy up to this point ... But on those few truly magical days when we got the dosing just right, he played. He used his hands to explore. He looked at us and smiled."
But it’s not a purely happy ending for Alex. In a knot of red tape, it seems the group home cannot administer the marijuana to the boy. The family is appealing to the government to change the legislation so Alex can get the only drug that has worked for him so far.
Medical treatment of children with marijuana is still laced with controversy, as the long-term effects of the drug on youngster are unknown. However, it’s a risk the Echols and other families are clearly willing to take.
"For us, the long-term side effects that are unknown for something that can't kill him are a lot better than the long-term side effects of him beating himself bloody," Echols told a local TV station, KPTV.
Should cannabis be prescribed as a treatment for kids engaging in self-injurious behaviours?
