Narcolepsy by Javier B.

I am a 24-year-old man in Madrid, Spain, who has been treated for "soft" narcolepsy since I was 12.  My problem was that I started to fall asleep frequently just when I was doing something like watching TV or studying.  Also, I used to lose my muscle tone for tenths of a second occasionally when I laughed or when I made a sudden effort. They gave me imipramine (Tofranil) and methylphenidate, one of each every morning. It helped me but didn't control it completely.-- -I couldn't sleep more than three hours at night.

But when I started my career (agricultural engineering) I begin to smoke hash (morocco). Little by little I started to sleep well at night(about 6 hours) and the muscle tone loss disappeared. I've been 8 years treating myself smoking hash. I've tried to stop taking medicines but it didn�t work. I thing in my case hash is the best complement to the medicines I take. It doesn't affect my normal life and I can say now that I totally control my illness.

I�ve read your books and I�ve learnt a lot about cannabis. In the Spanish version of it you mention Tofranil, but I�d like to know your opinion of this specific matter.

I�m also creating a political party called "Vote Marihuana". Since more than three million people out of 37 million smoke almost every day, we want to see if we could have somebody in congress to fight for the legalization of cannabis. In three years we will see the results.

Anyway, thanks a lot for being how you are and for writing your books, because you changed my life for good.