TEXAS - Retired Army Major David Bass served in the U.S. Army for 25 years from 1985 to 2006. He’s a veteran of operations, Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom.
“When I returned to Fort Hood, I had these symptoms that I didn’t understand,” Bass said. “I was diagnosed by Army doctors with post-traumatic stress disorder, which was a condition that I had never thought I would be diagnosed with.
And so the doctors prescribed psychotropic medications for PTSD. And I was also prescribed opioids for chronic pain from some injuries I had on active duty. After I retired, I was being treated by the veterans administration in Temple. And after a few years, I got tired of those pills. I didn’t like the side effects. So I did some research for alternatives to the pills, and that’s when I discovered medical cannabis.”
In 2012, he told his psychiatrist at the VA that he wanted to stop taking the pills he had become addicted to. He said the psychiatrist told him he couldn’t, so he began researching cannabis on his own. He started using it illegally that year.
“By the end of 2012, I had stopped taking the pill,” Bass said. “I proved to myself that cannabis is effective medicine for PTSD. The symptoms of nightmares, sleeplessness, anger outbursts, paranoia, hypervigilance–medical cannabis took care of them.”
Bass joined a nonprofit focused on cannabis reform called Texas NORML in 2012. In 2013, he became the director of veteran outreach. Two years later, he founded Texas Veterans for Medical Marijuana in 2015. He’s been advocating for medical cannabis ever since.