I too have severe pains in my back caused from sergery I had in ninth grade, where I had a valve( shunt) insirted into my lower spine to drain spinal fluid after 9 spinal taps! They say they can't do anythng for me and since I have no medical insurance I half experimented with many different drugs to ease pain.. I would have to agree that when I used opiates along side with marijuana I was able to reduce the amount of opiates I had to take.. But with most drugs there was addiction with the opiates, so I ended up going back to just marijuana.. I can deal with just having a bad attitude when I don't have the ganja as apposed to sweats, and vomiting..