Last August, I fractured my wrist and tore some cartilage in my hand. The particularly shitty thing about this kind of injury is that it can take months to heal—in my case, the estimated recovery time is about a year—and there’s hardly anything I can do about it, other than physical therapy exercises, hefty doses of ibuprofen, and guided meditation podcasts (to help deal with the spontaneous rage that comes from constant discomfort). These days, the pain comes and goes, but when it’s here, it’s hellish; sometimes it shoots up my forearm like sparks off a live wire, and sometimes it’s dull, like there’s an evil little snake constricting my wrist. Having a desk job hasn’t helped, and the winter months have been especially brutal (I finally get why old people migrate to Florida). I’ve had some dark moments, like when the 127 Hours amputation scene didn’t seem like such a bad idea.
Over the first couple of months, I unconsciously began drinking more to help distract myself from how much it hurt. But I’m from a family of Irish alcoholics, so that seemed like a dangerous road to continue down. I was hesitant about becoming dependent on any substance—self-medicating makes me nervous—but needed some way to subdue the pain. I decided to try edibles, because I could closely monitor and control the dosage. Plus, a lot of the products on the cannabis market are specifically crafted for people with chronic pain. I knew what I wanted: something I could take right after work, since my wrist would be tired from typing all day, that would give me a light body high without making me too loopy or sleepy. These are five of the edibles I tried, ranked in order of how well they met these qualifications.