Hello everyone, I'm new here and wanted to give anyone interested a little more information about me and why I am here. My name is James, I am 24, and I currently live in Gainesville, Florida. I have struggled my whole life to find somewhere to fit in, and to be able to lead a happy and healthy life. However, as time goes on I seem to be drifting farther and farther from this goal and I have gotten to the point where unless I can find a way to get back on track soon, I may lose everything. My struggles date back to my childhood, growing up with poor relationships with my parents, particularly my dad, was hard and my diagnosis of severe depression at the age of 12, certainly didn't help. Having to live with depression is hard enough, but my family never seemed to understand what it means to have depression or even care enough to try to help. I played sports in high school which helped take my mind of of some of my at home issues, but being forced by my parents to transfer schools after my sophomore year and a steadily growing list of untreated injuries, my chances of continuing on to playing collegiate athletics completely disappeared. After high school, I went on to college and got a good job and became completely independent. It was at this point that I was finally able to explore life for myself, and while learning a lot about who I am as a person and discovering some of the things I want my future to hold, I also made a lot of mistakes which led to horrible drug and alcohol addictions. This led me to lose everything I had built for myself and I checked myself into rehab in May of 2012. Upon the completion of my stint in rehab, I was forced to move back with my parents, who had no consideration for what I had just been through. The first day that i was staying with them after rehab, everyone left for work leaving me home alone, when i went into the kitchen to make myself breakfast I found bottles of vodka,rum, and wine on the counter, an open bottle of painkillers on the table, and multiple cases of beer in the fridge, after my one request of them was to at least hide all of that so I wouldn't be faced with such temptation immediately after being released. After this instance, similar circumstances arose time and time again forcing me to live in my car for about two weeks before finding an apartment I could afford on my minimum wage salary. After getting the apartment I found roommates to make the cost not so bad on myself. A period of time went by before I was given an opportunity to take a training class that would get me a job making four times what i was currently making. I jumped on the opportunity but in the end it seems to have been a scam. About that same time my roommates decided that they wanted the place to themselves and kicked me out. This forced me to move to Florida and in with my grandparents. I lived with them for about four months before moving in to an apartment with coworkers. Things were good for a while and I almost had enough money saved to move to Colorado where I have always dreamed of living. Then, about two months ago, I woke up with no feeling from the waist down, no ability to move my legs except from the uncontrollable muscle spasms I was having. Though this "paralysis" was only temporary, the numbness was replaced with pain throughout my back. The temporary paralysis does come back on occasion, but the pain is constant, the doctors that I have been seeing are trying everything they can but still do not know what is causing everything or how to make it better. The only way I can get any relief from the pain in my back or from the stress of my life is through cannabis. I have been unable to work for the past two months and have used up all my resources to pay my bills. My family no longer contacts me and when I attempt to reach out to them, they find any possible way to make me feel like scum. I am desperately trying to find a solution to everything, and the only one I can come up with is to be able to move to Colorado (or another medicinal state) so that I can have the medicinal cannabis that I need to allow me to function so that I can work again. But to do that I really need to have a plan setup and at this point I don't know where to start. I've written a lot so I will stop there, but I am in search of people who may be able to give me advice or information that I could use, or even just people to talk to.
