No it was a stupid  comparison.
I never said it was good for you, I was stating the side effects are what makes the difference.

  You still don't get it, so I'll reword it one last time. I did not compare pot to poison oak or rattlesnakes. My point was this: some people (did I name you, Jerry? No, I did not) claim pot is safe because it is natural, but that statement makes no sense. Many things exist in nature which are toxic and harmful to people.

That aside, yes, I agree that many prescribed drugs can have nasty side effects. It's a complex situation.... I also heard recently about studies showing some bad side effects from long-term pot smoking.  Different people are affected in different ways..... there are lifelong cigarette smokers living into their nineties, but that doesn't mean tobacco is good for you either. Everything is a risk / reward tradeoff, and in the end it boils down to personal choice and responsibility.

Sorry for the sidetrack, Yeller. I truly hope you can lose a bunch of weight because that will probably do your knees the most good. And I hope you can get some much-needed pain relief. If I'm not mistaken, the active ingredient in Vicodin is hydrocordone, same as the Norco I use occasionally for RA. When used regularly, the body develops a resistance to it so it becomes much less effective.

A neighbor of mine is an Iraq war vet with a badly damaged leg. The only thing that relieved his pain was morphine but he hated the side effects (feeling, well.... drugged). He said they put him on a synthetic morphine that kills the pain but doesn't give him that  'druggy' feeling or impair him in any way. Maybe that's something worth looking into.