from Sandra McNeill of CBS Detroit,

It’s been a long, troubled and well-documented road for former Detroit Red Wing Darren McCarty. Failed marriages. Money troubles. Most of all, always there — the problem with alcohol.

McCarty said that’s all over now and it’s all due to medical marijuana.

“The so-called experts say that it’s like switching decks on the Titanic,” McCarty said. “Hell no, it’s not. Anybody who knows me knows the grip alcohol had on my life. To be able to be free of that, I would do anything for it. And I’ve gotten there.”

McCarty takes a 500 milligram tablet of CBD in the morning. That’s a form of the drug that has no THC, the chemical that creates the marijuana high. The pills control the pain he has from his playing years and what he calls “self-inflicted wounds. I fell down a lot.”

“It’s not fun walking around with a knife in your back all day,” McCarty said. “So in the morning, when you can put some syrup or something in your coffee, it loosens you up…and [you can be] on your way,” McCarty said.

At night, he smokes marijuana to treat his insomnia.

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