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by Russell Barth (Author)
Outlaw Patients is a raw, darkly funny, and deeply human memoir about life at the collision point of pain, protest, and prohibition. Medical cannabis patient and outspoken activist Russell Barth takes readers inside Canada's medical system-where compassion is rationed, bureaucracy is weaponized, and sick people are pushed to the margins for trying to survive.
Alongside his wife, artist Christine Lowe, Barth navigates a world where following doctor's orders can make you a criminal, where paperwork means more than people, and where the fight for basic medical autonomy becomes a years-long war. With sharp wit, unfiltered honesty, and a storyteller's instinct for the absurd, he reveals the contradictions and hypocrisies of a system that promises care but punishes the chronically ill for needing it.
Part political history, part personal diary, and part howl of resistance, Outlaw Patients exposes the roots of a "compassionate" program that often wasn't, the human cost of misguided drug policies, and the strange, sometimes hilarious, always painful journey of two people determined to remain free in a country that preferred they stayed quiet.
A memoir about survival, anger, love, and refusing to bow to systems that harm the very people they claim to help.
