FOUNDER'S STORY
Built from pain. Shaped by truth. Searching for common ground.
Stoned Moses began when a lifetime of bracing, enduring, and trying to do the right thing collided with an experience that forced me to question what I thought I knew.
Why Stoned Moses Exists
I grew up in Appalachia with deep respect for faith, family, hard work, and personal responsibility. I spent much of my life being what I call the straightest of straight arrows. I followed rules, respected authority, and tried not to disappoint anyone.
I built a career on leading people by example, showing that decency, genuineness and courage can be successful in the business world. I raised a family, trying to always show my children that you can do the right thing. I spent years as a strength athlete, doing things according to my beliefs. In every part of my life, I learned how to carry weight, absorb pressure, and keep putting one foot in front of the other. I became very good at guarding and bracing—physically, professionally, and emotionally.
That ability served me through challenging times. Over time, it also became a way of living. I tried to keep the peace by carrying more than my share, giving everyone else the benefit of the doubt when something felt wrong, and managing the pressure around me. Strength became the only thing that kept me going. Eventually, it became the only way I knew how to survive.
Stoned Moses did not begin as a joke or a product idea. It began in the space between survival and understanding—when real life forced me to look more deeply at pain, faith, leadership, judgment, the stories we inherit about other people...and cannabis.
When Pain Changed the Conversation
For me, cannabis did not make life's problems disappear. It helped me endure them.
In my early twenties, I began getting stiffer through my neck and mid-back. At first, it was tightness. Over time it became limitation, and by my forties it had become constant pain.
I eventually learned that I have DISH syndrome—Diffuse Idiopathic Skeletal Hyperostosis. My body produces extra bone where connective tissue attaches to the skeleton. Parts of my spine gradually fused, while the surrounding muscles kept fighting to realign and stabilize a structure that could no longer move normally.
Pain became a constant companion.
Because of my medical history - and the devastation opioids have caused across Appalachia - I did not see long-term opioid use as a sustainable path. I kept searching for ways to reduce pain, release tension, preserve movement, and remain present in my own life.
Medical cannabis kept appearing in that search. At 49, after a great deal of thought and research, I entered West Virginia’s medical cannabis program. It was not a decision I took lightly, and it was never about rebellion.
It helped ease pain and muscular guarding enough for me to stretch, release pressure from frozen joints in my spine, move, rest, and keep fighting for function. It became one tool within a much larger effort to regain lost ground.
I am not cured, and I do not pretend that cannabis is right for everyone. But I am still moving forward. I am gaining ground instead of simply surrendering it. I am healthier at 55 than I was at 45.
That matters to me. I resist simply letting disease take its course. I resist surrendering physical function and quality of life without a fight. I am stronger than the disease, and cannabis helps me battle what once seemed inevitable.
What Changed
The physical relief mattered. But something deeper also changed: my view on stigma.
I met thoughtful, responsible, decent people whose lives did not fit the warnings and labels that society had led me to believe were absolute certainties. Many were hurting. Many were trying to heal. Many were using cannabis not to disappear from life, but to remain engaged with it.
I began to understand how easily stigma turns incomplete stories into verdicts. Real lives are more complicated than the categories we use to judge them, and the simplistic buckets we try to place people in.
Once I saw that clearly in the cannabis conversation, I began seeing the same pattern everywhere—in politics, faith, business, family, and culture. We inherit conclusions before we understand experiences. We defend certainty before we have listened long enough to know what another person has actually lived. Walking a mile in the other person's shoes is still a valuable life lesson to keep in mind.
Stoned Moses grew from that tension: the space between unchallenged belief and lived understanding. It is not about rejecting everything we were taught. It is about having enough humility to examine it honestly.
Faith Is Not the Target
Stoned Moses is not anti-religion.
It is against using stigma as permission to stop listening, stop questioning, or stop treating other people with dignity.
People of faith are welcome here. People who are uncertain about faith are welcome. People who have been hurt by religious culture are welcome. The requirement is not shared theology. It is a willingness to enter the conversation with humility, honesty, and respect.
Faith should be strong enough to withstand honest questions, and compassion should be strong enough to make room for lives we do not fully understand.
I Resist
If I had to reduce my life to two words, they would be:
I resist.
- I resist pain becoming my identity.
- I resist fear becoming my guide.
- I resist cruelty disguised as strength.
- I resist the idea that being peaceful means being weak.
- I resist cultures that reward intimidation, humiliation, or holier-than-thou certainty without deep, meaningful reflection.
- I resist becoming what hurt me.
This is not rebellion for rebellion’s sake. It is not bitterness dressed up as wisdom. It is the decision to push back against anything that makes us smaller, harder, more fearful, or less human.
Say the Hard Things
The message matters. The intent matters. The energy matters. We are responsible for all three.
For much of my life, I avoided confrontation. I tried to preserve peace by absorbing pressure, carrying frustration internally, and managing the emotions of everyone around me.
But silence is not always peace.
A few months before my dad died, I told him that it had been the greatest honor of my life to be called his son. We never said "I love you" to each other. Not once. So, it was not an easy or comfortable thing to say. But it was needed. At his funeral, I spoke about the importance of saying the hard things, a lesson that I had thankfully learned before it was too late.
Those truths belong together: love and honesty are not enemies.
Sometimes love requires the courage to risk discomfort. Sometimes peace requires truth before healing can begin. Sometimes the words we avoid become the weight we carry.
Saying the hard things does not mean using honesty as a weapon. It means speaking truth with good intent, peaceful energy, and a sincere desire for a better outcome.
An Invitation
If any part of this story feels familiar—if you have carried too much, questioned an inherited assumption, fought to keep pain or fear from defining you, or believed that compassion and backbone belong together—then you are already part of the conversation.
None of us has a monopoly on wisdom. All of us have blind spots. We can examine what we believe, say the hard thing, listen long enough to understand, and still choose decency.
