Does smoking marijuana affect you after back surgery?

Absolutely - it affects your ability to heal properly.

Depending on the procedure (if there's bone involved or if it was just a micro-diskectomy), any smoker, whether it be tobacco or grass, will take longer to heal. In many cases when a fusion is involved, a bone growth stimulator may be ordered by the surgeon for the patient to be worn for the 3 months minimum it takes a normal person (non-smoker) to fully fuse bone.

The reason behind this is that smoking reduces the amount of oxygen available to your bloodstream, and it's that O2 rich blood that is key to bone and tissue healing. The lower your oxygen content, the longer it will take to heal. So even if you had a procedure not involving bone, you're still going to take longer to heal if you keep smoking grass, as it actually reduces the O2 in your system even more than tobacco does.

If you're smoking due to increased pain and the stuff your doctor gave you isn't cutting it, document your pain with a pain diary (you can get one at Painfoundation.org, or just make one yourself - formal ones are better though) over time so that you can show evidence that you're having pain that your meds aren't dealing with. Without it, you can just look like someone wanting stronger pain drugs, and trust me, you don't want that label, whether true or not. Raven