A threatening war cry screams out, breaking the silence of the auditorium, “Mountain get out of my way!” Rap music fills the room, moving the young audience with its rhythm. The beat creates a bond between the group and this person on center stage. Minutes later gunshots fill the air. The music stops, as if shot itself. The loudest sound is the ringing in your ears; then come the cries of the scared starting to run. In a loud but calming voice the man on center stage, Montel Williams, reassures that it’s okay, they were only blanks. This short staged vignette was one way Montel would capture the attention of a young audience to speak about violence and drug abuse. In the late 1980s Montel traveled to thousands of schools across the country as a representative of the Navy. His War Against Drugs traveling show launched his talk-show career. Today he travels to Washington DC with a new battle cry to argue for the reclassification of marijuana, one of the drugs he once made his living discouraging among America’s youth.
Montel Williams has muliple sclerosis (MS). Those five words are changing the lives of millions of people. People with MS can have vastly different symptoms, but universal to all is that MS affects quality of life for them and the people closest to them. With his tenacious personality, Montel is waging war against multiple sclerosis. His fight includes funding research to end MS, increasing public awareness, and lobbying for legal access to marijuana for medical use.
Montel Williams has an impressive arsenal to wage this war. He began his professional career learning to fight in the US Marine Corps. He then entered the Naval Academy in Annapolis MD and graduated with a degree in Engineering and a minor in International Security Affairs. As a Naval officer Montel traveled the world on aircraft carriers and in submarines. He studied Chinese and Russian and specialized in cryptology. While deployed in the Indian Ocean he helped provide the intelligence allowing the U.S. to shoot down two Libyan fighters that made aggressive moves toward our aircraft. He has been decorated with the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal, two Navy Expeditionary Medals, two Humanitarian Service Medals, a Navy Achievement Medal, two Navy Commendation Medals and two Meritorious Service Awards. The most powerful weapon for Emmy Award-winner Montel Williams is his talk show, now in its 13th season. His compassion for his guests and his can-do attitude have produced a large and loyal following. With eight to ten guests per show, Montel has now hosted over 21,000 people. The Montel Williams Show is the only show of its kind to employ a full-time staff psychologist. The show’s After-Care Program has arranged for guests to attend psychological counseling sessions, weight-loss and eating disorder programs, and drug rehabilitation centers after they appear on the show. Because of the respect that Montel has garnered from his audience, when he talks about serious issues millions of people listen.
ABILITY Magazine’s editor-in-chief Chet Cooper and managing health editor Dr. Gillian Friedman met with Montel in his hotel suite during his recent trip to Los Angeles. Despite his casual attire and earrings, when Montel sat down at the table, he looked all the part of someone about to take charge of a corporate board meeting. With his well-conditioned physique and captivating presence, he doesn’t look like a person battling a sometimes debilitating illness. It is hard to imagine his daily regimen, which includes taking forty pills a day of various vitamins, herbs, and other supplements. The medication Montel takes to slow the progression of his MS must be administered daily by injection, and can cause fever, rash, bruising, anxiety, and shortness of breath, all of which he says he has experienced at some point in his treatment.
Surprisingly, Montel has found that snowboarding is perhaps his best therapy. When asked how it helps, he stood up with the palms of his hands still firmly planted on the table as if prepared to give a speech. “When I stand up I need first to hold on to something and think about the positioning of my legs. If I were to just start walking I would fall. I have to get my brain to find my legs and then I usually will take a test step, but I say something at that time to anyone possibly watching to distract them from what I’m really doing. Then I’ll find places to grab as I walk and talk, sometimes even walking backwards because I have more control that way. People have no idea that I’m doing this. But when I’m snowboarding and my feet are strapped in, my brain seems to have a direct connection to my legs. After snowboarding it’s night and day for my balance and walking. There’s a real physical change before I get up to the mountain and when I come down. The benefits last for days.”
In retrospect Montel and his doctors have figured out that he has probably been experiencing symptoms of MS off and on for more than twenty years, since his days at the Naval Academy. As Montel was about to graduate he developed a sudden blurring of vision in his left eye, along with twitching, weeping, and a scotoma (blind spot). A medical student today might immediately recognize Montel’s visual symptoms (called optic neuritis) as a potential initial presentation of MS (in fact, it is a frequent scenario presented on medical board exams). At the time Montel’s problem was a mystery. One doctor mentioned something to him about MS, but then dismissed the possibility because he was in such good physical shape. After a few months his vision spontaneously started to improve. Because symptoms come and go in MS, often the diagnosis is missed for many years. Each exacerbation is attributed to other factors, and when symptoms go away people stop worrying about them. For years Montel repeatedly lost vision in his left eye, but it would return after a couple of days. If he had pain, he attributed it to an overly strenuous workout. He once burned himself without noticing it, but didn’t consider that a nerve problem could be involved. It was not until he had a severe exacerbation in February of 1999 that the diagnosis became clear. While preparing to film an episode of Touched by an Angel in Salt Lake City, Utah, he began to experience a burning pain in his legs so extreme that he could barely walk. Afraid that disclosing his pain would ruin his opportunities for other guest appearances, he told no one except his wife and a physician friend in Salt Lake City. Through sheer will he made it through the shoot, and his friend referred him to a local neurologist. Montel’s feet and legs were so numb that when the neurologist drew blood poking him with needles, he still felt nothing. This doctor told him there was no question that he had MS.
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Montel says that when the doctor said “You have multiple sclerosis,” what he heard was “your life as you know it is over.” He saw the end of his bodybuilding and the beginning of physical deterioration. He envisioned the cancellation of his talk show. “Hollywood has only one image that’s acceptable, and it doesn’t include illness.” He thought about his name coming up for acting roles, and then someone in the room saying, “Wait a minute, isn’t he sick?” He says now that one of his motivations for talking about his MS is that until he came forward, “When people heard the words multiple sclerosis they immediately thought of Richard Pryor, unable to walk, frail and weak. Now they have another model – there’s also Montel.” But at the time of his diagnosis he assumed that since his symptoms had become so severe in that episode, he must be in the most progressive stage of the illness. He withdrew from everyone, including his family. He stopped going to the gym. He stopped eating, and lost 25 pounds in a month. In his new book, Montel writes, “for six weeks after my diagnosis, when I wasn’t on camera I was crying.” Various studies have estimated that 25 – 40% of individuals with MS experience major depression. Montel had become one of them.
When Chet Cooper asked Montel about his depression, his eyes swelled with tears and a flood of emotions filled him. “I wish someone had told me when I was diagnosed that part of this illness is depression. I didn’t know what was going on with the mood swings, the suicidal thoughts. I can wake up in the morning and burst into tears for no reason. Then in an hour I can be okay. One day I was reading in the Physician’s Desk Reference about the possible side effects of the medication I take for MS and it says right there, ‘depression and mood swings.’ It was like a light bulb coming on. I thought, ‘I wish someone had told me this.’ ”
Montel tried several antidepressants, but found that they didn’t help him. “When you’re depressed, your mind is going all the time with negative thoughts about yourself, what other people are going to think of you. For me antidepressants just speeded that up, made me think more, and I felt more like killing myself.” He is careful to say that this is his individual response, and that antidepressant medicines help many people, including his daughter, who has struggled with both depression and epilepsy. “For a while my daughter and I were on the same medication.” He now deals with the mood swings by “being open with those around me. Now when I’m getting close with someone, we sit down and have a discussion about my MS, so they’ll understand. At certain times of the day, it’s hard to be around me. For about an hour after I’ve given my shot, my system is irritated. It’s not a good time to try to touch me or to bring up a problem. Later on I can deal with it better.”
Montel talks candidly in his book about his two attempts to commit suicide, once by trying to stage a gun-cleaning accident, and once by jumping in front of a car on a busy street. One study that followed over 3,000 MS patients for 16 years found that suicide accounted for 15% of all deaths, twice the rate as in the general population. Montel says now he would tell others who feel suicidal to “talk to someone you’re close to about how you feel. Tell someone, ‘I’m having thoughts about hurting myself.’ When I was diagnosed I didn’t realize how important communication was. I kept it all to myself, and the people who loved me didn’t know how to help me.”
Montel did not initially intend to be a spokesperson for MS. For some time he kept his diagnosis a secret from his production staff, most of his friends, and even his parents and siblings. He held a press conference in 1999 announcing his diagnosis only after he received a call from a tabloid that had obtained a copy of one of his MRI scans (unlawfully, as privacy laws are supposed to protect medical records). The tabloid planned to run a story about his illness the following week and demanded a statement from him. He decided to pre-empt them with his own announcement. Since then he has stepped up to the plate several times as an advocate. He established The Montel Williams Foundation to support MS research. He has lobbied for more research directed at African-Americans with MS (the “typical” patient is a young, Caucasian woman). Montel discovered that there is no consensus about multiple aspects of MS treatment, including even an estimate of the number of Americans affected. In our country multiple decisions, from the amount of money spent on research for an illness to the years of patent protection pharmaceutical companies get for new drugs, are determined by the number of Americans thought to be affected. In his new book, Climbing Higher, Montel describes his increasing frustration when he contacted the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and could get no recent or verified estimates. Their official estimate was 250,000 individuals (a number which, he points out, makes MS a “rare” disease and qualifies pharmaceutical companies for special protection for drugs they develop). Several medical texts place the estimate at 350,000 – 400,000. Two recent national polls (the Gallup and Zogby polls) estimate 1 – 3 million Americans have received the diagnosis of MS. Montel now feels he has to question everything.
The first doctor to evaluate Montel told him he would have to stop his extensive exercise regimen, that it would be too stressful for his body. So he stopped for a few months, but then found that he was getting depressed. He talked to other doctors, and discovered the “seven-year rule” in MS: the course of the illness in the first seven years usually predicts the course during the next seven years. He figured out that he had probably been affected by MS for nearly twenty years, and he had exercised heavily during most of that period without ill effect. Lately he has discovered that certain types of exercise can help his motor skills. He has been told that when parts of the brain are injured, developing the non-injured areas can help compensate. Now the National Institute of Health is funding the development of a database to help physicians make recommendations for exercise to their patients with mobility limitations, confirming what Montel has discovered himself — that exercise is valuable for everyone. His 2001 fitness book, BodyChange, a New York Times bestseller, described how to develop a personal fitness program. “If you can only move two fingers, I can tell you how to exercise those two fingers to feel better.” In describing how he’s had to learn on his own how to live with his body, what helps him and what makes him feel worse, Montel explains, “Doctors who treat MS don’t have MS.”
Montel has referred to his announcement of his MS diagnosis in 1999 as “coming out” to the public about his illness. Climbing Higher takes personal disclosure several orders of magnitude deeper. In discussing his motivations for writing the book, Montel became tearful as he recounted a statement a woman with MS made to him. “She said, ‘You make it very hard for the rest of us. My husband says to me, if Montel can do that, why can’t you? He looks at you like you’re Superman.’ That just floored me. I never meant for that to happen. I have been trying to help people, not set up expectations that everyone should be like me. That’s one reason I felt I had to write this book, to let people know what I go through every day. I don’t look sick, but I struggle with pain 24 hours a day. I am no Superman.” He described writing the book as a cathartic therapy for him. “Larry Grobel and I would lock ourselves in a room for eight or nine hours at a time, and I didn’t know until we were doing it what would come out. The first time Larry asked me, ‘How does MS affect sex for you?’ I felt like punching him. But now that’s a whole chapter of the book. After this book, I can talk about anything.” “Okay then, now we’d like to ask you about your taxes,” Chet Cooper joked. Montel laughed, and asked, “does anyone know where I can find a tax accountant willing to declare more write-offs? My accountant doesn’t seem to think anything is deductible.”
One of the most controversial areas Montel discussed is his discovery that marijuana provides him more relief than any medication. He noted, “ most of time I ingest it, rather than smoking it. I can put it in almost anything and eat it.” Chet responded, “I thought the coffee tasted a little funny.” Montel laughed and then explained that he is not asking to legalize or even decriminalize marijuana for any purpose other than prescribed medical use. The federal government maintains five categories, or “schedules” for drugs that have addictive potential. Currently marijuana is classified as a Schedule I drug, in the same category with heroin, LSD, and PCP. This category is reserved for drugs without any legitimate medical use. Montel argues that marijuana should be reclassified as a Schedule II drug, similar to morphine, methadone, and amphetamines. Physicians are able to prescribe schedule II drugs to their patients when there is medical benefit. Because many schedule II drugs can be highly addictive, there are strict regulations for their prescription and use. In many states they require a special prescription form called a “triplicate,” which has three copies, one kept by the physician, one by the pharmacy, and the third by the state’s medical board or department of justice. It is unlawful for anyone to have access to a Schedule II drug other than through a doctor’s prescription, and there are strict penalties for selling or misusing these drugs. The number and dose of scheduled drug prescriptions each doctor writes is monitored by state medical boards.
Montel began using marijuana to help control his excruciating leg pain, spasms, and tremors after finding that the available prescription painkillers “didn’t touch my pain. They just knocked me out. I could take eight Oxycontin at a time, every few hours, and still my legs were on fire. I knew how addictive Oxycontin could be, and I didn’t want to go down that road. Plus, it just doesn’t work for me. My brain doesn’t have enough receptors for that group of drugs.” He finds that when he uses marijuana his pain goes “from a 6 or 7, on a scale of 1 to 10, to about a 2.” He uses it during the days or weeks when he gets an MS “flare,” or exacerbation of symptoms. Between flares he doesn’t use it, and does not have difficulty stopping it (in contrast to the withdrawal symptoms he would have if he stopped a painkiller like morphine or Oxycontin). In the 1990’s, researchers discovered that the brain has receptors for the active compound in marijuana, similar to the receptors for opiate drugs, which gave further validity to the theory that marijuana could have medical uses. Climbing Higher documents the opinions of a several physicians who recommend marijuana to some patients for treating pain, improving appetite, reducing digestive problems, and addressing several other symptoms of chronic illness. The book cites a 1991 Harvard study that found over 40% of cancer specialists had recommended that their patients break the law to get marijuana. When asked about the prescription drug Marinol, which is basically a synthetic form of marijuana’s active ingredient, Montel said that he had tried it but found it doesn’t work as well. He is now enrolled in a program established under California state law that dispenses marijuana for medical use, and he carries a card with him at all times identifying that he receives it by physician’s prescription. He has also become somewhat of an expert in how to extract the active chemicals efficiently. It is somewhat ironic to sit in a room listening to this man, who for many years traveled around the country trying to dissuade kids from using drugs, now describe the best way to cook up marijuana. But Montel is unapologetic to his critics. “I go to work every single day. I pay an immense amount of taxes in this country. I am immeasurably more valuable because of this treatment.”
Eric Schlosser, a correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly who detailed the history of U.S. marijuana policy in his 2003 book Reefer Madness, quoted DEA head Asa Hutchinson’s argument that medical marijuana use would “send the wrong message to children.”
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When asked if he is afraid he will be targeted because of his outspoken views about medical marijuana use, and his disclosure of his own use, he recounted a recent run-in with the law at the Detroit airport. His luggage was searched because of the syringes he carries to administer his MS medications, and the officer discovered a (clean, unused) pipe and a separate container with what Montel describes as an “untestable amount” of marijuana residue. Despite his enrollment in a legal marijuana program, he still received a citation and paid a fine on the spot. He was told that no court appearance would be necessary, but he has subsequently discovered that a court date was scheduled without his knowledge. When he didn’t appear, a warrant was issued for his arrest in Michigan, and his attorneys are currently sorting out the remainder of his legal obligations. Montel acknowledges “I know I could be stopped and searched at any time. I’ve got to be careful what I have with me, especially when I travel.” In fact, the programs in California that dispense marijuana for medical use under California law were raided by federal DEA agents in 2002, and several people were arrested. An advisor to one program was convicted of a marijuana offense carrying five to eighty-five years in prison. Montel vowed that when he becomes president (Chet Cooper agreed to be vice president) the system will run more logically.
