Rick Simpson with cannabis plants in Nova Scotia, early 2000s.

Before RSO Was a Movement, It Was a Necessity

Before Rick Simpson became a symbol, he was just a man in pain.

There was no audience. No branding. No hashtags. No movement waiting to be born. There was a workplace injury in the late 1990s, followed by years of chronic pain, neurological symptoms, and a growing realization that the conventional medical path he was on was not giving him answers that felt complete.

Cannabis entered Rick Simpson’s life quietly, the way it does for many patients—out of need, not ideology. He wasn’t chasing rebellion or recreation. He was looking for relief.

That context matters, because history tends to flatten people into slogans. Rick Simpson was not trying to change cannabis culture. He was trying to get through his days.

The Plant Came First. The Oil Came Later.

By the early 2000s, Rick began growing cannabis plants in Nova Scotia. Not for potency contests. Not for profit. For function.

What caught his attention wasn’t just that cannabis helped—it was how it helped. Neurologically. Physically. Consistently. That curiosity led him toward extraction, not because concentrates were trendy (they weren’t), but because he wanted to understand whether the benefits he was experiencing could be intensified, preserved, or applied more deliberately.

Using extraction methods that were common knowledge at the time, Rick produced a thick cannabis oil. It wasn’t branded. It wasn’t named. It was simply oil, made because the plant had already proven itself useful.

This detail often gets lost: RSO was not invented to become a product. It was created to solve a problem.

2003: When Observation Became Documentation

In 2003, Rick Simpson was diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma on his skin. Faced with limited options and armed with firsthand experience of how cannabis affected his body, he made a decision that would later echo far beyond his own life.

He applied the oil topically to the affected areas. He covered them. And he paid attention.

What followed, according to Rick’s own documentation, was not subtle. Over a short period of time, the lesions resolved. Visibly. Measurably. In a way that didn’t leave much room for interpretation, at least from the perspective of someone watching their own body change.

This wasn’t a belief. It was an observation.

Telling the Doctors—and Hearing Nothing Back

Here’s a moment that doesn’t get enough attention.

Rick didn’t hide what he was doing. He told medical professionals directly that he was using cannabis oil—not alongside treatment, but as his primary intervention. This wasn’t a secret experiment conducted in the shadows. It was disclosed.

What followed was not collaboration. Not investigation. Not even outright opposition.

It was silence.

No follow-up studies. No curiosity. No structured attempt to understand what had occurred. Just distance.

That absence mattered. Because when systems fail to engage with lived experience, people don’t stop seeking answers—they just stop waiting for permission.

When an Oil Became a Movement

Rick Simpson didn’t set out to lead anything. But people talk. Especially when someone has run out of options.

As word spread, others came to him—patients with cancer, chronic illness, and conditions that conventional medicine had not resolved to their satisfaction. Rick did what many compassion-driven providers do when the system isn’t built for nuance: he shared what he had learned. He kept growing. He kept extracting. And he gave the oil away.

This is where RSO stopped being just oil.

It became shorthand for patient autonomy. For survival. For the uncomfortable truth that sometimes lived experience moves faster than policy, research funding, or institutional comfort.

RSO wasn’t folklore. It wasn’t magic. And it wasn’t born from marketing. It was born from a gap—between people in pain and systems that weren’t equipped, or willing, to meet them where they were.

Why This Story Still Matters

Rick Simpson’s story isn’t important because it offers simple answers. It’s important because it exposes a recurring pattern.

When institutions move slowly, people adapt. When permission doesn’t come, necessity still does. And when enough individuals share similar experiences, something larger takes shape—whether the system is ready for it or not.

RSO exists today not because it was approved, but because it was used. Not because it was promoted, but because it was needed.

And that’s a reminder worth holding onto.

Sometimes medicine doesn’t arrive with credentials or consensus. Sometimes it grows in a backyard in Nova Scotia, shaped by observation, urgency, and a refusal to stop asking questions when the answers feel incomplete.

That tension—between lived experience and official recognition—has never really gone away.

And history has a way of resurfacing the stories we try to simplify.