Mohanad Quzag started smoking cannabis to help overcome the pain and side effects of chemotherapy and surgery after contracting bone cancer.
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But debts started to mount as his use became heavy and he hatched a plot to break even.
Quzag, 23, was on Thursday jailed by the ACT Supreme Court for his role in a sophisticated grow house that cultivated almost $500,000 worth of cannabis.
The court heard the police had the Macgregor home under surveillance, but were forced to act when it flooded in November 2012.
Officers found 98 cannabis plants in the garage and four bedrooms.
The plants were cultivated via an irrigation system, liquid fertiliser, and a network of lamps, shades, and filters.
The plants in the garage were hidden behind a false wall and the electricity meter had been bypassed to power enterprise straight off the grid untraced.
Forensics found the offender's fingerprints on two pots and his DNA on latex gloves in the home.
Electronic bugs also captured Quzag talking about the cultivation.
Quzag pleaded guilty to one count of cultivating a traffickable quantity of cannabis, an offence that carries a 10-year maximum jail term.
He appeared for sentence in court on Thursday.
The court heard the offender had been diagnosed with bone cancer in 2010 and undergone leg surgery - from which he still suffers problems – and chemotherapy as part of his treatment.
He began smoking cannabis to manage his pain and the side effects of the therapy.
But he fell into heavy use and became the caretaker of the cannabis cultivation as a way to pay his mounting drug debts.
The court heard the offender's brother Nabel Quzag, Yazin al-Naqib, and Moustafa Negro also had minor involvement in the grow house.
While al-Naqib was handed a suspended jail sentence with community service and an 18-month good behaviour order.
The court heard he had no criminal history and good insight and awareness of his offending, but he had an anti-social peer network that included drug users.
A pre-sentence report rated the offender as a moderate risk of reoffending.
Chief Justice Helen Murrell sentenced the offender to 28-months jail, to be served in full-time custody for six months and then periodic detention for eight months.
The judge order the remaining 14 months be suspended upon his release on entering a good behaviour order.
