c4bl3fl4m3:

churchofpoetry:

npr:

wired:

Marijuana
is going mainstream and unless you’re consistently smoking, your body
is something of a black box. Many new customers aren’t lifelong stoners,
and want an experience similar to, say, a Budweiser: a predictably intoxicating
experience. Problem is, cannabis is one hell of a puzzling drug.

Its many compounds can play with your
body’s chemistry in ways that scientists are just beginning to understand. But
the industry is getting closer to a reliable weed label, and in the meantime
learning some great science.

MORE. Nobody Knows How High You Are Right Now—It’s Really Hard to Measure

The science of weed, for all you late-night Tumblr-ers out there. -Ariel

There’s a (legal) recreational pot store a 5-minute walk from me.  The kids have told me they sell “edibles,” which are I guess what we used to call Alice B. Toklas brownies and such.  Last time I had any pot at all was the mid-’70s.  I’d rather have some of that vinho verde I like so much.  😀

I do wish there was accurate ways of labeling and knowing how strong weed is going to be and knowing what it’s going to do to you. Because I’ve had wonderful mellow highs in my life, and I’ve had extremely intense highs that were such bad trips that I had to go to the hospital (and I was still high 4 days later, no joke). I’d like to be able to have the former experience again a few more times without having to put myself at risk of the latter again.

Historical sidebar – I’d love to know how marijuana has changed over time. A lot of the 1930s and ‘forties pulp literature, etc, has people becoming manic and excitable while taking it – it’s probably just inaccurate anti-marijuana propaganda, but it also seems perfectly possible the plants grown at the time had a different chemical balance, or that people were mixing in other substances.