Fat Nugs Magazine Vol 9 - September Edition

Photo by Ahmed Zayan

01

Letter From the Editor

D

ear Treasured Reader,

Welcome to the third issue of Fat Nugs Magazine, which is the first issue that I have personally had the honor of editing. I have so much gratitude for this magazine’s creator, Dustin Hoxworth, who invited me to join him in producing this plant-powered periodical. What a journey it’s been to not only accept the position of Editor In Chief, but to also meet so many radical people who have a serious passion for plant medicine. The energy our writers bring to this publication is like nothing I’ve ever experienced in my many years of editorial engagement, and their storytelling skills are out of this world.

As the articles and pitches for this issue began rolling in, I noticed a theme emerging. It was one of trips, travel, revelations, and evolutions. Cannabis has taught me to follow the signs and intuit every decision I make. The message was strong this time, and so Dustin and I concurred - this third issue was meant to be centered on psychedelics, journeys, and transformation.

While cannabis is an integral part of our lives here at Fat Nugs (check out the cannabis-infused caramel turtles recipe on page 15, the Ganjier strain reviews on page 24, and the Legacy Spotlight on page 30), we also have a healthy dose of admiration for psychedelics. Cannabis is a psychedelic in her own right - a truth that is touched upon by Scarlet Weaver in her personal cannabis story, which begins on page 46. She describes one of the most important aspects of cannabis use, which is that it helps us to become more receptive to the experience of living so that we can enjoy life more fully and grow with confidence.

This approach to the human experience often leads people toward next-level plant medicine, such as magic mushrooms, simply because they crave to know themselves on an even deeper level. Our writer, Rian Kochel, shares with us his revelatory psilocybin experience in the article titled “Magic Lives in Truth'' on page 36, while Natalie Goldberg recounts her epicly spiritual Fourth of July mushroom trip in “Sandra,” which starts on page 42.

Mushrooms aren’t the only entity with psychedelic powers.

Resident plant expert Mike Robinson writes about his night with peyote and a fallen tree on page 18, while I explore the psychedelic potential of the birth process on page 7. After all, we can’t forget that we as humans are creations of nature too, and that our bodies are fully capable of creating psychedelic medicine from within. DMT, anyone?

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History, however, has not been so friendly to psychedelics or those who love them. In the article titled “Joe Friday vs. The ‘60s,” which begins on page 22, Dan Isenstein explores some of the pop-cultural moves made via the program Dragnet so as to misrepresent the realities surrounding LSD use in the 1960s.

Also addressed is the DEA’s response to MDMA synthesizers Ann and Alexander Shulgin in Nigel Despinasse’s article, “Remembering Ann Shulgin,” the matriarch of psychedelic therapy, on page 28.

We are thankfully now living at a time when a plant medicine renaissance is once again posing a serious threat to egos everywhere. Those of us who have traversed the realms of psychedelia understand that we are meant to traverse those realms. Keeping them hidden away only wreaks havoc on society because we forget just how connected we are to each other, to nature, and to the universe in its entirety. I hope that tuning into this issue of Fat Nugs enables you to turn on to the truth about what it means to trip out, whether the assist is provided by plants or your very own hormones.

Peace, love, and plants:

Kaitlin Coghill Editor In Chief

03

Psychedelics and Self Improvement

By Rob Sanchez

P

sychedelics are here to stay as cities and states explore alternative litigation. Colorado is pushing to decriminalize now, with measures around trip-sitting and elderly care included. There are a lot of “psychedelic” substances; we’re going to focus specifically on the natural occurrences, like psilocybin and LSD, in this article.

Decriminalization naturally brings up many questions about using psychedelics safely and maturing as a psychonaut.

Psychedelics can expand consciousness and allow you to investigate aspects of your ego that you may be unwilling to normally analyze and critique. This then leads to insights regarding yourself and society; some may be funny while others can be utterly profound. The trip is fuelled by your own experiences and intentions. Any visions or altered thoughts are reflections of your own subconscious mind, nothing else.

The goal of a psychedelic trip isn’t to live in a world of psychedelia or to escape reality. The goal is to gain the mental and spiritual reinforcement you need to forge onward in life.

Psychedelics can be used in this way as a tool for self improvement and acceptance, but how can one jump into this kaleidoscopic pool without a lifejacket? Start slow, man. For real - there’s a time and a place for eating a handful of shrooms and three tabs of L, but that is far from the recommended approach.

Please be careful with your own psyche and use caution. Start alone or with a single trip-sitter and find that “threshold dose” for you. Start very small, using a scale that can measure down to the milligram, so you know what you're ingesting and can properly judge the experience. This allows you to develop an internal barometer to gauge the depths of a trip.

In other words, you’ll be able to ride the waves much easier if you start in the tidepool.

Have shit pulled together. This is a big one. Get your house cleaned, clothes put away, and any pressing work or tasks should be handled so you can relax on your trip and not have to worry about a thing. Get all of your work email done and move any distractions from your planned space. This extends into personal life. Get your relationships sorted and make sure there are not hard feelings or unresolved issues. They can arise mid-trip and throw you for a journey, so it’s best to address those things as much as you can. That being said, sometimes handling a

Photo Courtesy of Andrew Ridley

It’s not something that one should quickly jump into; there’s a certain mental and physical preparation, as well as proper research, that can really pave the road for you. Psychedelics offer a wonderful chance to grow as an individual and to improve your way of being. This won’t happen from going to a festival and partying with your friends, although that, of course, has its own merits. The real work with psychedelics is in your mind and in the integration after the trip.

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particularly hard issue via a trip can in fact be helpful, which is why we’re seeing a push for both therapeutic and recreational use.

Plan an integration period. After your trip, you need to wind down and reflect on the experience, because once the experience passes, the insights are what remains. For example, if you’re tripping on Saturday, make sure Sunday is laid back so you can work on yourself and get things back in sync. It’s not advised to trip the night before work or anything major. This time is valuable and should be used to relax, be with loved ones, and consider the experience in its entirety. It can help to write

things down or record your thoughts. At the very least, think to

Photo Courtesy of Pure Julia

yourself, “What are three things I’ll work on now?”

Meditate daily. This is much easier said than done, seriously. I have struggled to maintain a consistent practice, even with just 10 minutes a day. The mind can be a beast to tame. Being able to turn your mind into that temple of calmness and reflective thought that comes with meditation will prepare you for moments of anxiety or doubt within psychedelic experiences that have the potential to spiral. Remember, if this happens, unclench your hands and body, breath deeply and slowly. Being able to return to your meditative space can be a safe haven at times.

Be positive. As obvious as this sounds, make sure to be in a good mood when embarking on a trip and when looking back on one.

Things can get weird, but it’s okay! You’re here to tell the story and to handle whatever your mind may throw at you. I’d highly recommend the book Be Here Now by Ram Dass as an introduction to this mindset of positivity and awareness.

With these quick tips, I hope that you’ll consider psychedelic experiences with a little more reverence going forward. They can be a lens to look closer, or an eraser to start again. Please don’t take any of this as medical advice. Do your research, talk to your doctors, consult the tarot cards and all that jazz first. The conversation on the therapeutic and safe use of psychedelics is ongoing and has really only just begun as these tools move into the zeitgeist.

“If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are

simply

instruments,

like

microscopes,

telescopes,

and

telephones. The biologist does not sit with his eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen.”

- Alan Watts

Rob Sancez is a Certified Ganjier and the owner of Apartment 113 Cannabis Connoisseurship & Consulting. He has a lifetime of cannabis experience, having started as a cultivator and hashmaker in Denver's medical days. He now works as a product manager and agile coach for BLAZE Seed-To-Sale.

Apartment113.com

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Artwork by Cynthia Meyers

BIRTH: The Psychedelic Trip of a Lifetime

By Kaitlin Coghill

B

efore becoming the editor of Fat ugs Magazine, I worked as a birthkeeper and postpartum care provider for nearly a decade. I still do this work for my ommunity, because it has become undeniable to me that birth and motherhood have innumerable characteristics in common with plant medicines and the shifts they invoke. From the fact that both mind-altering plants and mind-altering birth are burdened by illogical rules and regulations, to the truth that birthing and tripping in captivity amongst strangers is a seriously bad idea; the two worlds are really one, and it’s time to restructure our lives accordingly.

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My perspective comes from the knowing that birth itself is a psychedelic trip meant to catalyze families into a paradigm of love, connection, and oneness with the universe, just like mushrooms do. Allow me to explain this through the lens of story and intuitive knowing.

Birth is the Medicine

Sounds like a pretty bad trip, yeah?

We are now in the Age of Aquarius. Secrets are being shared, truths are being revealed, and we are moving toward a new way of being human. This new way, which is really the old way, which is really the eternal way, centers nature and all of her gifts. Many of us have realized, with the assistance of plant medicine especially, that we are connected to nature; we are nature; and we are meant to live embodied lives in congruence with our natural surroundings.

"Trust. Let go. Be open." - Bill Richards (Clinical Psychologist/ Psychedelic Researcher), and Every Birthkeeper That Ever Was

This has led to a modern-day renaissance akin to that of the 1960s and ‘70s, a time during which psychedelics and natural birth were weaving themselves into the fabric of society in such a way that governments and medical complexes everywhere were feeling really fucking threatened. We’ve all likely heard of Timothy Leary, but the story of Stephen Gaskin, professor of creative writing and semantics turned psychedelic thought leader, and his wife, Ina May Gaskin, self-taught independent midwife, speaks to the deeper nuances of this time beautifully.

Ina May is well known in the birth world for co-founding The Farm and writing the books Spiritual Midwifery and Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth, both of which contain powerfully psychedelic birth stories. Along with a crew of other self-taught midwives, Ina May witnessed and supported the births of 11 babies in a bus caravan for the Astral Continental Congress speaking tour her husband was leading in the interest of calling in a spiritual and social revolution.

I gave birth to my third daughter, freely and without the presence of anyone but my husband, on my bedroom floor. I retrieved her from the depths of my soul, where hers was entangled with mine, a depth I had never before accessed. She led me there. I could feel her tiny legs propelling her deeper and deeper into the portal, asking me to assist with the expulsion she so desperately wanted. She was ready to traverse the realms and breathe the air, as opposed to the waters of her own private ocean. She was born wet, slippery, pink and wide-eyed into her father’s hands. She and I couldn’t take our eyes off of each other as we processed, together, the most holy of experiences available to humankind.

This is not the same way I describe my first two daughters’ births. They were mechanical, medicated, scripted, manipulated, violated, and stolen from me. The epidurals numbed me. The doctors rushed me. I felt no tiny feet pushing against my ribs in an effort to move toward the light. I felt no depth. I felt nothing at all. My mind was preoccupied with texting people updates.

Hands went inside of me, measured me, stretched me, emptied bags of my urine, inserted needles and took my blood.

Photo Courtesy of Kelsey Perry

In the year 2022, we still want to free our minds, our plants, our bodies, and more. So long as we have access to people who know people, the concept of legalization is really nothing more than a small hurdle that many of us simply walk around to get to our destination.

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We grow our own mushrooms, we synthesize our own LSD, and we birth our own babies.

Yes, we birth our own babies. Doctors don’t “deliver” them and real midwives don’t “help them out.” Sovereign mothers birth their own babies with their own bodies thanks to a divine synthesis of hormones and internal desires made real.

When allowed to do so freely, without observation, interjection, or shaming, the process of bringing our babies earthside unfolds as the most epic of all psychedelic trips. This is the way birth was designed to be.

When birthing, a mother’s hormones are released in such a way that she is able to enter an altered state. Oxytocin, the “love” hormone that is also released during love-making and other potent moments of bonding, flows freely, creating what are known as contractions or surges. The beta-endorphins soon kick in, serving as a “painkiller” while creating feelings of pleasure and euphoria. According to Dr. Sarah J. Buckley, renowned obstetrician turned freebirthing mother and author of the book Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering, these beta-endorphins can reach such high levels that “the laboring mother can transmute her pain and enter into an altered state of consciousness.”

Stated another way, “The mother reaches a point in her traveling where it is time for her to go alone. The endorphins released by her body during her embarking have begun to change her consciousness and she enters, more deeply, the realm of the altered state. She travels to the edge of her normal reality, parts the Veil and goes beyond.

The Veil is my nomenclature for the curtain that separates ordinary reality from the deep altered state.”

This quote comes from one of my most favorite independent midwives, Whapio Dianne Bartlett, director of The Matrona a foundation that offers transformational programs in the realms of birth, healing and wisdomkeeping. She has a beautifully psychedelic way of explaining the different aspects of a woman’s birth journey, which she describes as “The Holistic Stages of Birth.” These aspects perfectly parallel psychedelic journeys - especially those that involve mushrooms.

ur irthright to ourney

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As a birthkeeper and mother, I know all of the above to be true.

A birthing mother always leaves this world and enters another when she hits a certain stage. When birthing in a comfortable and familiar setting, ideally at home or out in nature, the mother is able to sink into that altered state and allow her body to experience the journey of birth in her own unique way. And yes, it is absolutely possible for a mother to journey so profoundly and intuitively that she experiences her birth as blissful, orgasmic, and completely out of this world. It is possible for any mother; she simply has to choose it, and pay close attention to her set and setting.

This sentiment is echoed by radical birth thought leader and mother of nine, Yolande Norris-Clark, whose newest offering, PORTAL, provides women with a blueprint for a blissful, transcendent birth. “Any kind of birth demands an altered state of consciousness,” she shares.

“This is not optional. Birth is biologically engineered to create that altered state of consciousness from within, from the mechanism of your body/mind/psyche. If you’re being harassed and agitated and your nervous system is being constantly enervated by stress in any way, that sympathetic nervous system process that is intrinsic to birth is going to shut down, and you will experience birth not only as intense, hard, and painful, but it’s also going to be far more likely to be prolonged, and even to stop. It’s very challenging, in my experience, to be calling ourselves into full presence when our bodies are being violated.”

On the other hand, when a mother is allowed to journey through birth in the way she wishes, where she wishes, and without the presence of “authority figures,” there is nothing standing in the way of her transcendence except her own ego, doubts and fears - all of which she can work with both before and during her birthing time. River Shannie, a mother who birthed her son freely at home in the presence of only her partner and daughter, shared her psychedelic birth story with me, and it beautifully represents all of the above: “I went on the deepest trips of my life during Nuala and Griffin s births. I remember when the DMT of birth was beginning to kick in. I experienced a flashback to a psychedelic experience I had in the past. DMT is one of the chemicals released by a woman s brain when she gives birth. It is a hallucinogenic tryptamine that occurs naturally in many plants and in our brains. The realms I accessed during my children s births taught me about the wildness and the power within me. That same wildness and power is within us all.”

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She continued: “I felt the presence of the beings from my past psychedelic experience. I was happy they were with me. I had learned from them last time and I welcomed the familiar feeling of being comforted by their presence …

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Then, I centered myself. I suddenly flew away from irritability to a blissful state of altered consciousness. I was making my way deep down the path of labor with sensuality, courage, and glee.”

Yolande addresses DMT in PORTAL, even going so far as to explain how to maximize your body’s capacity to produce this chemical. The presence of DMT during birth (and orgasm and death for that matter) is yet another testament to the ultimate truth at the center of life itself: birth is meant to be a

pleasurable, transformative, transcendent, psychedelic experience of love; one that is meant to give human beings a spiritually connected beginning to their life on land.

“There is a reason that scientists believe that the mother’s brain, as well as her baby’s, produces DMT, ‘The God Molecule,’ during the birth process,” Yolande shares. “The purpose of birth is to connect us to heaven. Birth is the zenith of orgasm. It’s sheer gorgeousness, and it’s made for our thriving.”

Man or woman, can you relate? Those who have engaged with psychedelics and plant medicine are familiar with the concept of journeying through altered states of consciousness, and many understand that intentional journeys often complete themselves in such a magnificent way that the traveler feels blissfully reborn. A lesson is learned, a wisdom is unearthed, a body is rewired, a mind is set free. They have experienced what is known as a Hero’s Journey. They completed a cycle, one in which they willingly took themselves into the deep below, made a discovery of some kind, and then traveled back up to “reality,” where they share their tale of triumph.

Mothers have been birthing with this understanding for all of time. Up until men took over the birthing realm, women were often honored post-birth in the same ways warriors were when they returned home from battle. It wasn’t until midwives were burned, banned, and regulated at the hands of the church and their friends, the male practitioners of scientism, that birth was moved into the hospital - a place where everything spiritually profound is ritualistically removed from the process altogether.

Women have been routinely drugged and abused ever since.

Their memories of how to birth outside of the system have been systematically beaten into oblivion, and the sanctity of birth has been severely compromised for far too long.

Our deeply depressed society is evidence of this, and Stanislav Grof, the psychiatrist who developed holotropic breathwork and noted the undeniable similarities between LSD trips and birth/ rebirth, concurs. Birth trauma leads to serious psychopathologies, according to his research from the 1960s and ‘70s. It sure is a good thing we have psychedelics to help everyone process said birth trauma. If only we’d facilitated the psychedelic birth that was their birthright all along; then maybe they could have avoided a fear-based life of disconnect and suicidal ideation.

In the same way we must free birth from institutionalized captivity so as to prevent inflicting more birth trauma upon mothers and babies, we must be very, very careful with the ways we choose to “legitimize” psychedelics. Thanks to the trending miniseries titled How to Change Your Mind, we know that psychedelics are currently being studied in clinical settings with clipboards and machines that go ping.

Dr. April Bolding, co-author of one of the more popular books recommended to expecting mothers titled Pregnancy, Birth, and the Newborn, addressed this in a speech she gave at the 2019 Portland Psychedelic Conference (a speech that can be found on YouTube for those interested). Medicalizing psychedelic trips is in nobody’s best interest, and the boundary between research and a complete rebirth takeover must be maintained.

Psychedelic journeys of all kinds, including birth, are meant to take place in familiar, comfortable settings, and/or nature.

This photo depicts the first Astral Continental Congress van birth as witnessed by midwife Ina May Gaskin. The photo, titled Power Pilgrimage, is a part of the awardwinning BIRTH UNDISTURBED narrative series created by British photographer Natalie Lennard.

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This is by divine design, and, when encouraged and

The Integrated Mother From this point onward, birth must be treated like a sacred psychedelic journey; the one in which we are the vessel that creates the means through which Source presents itself. Our naturally occuring chemicals are the compounds that activate our unconscious realms, elevating us to new states of being human. Just as you wouldn't numb yourself for a psychedelic trip, women shouldn't numb themselves for birth. The experience is intended to help the mother transcend her current level of creativity, life experience, endurance, and overall self mastery. It is meant to reveal a new version of herself, the one that can mother intuitively and with confidence.

Psychedelic itself means “soul-revealing.” Birth absolutely and obviously does this, and in more ways than one. The mother, of course, is cracked open and her highest self is revealed. A new version of her Earthen self is then born and revealed as a result.

Her baby's soul is completely centered in his or her human body upon being born, and thus it is revealed.

Upon deeper contemplation, it is almost as though the creation of the baby within the mother is the seed of the psychedelic medicine itself. The baby contains the spark of life just as a plant does.

His or her energy field becomes one with the mother’s, continuing in this way for the duration of the entire pregnancy, birth, and the first three to six months postpartum.

Photo Courtesy of Kaitlin Coghill

supported, mothers and babies can essentially experience a year-long psychedelic transformation that expands their minds, opens their hearts, and prepares them for life in its entirety.

Those who journey with mushrooms and the like experience a post-psychedelic afterglow and integration period, just like a newly reborn mother does in the hours and days after naturally birthing her baby. Even the baby is having a psychedelic adventure post-birth, as it has recently been acknowledged that an adult’s brain on LSD functions in a similar way to that of an infant. Infant brainwave states are wildly special, allowing them to simply live in a dreamstate.

“Mothers have taught me that it is not appropriate to interfere with this important stage of birth (the return, the immediate postpartum),” Whapio states. “This is an incredibly high and holy moment and if we truly understood birth and the ramifications of returning from an altered state…the reintegration…we would protect the privacy of the mother and baby at this time more than any other.”

When understood in the context of psychedelic sciences, birth which creates a naturally transcendent synthesis of hormones within the human body - can be seen for its potential and benefit as opposed to solely its inherent risks. Psychedelic

plants and pharmaceuticals simply mimic what birth has been designed to do all along. This is why the plants and the fungi are calling us back. They are here to remind us of our true nature, to elevate our relationships with ourselves, each other, and our shared cohesive environment.

Nothing is separate. Birth is not separate. Birth is an act of creativity, love embodiment, and ecstasy. It is fear alone that introduces pain and discomfort and disconnect from Source and intuition, and it is a lack of reverence for mothers and birth that breeds the fear.

When choosing how, where, and with whom to birth, a mother should look to the ways in which a person plans for an intentional psychedelic trip. She must avoid anything and everything that is unnatural and invokes fear. She must prepare for transcendent bliss, and settle for nothing less. This is her birthright. This is her baby’s birthright. The generations that came before us and that will come after us deserve all of this, and more. Every birthing mother can be the catalyst for profound healing in her family and the world at large if she simply surrenders to the psychedelic birth experience that is built into her and her baby’s cells. It is theirs for the taking, and it is guaranteed to be the trip of a lifetime.

Kaitlin Coghill is a divinely inspired writer and editor who has devoted her life to elevating motherhood, plant medicine, and the power of story. Her work can be found in a variety of print and digital spaces, such as her own website - kaitlinpearl.com. When not co-creating her reality with the assistance of plants, Kaitlin can be found living and loving alongside her husband and their three daughters in Southern California, where they honor the ocean and worship the sun all year long. Follow her journey on Instagram: @the.elevatedmother.

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Bermuda: Home of the World’s Most Expensive Weed

By Connor Anderson

I

magine this.

You're researching locales for your next vacation. An ad pops up for Bermuda, featuring a couple sipping champagne champagne on a balcony overlooking a light pink beach, where gentle waves roll ashore from shimmering, crystal waters that stretch out into the horizon - blissful hues that make you wonder whether someone slipped a quarter tab in your morning coffee.

Goodness, you think. This is the most idyllic smoke spot I’ve ever seen.

Prices in Bermuda vs. The UAE Until recently, possession of any amount in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) carried a minimum sentence of two years. One would think the risk would juice prices up far higher than those in Bermuda, where possession under seven grams is decriminalized. Yet, research says Bermuda still reigns supreme.

Perhaps this is due to the UAE's proximity to other countries, which makes smuggling easie. It could also be a result of its lower demand.

A few sources list the UAE’s price at $110 per gram, but it seems they misconstrued the standard amount. An article on Business Insider claiming that UAE weed costs $110 per gram also claims a gram costs $124 in Bermuda - a statistic I know as false. The uninitiated writers probably meant to refer to prices on a pereighth basis.

I found a better, stoner-operated site, priceofweed.com, that uses self-reporting to aggregate prices in various countries. It lists the UAE’s average price per eighth as $106, and Bermuda’s as $158, which is pretty close to spot on.

Google shows that Bermuda is not in the Caribbean. It’s about 600 miles east of South Carolina, the middle of nowhere. But, it’s an island. Islands mean reggae. Reggae means pot growing between every crack and crevice, and Rasta stoners toking around every turn. Jackpot!

The discrepancy shows that, despite worldwide progress, information on cannabis remains globally sparse. Misleading information continues to be distributed by people who can’t distinguish a weed leaf from a four-leaf clover.

Naturally, you book a trip.

Holy Spicoli! Why is Weed So Expensive?

Your flight lands. You grab your bags and hail a cab. You make the usual inquiry, half-expecting a $50 ounce to plop in your lap in response. Instead, he digs around his glove box and passes you a tiny baggie of condensed bud that looks suspiciously shy of an eighth.You slip him a twenty. He glances at the bill and says, “You’re 130 short, mate.” You laugh awkwardly, hoping this lunatic is making some sick Bermudian inside joke that you don’t understand.

He’s not joking. You have to stop by an ATM to afford the $200 all-inclusive 20-minute round trip.

An Eighth of Good Weed in Bermuda Costs $150… Ain’t That a Trip?

The upside is that, upon closer inspection (and a brief test joint), it’s pretty good weed. Pretty much American weed, you think, well-versed in the geographical variances of your beloved tree.

American weed that’s been jam-packed and vacuum-sealed for months. The downside is that you just spent $150 on something that costs $30 anywhere else.

This is the realization that hit me when I made my first purchase in the states. Except worse, because it wasn’t a one-off vacation purchase; it was a weekly expense. I felt like a clown for the amount of cash I’d wasted. Yet, I still pay the exorbitant sum every time I return home to Bermuda. What choice do I have?

Bermuda has one of the highest costs of living and GDP per capita in the world. We produce ~0 percent exports, importing most goods from abroad. This results in high taxes and overpriced products. But, larger disposable incomes make high prices more affordable.

It works similarly with weed, except with an absurd tax. The risk of getting busted and the cost of importation are blamed for the dizzying prices. Historically, good bud has been imported, either via air with bribes made to airport staff, or via sea on fishing boats and in shipping containers. Reggie comes from Mexico and only costs $50 per eighth, but it's riddled with seeds and barely gets you high.

Since there are only a few Kingpin-like players leading the game, price-fixing defines the market. When COVID halted travel and opened up the market for local growers, prices didn’t budge. A local eighth still carries that $150 price tag, even though around 20 percent of good weed is now homegrown.

Maybe it was fitting compensation 10 to 15 years ago when most states still considered weed illegal and Bermuda had yet to amend its cannabis policy. Nowadays, however, weed is readily available in every state regardless of legal status, making it far less costly and complicated to purchase and import. Charging 500 percent more than our neighbors in 2022 is villainous.

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How Bermudians Handle the Price Buying in bulk and portioning are some prevalent money-saving tactics. But, according to a 2020 marijuana survey conducted by the Bermudian Department for National Drug Control, most Bermudians favor joints and spliffs - a method often called wasteful by stingey stoners.

There’s another trend that’s picked up speed in the past few years. While in the stoner section of a party on a recent trip home, a friend-of-a-friend took out papers, some nug, a metal knife, and about seven grams of dabs ($700 worth). He placed a glob on the knife, and used a lighter to heat it up. When goey, he lathered it onto the paper, sprinkled on some reggie, and rolled up a long, perfect, skinny doobie.

Joints rule supreme, and the introduction of dabs is helping Bermudian tokers save money.

The Art of the Bermudian Joint Nothing represents the island stoner like a spliff. You’ll never catch a Reggae God rhyming about his love for the bong.

Bermudian joints are of a different style than those you are accustomed to, and they are at the center of Bermuda’s stoner culture. Many of us pride ourselves on our joint-rolling skills, producing doobies in outstretched palms to gather nods of admiration from an eager smoker circle.

Unless it’s a special occasion, we use as little weed as possible to roll thin joints packed to the brim to make the experience last.

Sometimes we clip portions from the paper’s non-glue end for a slower smoke.

When we aren’t rolling pure weed joints, Bermudians roll American-sized spliffs that contain a ton of tobacco. Tobacco’s inclusion varies by personal preference, and some use it in their toothpick-sized joints to maximize pot preservation.

The Fight for Legalization

Photo Courtesy of Riley Taggett

Since Bermuda is a UK territory, our laws are subject to Royal blessing via the governor. If passed without British blessing, UK vs. Bermuda relations could deteriorate. The governor expressed worries that the bill went beyond what is permitted under UN conventions. In the end, it was defeated in the senate.

We’re still hopeful that a revised bill will make it into law.

Legalization was a driving force behind current premier, David Burt’s, campaign for office. He needs to follow through and prove that legalization wasn’t merely a route to other agendas.

Legalization would lead to massive positive changes for Bermuda. It would stimulate our local economy, encouraging local entrepreneurship and creating one of the only locallysourced and taxable markets on the island. It would also drive tourism, our main industry, on- and off-season. Perhaps most importantly, though, it would curb gang-related violence.

The Bermuda weed game is almost entirely operated by a few competing gangs. Though firearms are illegal, an increasing number of guns reached our shores in the last few years. My main dealer was gunned down earlier this year in our usual spot, less than a half-mile from my parents’ house. He was 24.

Though gangs import other drugs, weed is their main market.

Stripping away their primary income stream would significantly curb their ability to take on new members, who are often high schoolers. Legalization might finally bring an end to Bermuda’s gangs, thus improving the life trajectory of the youth and lowering the prices of herb for all.

Connor

We almost passed The Cannabis Licensing Bill, which would have issued licenses for cultivation, retail, research, import, export, transportation, and manufacturing, and allowed adults to purchase and possess. “

”

Anderson

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WaxNax,

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cannabis packing company, and writes fict ion stories in his free t ime. His cannabis advocac y is spurred by his belief in the inherent corr upt ion of government and large corporat ions in industries like big pharma. Find him on Substack (as Connor Anderson) to read more of his work.

CannabisInfused Caramel Turtles

by Adena Justice

Y

ields

86

turtles

2 cups brown suga 1 cup infused coconut oi 1 can condensed mil 1 cup corn syru 1 tsp vanilla extrac 1 2 tsp sea salt 2 cups toasted pecan 2 cups milk chocolate chips 4 Heath candy bars (chopped) /

Melting Chocolate Add chocolate chips to a microwave safe bowl, melt for 30 seconds. Stir, and repeat at intervals of 15 seconds until chocolate is melted and smooth. Place chocolate into a Ziplock bag, and set aside.

Turtle Assembly Spray measuring cup with cooking spray. Next, add caramel to the measuring cup and pour evenly into the center of each pecan cluster. Once all pecans are evenly covered in caramel, cut the corner of the bag filled with melted chocolate. Evenly top turtles with melted chocolate. Finish by placing Heath candy bar pieces on top of the melted chocolate. Allow turtles to cool (or don’t) and enjoy!

Freezer Storage Add to freezer-safe container with a piece of parchment between each turtle. Store in freezer for up to two months.

Adena Just ice is a wife, mother, and self-taught confect ioner. She believes in making medicated confect ions that feel like a gift, looking just as beaut iful

Pecan Prep

as they are delicious. One of her goals at Whatz Up Farmz, is to get her

Prepare two large cookie sheets with parchment paper. Next, pile your pecans in sets of three to make clusters. Make sure your clusters are about two inches apart.

her pat ients. Follow along on Instagram, @whatzupfarmz.

Candy Bar Prep Prepare two large cookie sheets with parchment paper. Next, pile your pecans in sets of three to make clusters. Make sure your clusters are about two inches apart.

Caramel Place a medium-sized pot on the stove and set heat to medium.

Add two cups of brown sugar, and one cup of coconut oil. Stir with whisk until combined, continuing non-stop throughout the caramel making process.

Next, add one cup of corn syrup, one can of condensed milk, and a ½ tsp salt. Continue stirring while waiting for caramel to come to a boil.

Once caramel is bubbling, let boil for about eight-and-a-half to nine minutes, or until candy thermometer reaches 243 degrees fahrenheit.

Once caramel has reached the proper temperature, remove from stove. Add vanilla extract. Stir caramel until slightly thickened.

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products into the hands of many people across the country one day, not just

Photo Courtesy of Adena Morris

Artwork by Justin Pence

15

16

Photo Credit Pomme Home

17

Ode De Peyote: My Conversation With a Fallen Tree

By Mike Robinson

H

e was lying down, getting a drink of water, and wanted to talk.

On the trip of all trips, wandering down a path at Eagle Rock Lake in New Mexico, I stumbled across a sizable deciduous pine - a fallen victim of the 2015 construction project on this lake. I have no idea the size of the dose of peyote I had taken that morning, but it was enough to spend the night out on the lake in a very colorful and spiritual way.

Peyote is a small, button-shaped cactus native to the southern United States. Potent compounds in the plant, such as mescaline, cause strong hallucinogenic effects in humans. Historically, peyote was used as far back as the Mayans for ceremonial purposes, and was also utilized by the Olmec, Zapotec, and Aztec civilizations.

Photo Courtesy of Chris Leipelt

Teas are created by blending the cleaned cactus into a pulp and then boiling. This process went on for hours, and, while it boiled, the Native Americans that were doing the ritual sang songs and chanted. It was very peaceful. The reason tea is used as the means of consumption is that it lessens the often violent GI upset.

The members of the Rainbow Family of Living Light that I was hanging out with in Sante Fe joked about Jim Jones and the Kool-Aid in Guyana as they prepared this unique drink.

Admittedly, the anticipation of chugging some down and leaving this plane of existence for a bit was overwhelming.

"You need this. You go first," a Native American guide instructed. "We're taking you to a place to heal, as you must have health in your mind to help others."

As we arrived, a young Native spoke about the Spirit of Trees and how they could talk to us. Paying attention to her was difficult, as I was already sick from the tea.Thankfully, the expected GI upset associated with mescaline/peyote passed quickly.

On the way, the guide explained that the lakeside had crews working every morning and that we'd have to leave at sunup.

"Stay off the equipment; this is a spiritual experience. Allow the moon, the stars, and nature to guide." His advice seemed fair enough, and a new reality had already kicked in with vivid colors streaming across the gorgeous pink, purple, and golden sky.

A massive tree was lying there, taking a break from growing, and asked to talk to me as I approached the lake. "Be careful, Mike, that's going far out into the water," a human voice rang out. I can see signs ordering all to stay away from the shore and not touch the equipment, providing warnings of prosecution, and more. But, the trip was on, and the music started blaring.

"Sign, sign, everywhere a sign. Blockin' out the scenery and breaking my mind. Do this, don't do that. Can't you read the sign?"

"The signs say listen to the tree," came flowing out of my mouth, and the music shut off. With that, the conversation with the fallen pine started and got very deep, very quickly.

"You can crawl on me; it's safe." He was lying on Mother Earth and told me to have a seat; that she was distraught. The sky turned dark purple, or so I thought, and the younger Native with me warned that I needed to be safe. I told her I had things to do; it was sort of like my last moment of near-reality.

My mama was a hippie and taught me how to respect the forest and Mother Earth. She always told me everything was alive, and I knew that tree had a reason to be asking for a conversation. I was in this far-off place in my mind: "I'm a Civil Rights lobbyist, and there's no reason not to protect this," I told the young lady with me as I scooted along further out into the lake with my legs dangling on both sides of this monstrous tree.

It went on for hours. She started taking videos on her phone at one point. I wanted to know - I needed to know - what was on the tree’s mind and why it had to rest there. The tree told me the story of Earth and how it was born. It shared with me its life and how, eventually, a man decided a lake should look differently, which caused the tree to lay down in the water. It shared with me it had no choice in these matters; mankind decides whether or not it gets to live or die.

"I'm just like that pot plant!" he yelled out, knowing what was causing the highest level of grief inside of my soul.

"Why not just get up and face them?" I asked. I was overwhelmed by the desire to know why this 100-foot tall tree couldn't take on a construction crew, or, better yet - the world.

At 7 a.m., when the workers started to arrive, they allowed more water into the lake, and it hit my feet. That pulled me out of it for some reason,

“Shoo, no, it's on my shoes. Why, shoe? NO shoo!" Water had soaked my shoes, and when I turned back, the guide was there along with the young lady, who I later found out was his daughter. She had watched all night.

She came and talked me into getting off this enormous tree I'd straddled all night, knee-deep in conversation. She said I'd been there for the past seven hours, and we had to leave. People were coming, she told me.

"WHAT? People? No, tell them to leave now!" I told her that the spirit of the tree spoke through me. It had taken over my voice and was demanding that the crews leave. The guide's voice

rang out an order that my melting mind couldn't argue with. "It's time to leave nature to its works. Listen to the spirits - not your own voice. Let's go."

The tree shared so much. He knew my life, as he was alive before I was born.

Photo Courtesy of Raul Luna

In depth, after decades of internal struggle, the tree shared with me why my son was autistic. The tree also told me the tale of a man with an ego so large that even he couldn't measure up, and that's why I wrecked the racecar. He went on to share why I'm going to see the end of all trees and that only humans that can fight for survival will save them, and for him, it's too late.

"I'll end up being someone's firewood."

When I asked “why” after everything he said, he told me I'd know the answers when my time with him was over. I remember being sore from sitting on this colossal tree, but every time I got up, he asked me to please be still, and I'd end up blending into the bark. I laid back on it and became part of the forest; the squirrels loved the tree and sat on it with me.

What was hysterical was watching the videos because, of course, the tree never spoke out loud. "Only you could hear that message, as it was meant for one person only," the guide shared with me.

For weeks after that trip, I kept having these small aha kind of feelings, to which I'd say, "That's why," and it was always about something the spirit of the tree told me. Six years later, that tree affects just about everything I do. The spirit of the tree will always be within me.

Mike Robinson is the founder of the Global Cannabinoid Research Center and three-time Cancer Survivor. Named to the Top 100 Most Influential People in Cannabis by High Times, Robinson is the former Director of Communications for the American Academy of Cannabinoid Medicine and the past founder and Director of the American Cannabis Compassion Alliance - an entity that gave away cannabis oils to those in need across America. He's known as a global educator in plant medicine, but gained fame for adopting one of his cannabis compassion patients, Genevieve, while beating cancers and opioid addiction through the intentional use of cannabis oils.

Photo by Florian Van Duyn

21

Joe Friday vs. The ‘60s

By Dan Isenstein

“T

his is the city, Los Angeles, California. Throughout the city, hundreds of crimes are committed daily. I should know, I carry a badge.”

Long before cell phones and body cams, and decades before Cops, there was Dragnet, a police procedural whose prologue contained a variation of these words above, delivered in a “just the facts ma’am” monotone by protagonist, officer Joe Friday, who was played by producer/director Jack Webb.

There have been several iterations of Dragnet. “Classic” Dragnet aired in black and white from 1952-1959, and was itself a reboot of a popular radio program. In 1967, in response to a world seemingly filled with weirdo hippies, threatening characters, and other events, Joe Friday returned to present the ‘law and order’ response to the turbulent era’s events and social issues.

Photo Courtesy of Catwalker

Along with his loyal partner Bill Gannon, Friday tried to help middle America make sense of the psychedelic madness.

Dragnet featured two LSD-themed episodes upon its reboot. The series premiere, “The LSD Story,” focused on law enforcement, while the other, “The Big Prophet,” is basically a 25-minute “philosophical debate” about illegal drug use with LSD at the core.

The actual “truth” of each episode is debatable. “The LSD Story,” written by Jack Webb, is a cautionary tale about LSD, and was obviously cribbed from police records relating to the Merry Pranksters’ “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.” Also known as the “Watts Acid Test,” the event was held at the Youth Opportunity Center in Compton, California, in February 1966.

The perpetrator in the episode, Benji “Blue Boy” Carver, is a teenager suspected of dealing LSD. Our heroes first encounter “Blue Boy” at a nearby park, where he has buried his head in the ground. When police get him standing, he is wild-eyed, his face painted half-blue, half-yellow.

“Blue Boy” is likely based on the persona Prankster Paul Foster had adopted around this time, the “Dimensional Kreemo.” Foster had painted his face silver and gold, and, according to Thomas Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, was arrested by the LAPD for public intoxication the morning after the Watts Acid Test. Because LSD was still legal at the time, “Blue Boy” is ultimately charged in violation of state code “601” - “In danger of leading an idle, dissolute or immoral life.” That’s where the similarity ends.

Foster was 22 when arrested in 1966. “Blue Boy,” meanwhile, was barely 18 and living with his parents at the start of the episode. The age discrepancy appears in keeping with one of the show’s themes - scaring viewers in middle America into believing their babies were threatened by whatever lay beyond the thin blue line.

The story was obviously influenced by what a police officer would have read about an LSD trip in 1966. When Friday and Gannon first encounter “Blue Boy,” he stares straight ahead reciting random colors. “Brown, blue, yellow, green, green, orange, red, red-red, red. I can hear them. I can hear them all.” It is an obvious reference to synesthesia, the crossing of the senses.

Not only are Friday and Gannon baffled by his behavior, but they are ultimately powerless to act, as LSD was still legal at the beginning of the episode. The police lament their lack of authority as LSD use seems to be spreading rampantly through the city. In another direct reference to the Merry Pranksters, one officer states, “It’s getting popular. You see that bus up on the strip, Friday, Saturday nights? Big sign on it says, ‘Can you pass the acid test? pay $1 and find out.’”

The story’s dramatic turn occurs six months later, when police are finally empowered with federal and state statutes prohibiting LSD use. Armed with these new laws, Friday and Gannon hit the Sunset Strip in search of “Blue Boy.” They are alerted to an acid party taking place in the Hollywood Hills by multiple informants, including two teenage girls Sandy (15) and Edna Mae (14), who officers previously had helped navigate a bad trip. Friday and Gannon raid the party, finding all the guests acting odd. A girl is trying to literally climb the wall while an artist keeps putting his paintbrush in his mouth. More synesthesia? But Blue Boy has already split the scene of the crime.

Dragnet experienced an acid “flashback” less than a year later with the episode, “The Prophet.” In this story, Friday and Gannon engage in a battle of wits with “Brother William,” a character inspired by Dr. Timothy Leary. The police suspect Brother William of selling LSD to minors, but have no proof.

Friday and Gannon are dispatched to visit Brother William with orders to let him know the police are keeping tabs on him.

The debate that ensues is loaded with disproven gateway theory: “Marijuana’s the flame, heroin’s the fuse, and LSD is the bomb.” This statement is accompanied by sensational horror stories that are countered by claims of bodily autonomy and the idea that LSD is the path to getting closer to God. The episode takes place entirely inside Brother William’s “Temple of the Expanded Mind.” Adorning the temple when Friday and Gannon arrive are signs with popular phrases, “Can You Pass the Acid Test?” and “Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out.” There is no “dramatic turn,” as the entire episode is built around the debate between Brother William and our heroes. Gannon lets us know early on that “Brother William” is really William Bentley, who swindled little old ladies out of their Social Security checks, to which Brother William retorts, “I’m not here to make a profit.

I want to be a prophet.”

Gannon exposes William’s conman past, implying that Brother William is not the “prophet” he claims to be. The rest of the episode, however, builds the case that the real danger posed by Brother William is his intelligence and education. Brother William boasts of graduating Magna Cum Laude and his postgraduate teaching experience. “Brother William” is very articulate, and Friday contends that it is his rhetoric that makes him especially dangerous to kids who are becoming aware that the world is a nasty, unfair place.

As the debate continues, Brother William’s statements are often countered with claims that would have made Harry Anslinger proud.

BW: “If you’ve never taken the trip, you wouldn’t know. You haven’t seen it.”

JF: “Neither did the kid who pulled his eyeballs out of their sockets to get a better look.”

As the debate ensues, Gannon thumbs through the Prophet’s “bible” entitled The Church of the Universal God. The title is perhaps a dig at the Unitarian Church, which had hosted an “acid test.” Gannon reads chapters from the table of contents, such as “How to Manufacture LSD” and “How to Grow Marijuana.” When Gannon expresses disbelief that methedrine is not mentioned, the Prophet boasts he is devoting an entire book to methedrine.

Brother William then tells a story, sure to horrify the viewer, of an eight-year-old girl who, with her parent’s permission, stayed out on a three-day trip. Gannon and Friday can only look on in disgust.

Throughout the episode the Prophet is adamant that he does not sell drugs, only ideas, to which Friday retorts, “You couldn’t sell me directions to the men’s room.”

When Friday and Gannon leave the “temple,” Gannon crumples some literature he took from the temple and tosses it into the gutter, implying that police are allowed to litter. During the epilogue, the audience learns that Brother William was eventually arrested and found guilty of (gasp) selling drugs to juveniles. The narrator informs us of his 10-year minimum sentence.

Artifacts like Dragnet were produced for a reason. When the program debuted, things were happening in America that were perceived as a threat to mom, pop, and apple pie. Joe Friday and Dragnet reassured people that the forces of law and order had things under control.

Today, the episodes are played as campy fun, but in 1967, some dude in blue and yellow facepaint tripping his brains out scared the crap out of those in the heartland.

In total, Dragnet devoted a full nine episodes to America’s burgeoning drug problem. Sandwiched between the two LSD episodes, “The Big High” (AKA “Baby in the Bathtub”) provides the same campy fun, only with marijuana as the focus.

Need a good laugh? The episodes are available on YouTube. And remember, “The story you are about to see is ‘true.’”

Dan Isenstein, the author of Tales from the Kentucky Hemp Highway, is a cannabistorian with multiple interests. Prior to writing about cannabis, Dan spent 20 years in various management functions at a plastic injection molding facility. His background provides a broad perspective with which to observe the emerging cannabis industry.

LinkedIn: Dan Isenstein | Facebook: Hemp Highway of Kentucky | Website: kentuckyhemphighway.com.

Photo Courtesy of Pawel Czerwinski

Durban Poison

by Luxury Loud Ganjier Review

By Rob Sanchez

M

y name is Rob Sanchez, and I am a Certified Ganjier.

I have 15 years of experience with the plant and have always enjoyed the nuances of different cultivars and the craftsmanship in cultivation and manufacturing.

I started cultivating during Colorado’s medical days, and was making solventless hash before moving into software. Seed-toSale software and compliance have been my focus for the last five years. I’ve contributed to 365 Cannabis, Viridian Sciences, and Ample Organics before joining BLAZE as the Product Manager of Wholesale (Cultivation, Distribution, and Manufacturing). As an Agile Coach, I help companies utilize Agile and Scrum to optimize the value created.

Photo by Rob Sanchez

Apartment 113 is working to help spread knowledge, The entourage effect is the full combination of cannabinoids, connoisseurship, and appreciation of cannabis along with Agile terpenes, flavonoids, and more that create the experience or and Lean practices through the industry. We’re earching for “high.” But one high is much different than another, and there quality to celebrate and for those with the passion to create it in are chemical reasons for that. As the industry has matured, today’s THC-dominant market. The Ganjier program teaches we’re learning more about these individual compounds. For you how to appreciate cannabis flower and concentrates. example, CBC has antimicrobial and bone stimulant properties, They’ve created an assessment process using four major pillars and myrcene is associated with sedative effects. appearance, aroma, flavor, and, of course, experience. Outside of The lab results of a product can help set the stage, quality products, the other focus for Ganjiers is quality but the product itself isn’t a stat sheet that tells service; each customer interaction is unique, you everything. It needs to be smoked to be and we’ve been trained to narrow down the appreciated and assessed. The Ganjier preferred wide product range found on the shelves today consumption method is a hand-rolled joint. The to help find the right product.

ritual of the joint is slow and methodical The Ganjier Connoisseurship really has no limits; in all preparing flower, rice paper, and a crutch. program has industries there are different tiers of products.

There’s something relaxing about the origamicreated an Those at the top are near-perfect forms of the like process, and hand-rolled joints are above assessment product, or artisanally created versions showing and beyond pre-rolls. If you’re not rolling yet, process using four a deep understanding of the product. This is today's the day to get started! I’d recommend major pillars what the cannabis industry is still building and Elements Ultra Thin Rice Papers. All this being appearance, what Apartment 113 is looking to catalyze. said, combustion may not be the best fit for aroma, flavor, Newer markets, however, are pushed into everyone.

and, of course, selling higher and higher THC, as that’s what experience.

I’ve been fortunate to try many different the consumer asks for. Oftentimes this is cultivars, and have started to build up a library because the consumer doesn’t know about the of Certified Ganjier reviews. I prefer potent entourage effect.

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cultivars with heavy effects and strong aroma, but have started to appreciate less sedative and more flavorful citrus cultivars as well.

One of the best I’ve assessed this summer was a harvest of Durban Poison from Luxury Loud in Detroit, Michigan. This flower was taken down at just the right time and absolutely jumped out of the jar with a classic Durban Poison scent.

Durban Poison has a funky fuel smell with a burst of sweetness that creates a cloying intoxicating aroma with light notes of grape. It’s a gem when done properly.

The flower was covered in a dense layer of short trichomes. The ends of these trichomes are the heads where the cannabinoids are concentrated. Improper handling at any stage of cultivation, manufacturing, or distribution can knock these off and start to degrade the product. My sample here was exquisite; many of the heads were still intact.

The smoke on this was very smooth with a medium body. The pungent sweetness of the aroma becomes a candied spice flavor on the inhale. The flavor in your mouth after exhaling is potent and long lasting. The effects came on in a reasonable amount of time and brought balanced results with a euphoric wave at the beginning. The Ganjier review is a strict one, and this cultivar really hit it out of the park. Near the heart of Detroit, Luxury Loud is creating quality.

For more of my Ganjier reviews check out future issues of Fat Nugs and visit apt113.com.

Rob is a Certified Ganjier and the owner of Apartment 113 Cannabis Connoisseurship & Consulting. He has a lifetime of cannabis experience, having started as a cultivator and hashmaker in Denver's medical days. He now works as a product manager and Agile Coach for BLAZE Seed-To-Sale.

Apartment113.com

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Mule Fuel

by Sugarbud Ganjier Review

By Matthew Jerome

A

s I have a think on it, I quite possibly have a fair claim to the best job in the world. Not only do I get invited to judge various cannabis and hash competitions/cups nationally, but I also get to work as a medicinal cannabis advocate and consultant, speaking at conferences all over the world about the therapeutic benefits of cannabis, as well as writing for incredible publications like the one you’re reading right now. One of the coolest things that my job affords me the opportunity to do is highlight and review some of the most incredible cannabis that Canada has to offer, as well as the passionate people who grow it.

One of these people is David Remillard of Sugarbud. Dave and I met earlier this year at an expo held annually in Toronto.

Photo by Andrew Interisano

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We immediately hit it off over a joint, griping about the early days in the industry, handcuffing regulations, criminal taxation, and everything in between. I asked what he did at Sugarbud and, to my surprise, learned that he was the head grower. I say “to my surprise,” because it’s usually the first thing out of the mouths of head growers you meet. Rather than a sales pitch, he simply asked if I’d like to smell or try some of his bud, which I gladly accepted.

Sugarbud, a craft cannabis producer in rural Stavely, Alberta, is backed by the philosophy of being “part of the brand that will define quality and value for those that appreciate the finer things in life.” I was pleased to learn that Sugarbud is also a main employer of the local township, which hosts a population of about 540, and discovered that they insist on paying a working wage base salary to all their employees. Furthermore, I was keen to hear that Sugarbud prides themselves on their involvement in local community-based events.

During my recent interview with Dave Remillard, I asked what he thought was most important to the success of growing the kind of quality herb required to achieve the goal of their philosophy. He calmly replied, “Empowering my team is everything. Close attention to all the details involved is vital, but a team with vested interest that takes pride in their work is unstoppable.”

He went on to state that, “a culture where all steps are taken with the utmost care is achieved by helping one’s team build confidence in their own abilities. It’s done by arming them with the reasoning behind the steps taken and the techniques used.

You can’t take any shortcuts to true quality.”

Consistency in both quality and delivery of expectations are crucial to earning brand loyalty and to creating the brand ambassadors I mentioned earlier. These types of ambassadors are not only proud to buy the quality you provide, but they wholeheartedly recommend it to others. Quality sold itself to me and will continue to for the rest of my life. With that, I introduce you to Sugarbud’s Mule Fuel.

Its appearance scores an 8.3, with a beautiful tight structure, and gorgeous dark colours and hues with hints of orange. It has substantial trichome coverage with intact, resinous looking points, and looks to be cured properly with a great “nerf”-like springback. There are no signs of foreign materials, powdery mildew, or mold.

The aroma comes in at 7.9 with notes of tangy sweet moss, lighter fuel, clementine rind, ferment, loam, and wet wood chips.

Its flavor scored a 7.4, as it is pleasantly complex. It tastes of fuelsoaked lemongrass, and reveals a salty, rich, increasing crescendo of flavour as I move further into the joint. With a very smooth, moderate-bodied smoke, it's strong but not .......///////......overwhelming.

I urge those in the industry to focus on humbly growing and selling a quality product. In doing so, you won’t create customers, you’ll create ambassadors.

With such a thoroughly enjoyable sesh, Mule Fuel scored 7.8 on overall experience, and would be recommended for an end of the day/after work smoke. It has an intensely relaxing, balanced, nostalgic body feel. Delightfully stoned about 7/8 through the joint, with a solid perma-grin, I had a sustained, relaxing, and calming experience. This was some of the smoothest retail bud I’ve smoked in Canada. I highly recommend this for anyone looking for stress relief and wanting to find their place of zen.

Matthew Jerome, Canada’s first fully certified Ganjier, is the founder and chief consultant at Meristem Cannabis Consulting. Matt has over 15 years of experience in the cannabis field, and has been a vocal cannabis advocate for over a decade. He is also a professional cannabis judge, and has been featured as a keynote speaker at several cannabis events and competitions worldwide.

He offers one-of-a-kind systematic cannabis flower and extract assessments, and provides confidence when it comes to quality-related decisions.

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Remembering Ann Shulgin

by Nigel Despinasse

Giving Our Flowers to the Late Great Matriarch of Psychedelic Therapy

W

hen people hear “psychedelic therapy,” most think of an investment opportunity or an offhand study someone mentioned once about mushrooms, depression, and anxiety. Companies worth hundreds of millions of dollars are hard at work trying to make pharmaceutical products using the active components found in these psychedelics. Before companies like MindMed, Compass Pathways, and Cybin were exploring the therapeutic uses of psychedelics, Ann Shulgin and her husband, Alexander Shulgin, were synthesizing and administering psychedelic therapies to thousands of patients.

For well over 10 years, Alexander had a license from the Drug Enforcement Agency allowing him to synthesize Schedule I substances. This license provided Alexander and Ann with a safe environment to create and work with over 200 different psychedelic compounds. Ann and Alexander published two books, PiHKAL and TiHKAL, both of which got an austere response from the DEA. These books gave a step-by-step approach to synthesizing many of the drugs they made. The DEA revoked Shulgin’s Schedule I license and tried to renounce their association with him.

Ann and Alexander continued their work regardless of this revocation, synthesizing new drugs, experimenting with them, and then giving them to their friends so they could take detailed notes about their experience and report back. They worked in groups with artists, psychologists, philosophers, and doctors to discuss the nature of these drugs and the effects it had on them.

Photo Courtesy of Getty Images

Ann Shulgin passed away from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease on July 9 of this year at the age of 91. She is survived by her daughter Wendy. Alexander succumbed to liver cancer in 2014 at age 88. The details of their burial sites are unknown.

Those who fight the good fight because they know it’s right are the people who are sewn into the culture. They are the pioneers who made strides where others would not step, and the radicals who sought to change both hearts and minds so as to bring humans forward. Entities like the previously mentioned public companies came to work with psychedelic therapy to capitalize on an opportunity, whereas Ann Shulgin viewed her work as a sacrament and a privilege. She brought invaluable research about psychedelic-assisted therapy to the world and paved the way for mind altering plants and substances to change the lives of people suffering from addiction, depression, and many other ailments.

Growing up overseas in different locations, Ann’s childhood spanned from Italy to New Hampshire. She eventually found herself in the Bay Area, where she studied commercial art.

After becoming a mother, Ann switched from art to medicine, a field in which she worked as a transcriber. After three marriages that ended in divorce, Ann met Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin, a genius chemist, whom she eventually married.

With Alexander being the chemist and Ann being the therapist, their skills were a match made in heaven. Alexander sought to innovate drug research and invent tools for exploring the human mind. Ann wanted to help heal those who are hurting and work to help them grow through their traumas, as well as work with them on a spiritual level. Despite not having any classical training as a therapist, Ann helped people make tremendous strides in their own psyche.

Thank you for your work, Ann. The world is evolving into a better place because of your dedication to, and love for, humanity.

Nigel Despinasse is a cannabis nerd, entrepreneur, and writer who has been working in the legal industry for the past five years. He holds a Business, Entrepreneurship, and Organizational Studies degree from Brown University and loves house music. Find him online @nigel_deez.

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31

Getting Stoned vs.

Being High

By Dan Russell

I

get stoned…and I get high. I also differentiate between the two which is probably a very fine, if not indefinable, line for people who aren’t regular cannabis users.

There’s a time and place for each, or maybe even for both. But what’s what? Sure, you like to smoke. Or maybe you’d rather vape. Perhaps edibles are your cup of tea? Maybe tea is your flavor of canna-beverage? These are easy options to choose between. But the real question, and one that is rarely asked, is, when you are consuming cannabis in all its different forms and iterations, do you prefer to get stoned or be high? Or get high and be stoned? Is there a difference?

For me, the difference is best understood by the situation I expect to find myself in. To paraphrase the Gambler, my situation tends to dictate the condition of my condition. For example, if I’m going to sit down and watch a movie I want to be stoned.

You want me to melt into a couch for two-plus hours, maybe eat some popcorn and Gobstoppers while zoning in on one thing? Stone me.

Photo Courtesy of Catwalker

I also love getting stoned after a wonderful home cooked dinner.

The combination of food coma and marijuana washes over and stones me in such a way that I find myself extremely comfortable, and at times too pooped to poop. But, if i’m going to take my dog on a walk, it’s more fun to be high. It’s great to be high, get outside and interact with nature, walk and talk to neighbors, while waddling my dog around the block.

There are certain activities where I don’t differentiate, like cooking.

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I like to cook and I’ll cook stoned or high, but my molasses-likeinertia is much more difficult to break through when I’m stoned….unless I have a plan. If I have a plan or a task to follow through on, then I love to be stoned. It’s a joy to be stoned If I know I need to clean, wash, and dice the potatoes and onions to fry them up for dinner. I might obsess over how finely diced they are, but it’s a joyful obsession, like scratching an itchy mosquito bite.

If I’m being honest, I’m always happy to be high. There are certain mornings when I really love to get high. I enjoy catching a great buzz with my morning coffee while I collect my thoughts and ruminate on the coming day. It gives me the feeling of being lighter on my feet and quicker on my toes - both literally and figuratively. When I’m high, I feel tapped more directly into the creative part of my brain. Varied and tangential thoughts skim perpendicular to the main thoughts in my head, tempting me to think in new and different directions. It’s easy to get distracted when I’m high, and I occasionally get lost. Being stoned, however, allows me to sit more heavily on those thoughts and delve deeper into them.

I guess it’s all very simple; and it was staring me in the face the entire time. The words themselves can be taken quite literally.

Stones tend to sink because they are heavy. They are weighted down and slow moving. Despite everyone telling me I was wrong, I always thought Eeyore was stoned. I correlated his droopy eyelids, slow gait, drawn out speech, and his can’t-bebothered attitude to one of stoned apathy towards his fellow stuffies’ shenanigans.

Keeping with the Pooh analogy, Tigger is high. Tigger’s high isn’t the exact equivalent to Eeyore’s stonage because Tigger probably dabbled in a few things beyond cannabis.

He is enthusiastic and positive and, of course, bouncing….high.

Like Tigger, high is in the sky, energized, and giving fives. High is rocking a rhyme that’s right on time ‘cause it’s not tricky; it’s just something Tiggers can do and Tiggers can do anything (cause they're high).

There are caveats. If you get too high, that spark turns into a jumpy fire of agitation and paranoia. Get too stoned and you’ll just fade away and fall asleep.

Was I high writing this column, or was I stoned? It’s an amorphous line penciled into quicksand…an ever-shifting point of delineation on a long drive over this keyboard. I know I feel good, and that’s good enough.

Dan Russell currently makes his living selling rolling trays, flying discs, and all the branded swag you can imagine. Currently living in Chicago with his wife and dog, Dan has had a lifelong interest in cannabis culture. He is a veteran of many Phish tours and a lover of all things phatty. Find him on LinkedIn.

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Photo by Marcus Loke

35

Magic Lives in Truth

By Rian Kochel

G

rowing up as a queer youth in rural Montana during the late ‘80s and early ‘90s was less than ideal. I did, however, learn a lot of things, such as the difference between loneliness and isolation.

People often use the words interchangeably, but they are quite different experiences. The relationship between the words isn't so much synonymous as it is yin and yang. Isolation feeds loneliness.

I became vividly aware of this nuance in syntax because I lived in a town of roughly 3,000 people. The symbiosis of the two words unfolded in front of me shortly after realizing I was “different” around the age of nine.

Fun fact to know and share: my hometown is located just 10 miles east of the Gates of Hell. For you geography buffs out there, that's 30 miles - as the crow flies - due south of the precise end of the world.

It's called Shelby. It sits under the charging skies of Montana on the high plains, out where dinosaurs once roamed. Now, sporadic oil wells punctuate a vast expanse of winter wheat and alfalfa fields that stretch out as far as the eye can see. It's a landscape that feels unforgiving and relentless, with sweeping vistas that recall paintings by Andrew Wyeth, albeit with more desperation.

This was especially true during my adolescence, when the ‘80s were rolling over into the ‘90s. There was no internet. There were no smartphones. The closest mall was a 90-minute drive away. This was a time when people legitimately relied on encyclopedias for knowledge.

My scope of the world at that time was confined to a tiny rural town. I couldn't conceptualize anything outside of this reality because I'd never been outside of it. The idea of meeting another gay person in my lifetime seemed impossible. I had only ever heard people talk about one gay person. He was from the neighboring state of Wyoming. His name was Matthew Shepard, and if you don’t know that name, you should. He didn’t ask to be part of history, he had no choice. He was born into it.

All that to say, I had to create and manage a persona that I thought would match the expectations of my environment. By the time I graduated high school, I learned to play the part so well that even I was starting to believe myself.

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That all changed when I moved to New Orleans, site unseen, at the tender age of 19, but we will come back to that in a bit. First, I want to clarify that Montana was not the worst place to spend my formative years. Some folks might even use words like "quaint" or "charming" to describe my hometown. Actual humans with free will and average cognitive ability choose to live there. Much like there are also people in this world that use their cognitive ability to put carpet in bathrooms out of their own free will. Who am I to blow against the wind?

One specific place in Montana holds a very dear place in the caverns of nostalgia that are carved into my heart - my family’s tiny, no frills, A-frame cabin. It was located just across the Middle Fork of the Flathead River from Glacier National Park, and it was magical. There was an energy in that corner of the universe that was so specific, yet impossible to describe. Small but mighty magical occurrences were the norm during weekend getaways and week-long vacations.

The magic could be found in the way the coffee smelled in the morning, and in the purity of awe that could be induced by nighttime thunderstorms as they roared with window-shaking thunder - flashing lightning so bright it cut through the ink of night with the saturated brilliance of the dawn.

Of all the experiences I was fortunate enough to be granted through that cabin, one weekend will always stand as the ultimate testament to the power that place contained.

I had just turned 19 and was home for the summer after my first year of college. Pretending to be straight was taking a toll on my mental health, and the freedom I was given through no longer answering to my parents found me learning lessons of consequence, one of which was flunking out of school.

I chose not to tell my parents about any of my woes despite occupying the same house. I was terrified by the thought of disappointing them. Instead, I picked up two full-time jobs and worked my ass off. The ultimate goal was to save as much money as I could before I left in September. My parents were under the impression I would be headed back to college, but my real plan was to leave my hometown and pursue a new life in New Orleans.

During an extended weekend in July, I took two of my closest childhood friends up to the cabin. Included in our scant provisions for our weekend was an ounce of cubensis mushrooms.

Upon arriving at the cabin, we dumped the bag of mushrooms into a large bowl and placed it in the middle of the kitchen table.

Over the course of the weekend we nibbled away at them leisurely.

The perfect combination of place and people (two key components of a successful psychedelic experience) provided a space to sort through the issues I was grappling with at that time, all through the lens of psilocybin.

Photo Courtesy of Steven Cordes

The mushrooms allowed me access to an ancient understanding of the way the universe works and my place in it. They showed me how that knowledge lived in me at all times, like a collection of books I’d forgotten about that had been stuffed in the back of a closet in my mind - I had just been unaware of it.

Most importantly, I was given the epiphany that my life was mine to live and no one else’s. Not my parents, not my friends...it was all my responsibility, and I was the only one putting limits on what I was capable of accomplishing. I realized that contentment in living your life starts and ends with being truthful with your words, your actions, and above all, with yourself.

When I left Shelby, Montana, and headed out to New Orleans at the end of that summer, I may not have made the most graceful exit, but it was an intentional one. I let that intention guide me and I ended up in a place where the isolation and loneliness I’d always lived with gradually gave way to a new life; a life filled with acceptance and the support of a community.

It took a few more years to officially come out to all my friends and family. Regardless, the catalyst for that outcome was a direct result of that weekend spent with my childhood friends at the magical cabin on the outskirts of Glacier National Park; a weekend during which the universe whispered sacred knowledge to me in a dialect of absolute truths, and I had enough sense to shut up and listen.

Rian is a beach leisure enthusiast with a penchant for hyperbole.

He creates with words and with music compulsively. His pappy was

a pistol, and he’s a son of a gun.

Find Rian on IG: @biffpowbang.

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AI ART by Rob Sanchez

Cosmic Connection

by Rob Sanchez

V

iolet light exploded across the dunes. The barren white sand stretched for miles, farther now that he tried to focus. He searched for the horizon. That line of familiarity and grounding was lost now as the night sky blended in a seamless wash of dark purple with bursts of starlight. The constellations he’d grown accustomed to were distorted and moved organically like creatures alive and unaware of him watching. There he sat, as if a spectator of

an event, witnessing chaos emerge from nothingness.

He didn’t have time to address the thought further. It seemed the creatures grew fearful of something and began to move from the sky.

There was no formality to her departure or his descent; she was gone a moment later. The camping chair dug into his sides where her arms had been. The stars seemed to have got the memo as well, resuming their natural places. Restless dunes were dormant now as if hibernating for the next season. The fire moved in slow motion casting odd shadows for a moment before speeding up unnaturally to catch up and fall into sync with reality. He wiped a hand over his eyes and reached for the water at his foot. He took a deep breath while listening to the silence of the dunes and the crackling fire nearby. Content and connected, he smiled.

Rob is a Certified Ganjier and the owner of Apartment 113 Cannabis Connoisseurship & Consulting. He has a lifetime of cannabis experience, having started as a cultivator and hashmaker in Denver's medical days. He now works as a product manager and agile coach for BLAZE Seed-To-Sale.

Apartment113.com

He could feel a hint of anxiety deep within as new stars came into focus. Wavering at first, they grew in intensity before forming the shape of a woman. She was walking across the sand toward him; the dunes formed as a result of her colossal footsteps. She was mentally and spiritually difficult to observe; bright light that brought tears to his eyes. He wanted to look but could hardly bear it. A multitude of colors raced across her form as she leaned forward and picked him up from the sands where he watched. In her hands, he rose into the sky with a rush of wind. It was clear now that he hadn’t been watching anything from on high; in fact, he had been deep within something resembling a crib. The figure showed him the world from her perspective. He could see it had really only just begun.

Her face was dark and featureless with brilliant eyes shifting from pink to red and back again. Although there was nothing said, he felt her intentions were good. The wind increased and the dark sky spread out before them. There they stood together looking out above reality. Nothing was left but darkness until a spark in the distance caught his attention. It was a city that moved with the same erratic and beautiful light the woman was made of. Every building seemed to twist in an Escher-like zigaraut, spiraling upward. As he made it out and tried to look closer, she moved away, carrying him into the darkness. In two steps, they were near the desert again; he could see it from here.

Photo Courtesy of Jimmy Larry

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I closed my eyes, and that's exactly when I entered the galaxy.

Sandra

First, my chest started to feel that feeling of impending doom mixed with elated happiness. It's called passion. It takes over and

By Natalie Goldberg

I usually don't know what to do. So, I grabbed my chest and n the Fourth of July weekend, my entire city, along

O

with

many

entitled

cities

in

the

country,

gleefully

independence.

I

knew

it

would

be

better

on

mushrooms. I decided to have a healthy amount, but not exactly three

grams.

I

swallowed

them

around

5

p.m.,

just

emotions were released. I closed my eyes. I saw a shape. I saw a heart. I saw an entire new world.

blew up color-bombs in the air to celebrate our

country's

hoped to magically heal my heart. I started crying and then the

before

fireworks infiltrated the night. I made sure to have my journal nearby.

I felt compelled to wipe my tears and grab my journal. I knew something was happening. My chest felt so passionately eager to reach someone. To reach her. To reach....SA

NDRA.

My hand

started to write out, "Sandi, where are you!?" In my state of mind, I knew I didn't know who Sandra was, but I also knew to blindly

It really is like preparing for liftoff. It's such an exciting feeling.

trust this passionate feeling I had in my chest for her.

We

You know you're going somewhere but you don't know where. I

I could see her, my purple goddess.

make sure to prepare enough weed to keep it handy the entire

along

hour waiting for them to kick in. I continue to prepare all things

floating. It wasn't dark enough in this world. I could see some

needed, like water and THC chocolate bars. The more THC, the

daylight, which was something I never experienced with her.

dark

pipes,

elevated

and

were floating, again,

somehow

suspended,

yet

not

better.

I told her I thought she looked so pretty in this new outfit. She was wearing white leather with what

were

possibly

buttons

hanging

off.

She

looked down at it to check it out. She said, "I like my new outfit, thanks!" She genuinely seemed grateful

for

my

fashionable

expertise.

Apparently, it's understood that I influence what she

wears.

Somehow,

her

existence

is

just

understood to me, under these circumstances.

I know it's my purple goddess who now has a name. I remember feeling uneasy with her name.

I

have

name.

never My

particularly

Barbies

were

had

a

draw

named

Jane,

to

that

Janie,

Daphne, or Lynn. I could feel my consciousness trying to analyze why I would create that name.

Even so, I called out to her, "Sandi, what do I do about this loneliness?"

She was always smiling. She assured me I wasn't alone.

I

immediately

thought

to

ask

about

my

native man that I run into during these trips. She Photo Courtesy of Genessa Panainte

said

he

is

always

with

me.

"He's

always

protecting you. He's always with you!"

It was around 45 minutes in and I was already seeing through And at that moment, it's as if Sandra knew I would look into a the wavy veil. The edges of my vision are misty, like a soft-glow light that I like to look into when I’m tripping. In this light, I can filter is placed over a lens on a camera. It makes everything quite see so many fractals, flowers, mountain peaks, graphic designs, beautiful. Even my discarded Hello Kitty pants by the pool's spiders, entities, and kaleidoscopes. As she reminded me that he lounge chair were so beautiful.

was with me, I turned to this light, which shines red and rests by After

being

assaulted

neighbors

the power symbol on my television set. In it, I could see the most

laughing followed by belligerent yelling, I decided to go inside. I

graphic headdress being worn by a masculine figure. He was so

ended up going into my dark bedroom, getting into my bed's

gorgeous, I was taken aback. I felt so in awe that someone so

covers,

beautiful and strong could ever love me. He enhanced all his

specifically

with

under

the

my

shrill

noise

weighted

of

the

blanket.

I

wanted

to

listen to something besides bombs, so I put on atmospheric space music.

facial features as if to bolden his strength.

The intricacies of his feathers and attachments to his head gear were breathtaking. The precision in detail was out of this world. And I guess I was too.

With such a vision, I had lost Sandra. Soon after, I recall lying on my bedroom floor and remembering that Animal Collective was going to be coming to town in concert. I decided to listen to their song, “In the Flowers.” I label songs as "my favorite" if they have a hook that is unlike any other part of the song. I like that this song is filled with higher notes that tend to drop without any mid-range notes in between. I don't know why this is. It feels similar to a roller coaster; the way you spend so many emotions cycling through the mystery of what the drop will feel like, and then when you're finally suspended, it lasts seconds that feel like the fastest seconds of your life.

The middle part of the song, at roughly 2:25 - "If I could just leave my body for a night..." - is when my body jolted up and decided to take action.

The amount of chaotic noise produced in that instance of the song is quite beautiful to me.

Sandra Portrait by Natalie Goldberg Submerged in the high, light notes you can hear a drum, consistent with a tribal beat. That drum is reminiscent of your heartbeat. Animal Collective knows!

He was assigned to purchase an important item for me in They always have these tribal beats in their songs. It's a source preparation for the concert. The store, Sweet Charity, carried of connection to "the network." If you dance and sing, you can the ideal hair-dye. He said a couple of punks laughed at him get connected even more!

when he asked where he could find purple hair-dye. They happily provided him with Manic Panic Plum.

Yes! I had to play the song loud! I turned off the lights! I started to dance! As I enjoyed the music in the darkness of my childhood When he arrived home that night my sister and I snatched the bedroom, I was completely reminded of the moment Pearl Jam bottle and got to work on my super long, thick head of black came to town circa '93. I ignored these images as I danced. I tried strands. I knew I was entering a new era of my life. I was going to push them away. I kept seeing them, however.

to experience the man who's been singing to me in such depths of sorrow. I was going to finally see this band in the flesh. I was It was the release of Pearl Jam's second album in the early 1990s. going to experience something new, a sensory-fulfilling and My father pulled up to the house after work, exhausted, genuine moment with the band themselves, in the same room. opening the screeching door of our white Lincoln Town Car. It was the best looking car we could afford at the time, according to dad. My older sister ran past me, screaming to my father, "Dad! Dad! They just said on 98-Rock that Pearl Jam tickets went on sale at Sam Goody, RIGHT NOW!" With one leg already outside the car, my Dad stiffened up and said with complete seriousness, "Well then get in the car! Let's go get those tickets!"

I know my father was difficult, but there were these times.

These times were so good that the mushrooms remind me of them. I loved his dedication to adventure. I know that shared passion alone makes me his daughter. He supported the Pearl Jam concert a lot. After work, in business attire, he drove into the cool parts of the city where hippies and patchouli reigned.

As I danced in the dark to my modern-day passion band, I knew I was receiving a message. The song was

coming to an end, my emotions were slowly diminishing. I knew I had to take action. The first thought that entered my head was my sister. I grabbed my phone and somehow figured out to take it off airplane mode (this is always a practice I do before liftoff).

As I fumbled through her text-thread, I started to type, "Please help me with the logistics of buying a ticket for the Animal Collective concert this Thursday." After a few more dozen frantic pleas, she agreed. Once I saw the ticket purchase, my emotions of relief came over me. I sat on my bed with my heart rate quickly dropping. I breathed heavily after dancing in my room. What was happening? I was going to a concert alone. I closed my eyes and asked why?

My fears keep me closed in as a hermit, usually. I had heard the band was going to be coming to town but I instantly visualized myself in a swarm of sweat and airborne diseases. I could visualize myself dropping to the ground as random pops continued to go off. And the worst part of it all was going to be the drive across the bridge of water to get to the concert venue.

No, I wouldn't do any of it. I have never seen Animal Collective live and, yes, I imagined it to be something amazing, especially on a little bit of mushies, but me and my safe ways would not allow it. Until now. Until I closed my eyes and asked why. I saw a large globe with a cartoon face smiling at me. A skinny hand extended off this playful globe. He said, "You came to this earth to have experiences! Well, here's an experience!"

I could see a makeshift band performing on a stage that he somehow enlarged like a magnifying glass, stemming from the Florida peninsula. I telepathically begged to know why again.

"This is where you'll find your tribe. You must go!"

I don't usually get out. I have slowly diminished my desire to be among adventures. I tripped while sitting in my mother's back porch lanai, enjoying the most beautiful fireworks show in the sky.

Photo Courtesy of Jurian Kersten

Photo Courtesy of Polygraphus

We used to go to the movies on firework nights because the theaters were empty. The last time I entered a movie theater was in 2013. My father died the next year. He loved the movies.

He wanted to see Sandra Bullock in that space movie. I remembered we both didn’t particularly like it, however he thoroughly enjoyed watching her in films because he considered her as an intellectual with sharp looks.

I am genuinely writing this from my heart, and I am just now realizing what just happened here. I am a little spooked. I write like water. I just let it flow. Sandra Bullock. Sandra. Perhaps

there is a divine thing going on; maybe my father’s spirit is persuading me to have some fun again. I have chased romance for so long that I missed out on a lot of adventures. I am in love with my purple goddess, Sandra. She is in control, possessing maternal love, confidence toward my will, and an absolute eternal beauty.

Once I looked up the meaning of the name Sandra, I gasped and yelped out "Oh my god!" like I always do when I get punched in the stomach with a synchronistic moment. The name Sandra means “helper of mankind.”

This is the kind of stuff that breaks your ego down. I remember being so atheistic and sticking my nose up at people who believed they were meditating. Yoga was just a part of being "posh."

Fast forward to the present moment, and I'm all of a sudden wanting to rewatch Gravity.

I think this time I will cry my eyes out.

Nurse Natalie is a psychiatric and pediatric nurse who recently transitioned into the cannabis industry, and has been giving Florida’s medical cannabis patients guidance and knowledge on how to treat their ailments. She’s currently blogging to spread awareness on the medicinal qualities of cannabis and psychoactive plants.

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My Journey With Cannabis Toward a Lighter Way of Living

By Scarlet Weaver

T

he first true experience I had with cannabis was in my late teens. In high school, I had a handful of people I knew who had smoked cannabis before. They always have the whole “Say no to drugs!” bullshit in school. You know the one, where they show you pictures of drug addicts and tell you that’s what will happen to you. I must admit I never once believed that cannabis would do any of the things they said it would. Being in the Bible Belt, I pretty much assumed most things I was taught were highly exaggerated because eternal damnation was on the line.

After many years of having less than stellar “parents,” I was a little damaged, and cannabis started to seem more and more enticing. So, what does any 17-year-old with a horrible parentchild relationship and years of sexual trauma do? We find a stranger who can get us what we want. Long story short, I spent my 17th birthday higher than Jesus, eating my body weight in food at Denny’s, and checking out animals at the pet store.

Yes, It Is Indeed Ironic A week after my introduction to the stoner world I was pulled over and arrested for possession. I’m sure you can imagine how well that went over with my mother.

This experience sent me on a path of prescription drug abuse and self-destruction. I truly don’t know how I came out alive.

There were nights I didn’t think I would wake up. When I got clean, doctors and psychiatrists told me weed was what made me a drug addict, but I still didn’t believe them. I had my experience, and I knew better than what they were telling me.

In the years following my arrest, I got married, pregnant, and separated, then moved halfway across the country. My love affair with the green goddess had been on pause for some time, but, just like a faithful lover, she came back to me - and oh, how sweet she was.

There was a beautiful woman I met who changed my life. Her personality was electric. She was gorgeous, bubbly, successful, and established - and she was the biggest stoner I had ever met.

I remember my daughter was sick and had to be hospitalized the day I bought my first eighth from her.

That day is burned into my brain for the rest of my life. I remember looking out the pediatric unit window, then looking back at my helpless, almost limp child. I felt empty. For the first time, I felt absolutely nothing. Then, the thought crossed my mind. I have weed at home… When I get home none of this will matter anymore, and I can smoke.

At that time in my life, I felt like I was in a living hell. I worked so much that I never got to see my daughter awake. I wasn’t eating, and liquor had become my best friend. My boss threatened to fire me every other week and had people following me around work. I felt as though I had no escape from my circumstances, but cannabis was always there for me to take a mental break from it all. While I don’t necessarily recommend using it to escape your life, that is exactly what I did. For a long time, it worked for me rather well.

Allowing the Space for Healing Then along came my current partner, Brad. When I met him, the way in which I used cannabis changed dramatically.

Through him I was able to quit my job and become the stay at home mom I didn’t know I wanted to be. I decided that having all of this newfound extra time was the perfect excuse to finally relax a little. At that point, the occasional cannabis use became my therapy. Not in a self-discovery way, but more so in a way that allowed for the deepest level of relaxation I had ever experienced. After a year or so of relaxing my nervous system, the traumas I had experienced began to bubble up.

Photo of Writer Scarlet Weaver

I had some very deep unhealed wounds that were wrecking my

I

am

almost

convinced

there

isn’t

anything

in

the

world

life and my relationship. I feel so bad that I let it get as horrible

cannabis can’t help with. Is this 100 percent true? There is no

as it did. Luckily Brad stuck with me, and I’m better off for it. If I

way to know for sure, but, in my life, this has proven to be the

didn’t have the space and time at home to allow those feelings to

case, and it will continue to be the case.

come whenever they wanted, I would have never healed from There is nothing better than lighting up a bowl them. with

my

man

after

he

gets

home

and

simply

The thing for me with cannabis and trauma is, it

enjoying each other’s company, and there is no

doesn’t make the trauma go away. What it does is

feeling

slightly

dull

the

emotional

response

to

it.

That

that

myself

compares

when

I

to

how

proud

and

have

smoke

I

am

of

positive

Thankfully,

allows me to see the trauma almost from a third-

conversations and experiences with my kids that because of

party view, and to process the information fully

I may have never had otherwise. After battling cannabis, I was

so that I can then accept it. It doesn’t mean I don’t

through

years

of

trauma,

enjoying

a

life

of

able to avoid

cry, but oftentimes our emotions can be so strong

pleasure with my family is everything and more opioids and my

that we can’t fully see what is going on. If we can

to me, and I have cannabis to thank for this gift second baby was

take that wall down to see the bigger picture we

of ultimate gratitude. born healthy and

can heal.

strong.

During

my

cannabis

as

second a

pregnancy,

medicine.

I

had

I

began

nerve

using

pain

in

addition to “normal” pregnancy pain because my expanding uterus was being ripped open as a result of the cesarean birth I had with my first baby. I couldn’t have made it through my second pregnancy without the pain relief cannabis provided. It made my discomfort manageable, because when you have a toddler you can’t just lay down and rest as you please when it comes to pain management. Thankfully, because of cannabis, I was able to avoid opioids and my second baby was born healthy and strong.

Relaxing My Way Into Other Realms

I recently journeyed through a three-week tolerance break, and then

had

yet

another

beautiful

reunion

with

my

cannabis

queen. The experience was the most intense mental shift I’ve ever had. Now, maybe it was the Oklahoma heat, but I left this realm

and

found

myself

nestled

in

between

dimensions.

The

relaxation was so real it felt like I died. I was floating in a place I had never been before, and haven’t been since. I could hear my partner

talking

receiving

a

in

mental

the

far

background,

download

of

but

masses

of

I

felt

like

information

I

was from

another dimension.

Once again, my relationship with cannabis transformed. I had been using cannabis as an aid in my meditation practice before the break, so maybe something about THC is a cue for my brain to swap into a meditative state. There is a chance that what I experienced think

had

cannabis

nothing holds

a

to

do

with

powerful

cannabis.

key

to

Regardless,

unlock

I

mental

experiences that are far beyond our ability to understand.

Cannabis is for Everything

I truly do mean everything. Cannabis has changed my life, as well as who I am as a person - and all for the better.

Scarlet Weaver (aka Casey Renteria) is a mom of three with a passion for plants and cannabis. She has worked in the industry for four years and fell in love with it. The best way to get in touch with her is by email at c.rent_21@yahoo.com.

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