1. Cannabis-Smoke-Or-Eat?
Cannabis-Smoke-Or-Eat by Andrew Guthrie-Dow
What’s the best way to consume cannabis? Well, that depends on your personality, the setting, the time of life etc. For me, I was a young adult, just eighteen years old before I first met-up with Mary-Jane (marihuana). These days this would constitute being a late starter, but that age had already allowed me to build-up a significant cigarette-habit, so smoking was the only “natural” choice.
I was at Essex-University, that beacon of hope, rationality, irreverence and indulgence, where anything seemed possible, and sometimes it was. Having had a rigid, private-school education where the status-quo was always right, and facts were massaged to support that world-view, the received “wisdom” was that cannabis was a highly-addictive (whatever that means), mind-altering drug, that could only lead to self-destruction. With my personality type (basically a risk-taking social-idiot), this was something to be challenged. I could see the hippy-movement all around me via the TV, and I didn’t want to be too-late to the party.
My first tokes (sorry for the jargon, but it does prove authenticity; see page ninety-four for a summary-of-terms) were inevitable and uneventful. So uneventful that I followed-it-up with four pints of lager down the student-union bar. I was a bit of a piss-head in those days; well, I did come from Essex (the county). I’m a great believer if you don’t initially like something, try it again and again until you do. So eventually I began to appreciate cannabis. It was subtle, I was not, but we reached a rapprochement. It really did work better on its own without alcohol, in familiar environments, and shared with friends. This last point is critical to the smoke-or-eat debate; the degree to which these two modes of consumption “chime” in a social context (i.e. with other people).
Smoking cannabis has generated its own sub-culture over the decades. It has evolved rules, norms and conventions, just as drinking in the pub has. The most obvious manifestation of this is the rolling-of-the-joint, and like trooping-of-the-colour, enjoys a long-and-ceremonial history. First the cigarette papers are stuck together to form the basic substrate. There are many variants, and I eventually settled on the Jamaican-spliff where three individual sheets are used-and-fused. Then the tobacco or “leaf” (for avoiding nicotine and other nasties) is sprinkled over the papers, leaving a space for the roach or filter. Finally, the cannabis (grass/weed or hash) is sprinkled on-top of the tobacco, and the whole ensemble wrapped-up into a tube to form the proto-joint. This is where experts and amateurs are separated.
I was never that good at doing this, and as an evening wore on, and my level of stoned-ness increased, accidents would inevitably happen. If you were of the sensible-type you would place a tray under the proto-joint to catch the fall-out of ruptured-papers, tobacco and cannabis, ready for another-go. The only good thing of such an accident is the chorus of giggles from your “mates” as this happens, and try-as-you-may, you just have-to join-in. There is no short-cut here, like learning any skill, you have to put the effort-in to master the task, though I think the often quoted ten-thousand-hours measure is excessive (but glorious).
As I got more skilled, I learnt the Jamaican-spliff offers preferential treatment to the joint-roller for his-or-her efforts. What you did was to roll the proto-spliff into a funnel shape, the front-end it with more cannabis, which as the spliff-roller is usually afforded first light-and-toke rights, gives you an immediate super-hit, before having to pass it around. Depending on how greedy you were, and believe me, some people are incredibly greedy, half of the cannabis can be inhaled in a single breath. Anthropologists, sociologists and economists have written a lot about this over the decades about how ideas of fairness evolve (I’m only partially making this up!).
Then the roach or filter is inserted into the end-with the space, which again relies on skill for it to fit, and again is a high-risk part of the procedure. All that is left to do is to nonchalantly swing or tap the joint so that all the cannabis and filler is hard-up against the roach. The full-end is then twisted till it closes, and the spliff is complete. I have seen, and even been responsible for, this stage to go horribly-wrong, where the entire contents if the joint, roach cannabis and filler, is ejected like stepping on a tube of toothpaste, accompanied-by the utter-humiliation that follows!
Could anything else possibly go wrong at this stage? Oh yes it could! Let me tell you the sad tale of Dopey-Dave. He had done everything right, perfect-spread, perfect-roll, roach in and ready to twist-and-seal. He looked and realized he was trying to twist the roach-end, not the open-end. Silly-me, he thought, no-worry; lust flip the joint around and do-it again, which he tried. Problem though, he was so stoned he had inserted a roach perfectly at both ends! He kept the joint as a trophy for over a year before temptation got-the-better of him. Shame; it should have gone to a museum!
Finally, you light the joint and breathe deeply. You are almost there, over the finishing line, with only one hurdle left to jump. Can you hold the smoke-in, look-cool, and avoid a catastrophic coughing fit before passing the joint around? Again, much practice is required to navigate the cool-sad boundary safely-and-reliably. I’ve often thought there should be an episode of one of those trash-TV shows where the contestants (grandma versus grand-daughter/grand-son) are tasked with rolling-and-toking the perfect joint within a three-minute period (I’d bet on grandma every time).
Of course, you can always use a bong to smoke (I love the word “bong” and its sound; far better than “water-pipe”). This has many advantages, not least the ease and speed of preparation. The bag-to-brain delay is reduced from minutes to tens of seconds, and the opportunities for faux-pas are greatly reduced. You can always drop the bloody-bong and wait to see if it breaks (they’re surprisingly strong though!).
Anything else? Yes; dealing with fire when you’re stoned; never a good idea. Do you know how long it takes to react when burning cannabis-and-filler falls into your lap/crotch region? Milliseconds longer than it should, is the answer. We haven’t even got around to the smell, which personally I love, but the local neighbourhood-watch may not (what a fine bunch of men, women and crypto-fascists). You just can’t please everyone!
The only thing I can think of on the positive side of smoking cannabis is the auto-regulation of consumption. As you get more and more stoned it takes longer and longer to prepare the next jolt-of-dope. Eventually you are pretty-much incapable of performing any manual task, let-alone rolling a joint or loading a bong. A natural end-point equilibrium is reached; stoned-as-a turn, but not paranoid or psychotic, let alone “pulling-a-whitey” (where you go light-headed and almost pass-out). It’s only a very small, hard-core minority of users who seek these mental-states (guilty you honour?).
If I haven’t persuaded you yet that smoking-cannabis is ridiculous, let me add one other thought. Is smoking cool in the first-place? Is filling your lungs with carcinogens, in small or sometimes large amounts cool? No, it just plain isn’t (well that’s my thoughts anyway). As the Bible says (2nd book of Knackerdemus, chapter-seven, verse-five), “If God had wanted us to smoke, he would have given us fire-boxes and not stomachs”. Eating-cannabis though…
I first ate cannabis by mistake – honest guv! Again, it was at Essex-University. I was in the union bar after a few tokes in my college-room, and was half way through my second pint of lager (mixing cannabis and alcohol in general is not recommended by me – see below), when Cosmic-Ray sat-down next to me and asked if I was feeling hungry. I was (the munchies!). He produced a slice of “chocolate-cake” that went down very well, and we talked-on.
That’s the first time I experienced a “whoosher”. When it kicked-in it built rapidly, until I got some visuals and being slightly “freaked”, but not as bad as “meeting-the-ancestors”. I was still in control, and responded better to un-subtle than subtle. This was mega-unsubtle, like consuming six pints of lager and a pork-pie (Jesus, did I ever do that? Unfortunately, yes, and it’s the pork-pie bit that shocks-and-embarrasses me most now).
What I didn’t understand at the time was that when you eat cannabis, either as a consumable like a cake/jelly or directly as a (small?) chunk of hash, in the hour before it hits your brain it is transformed by your body into a similar but more potent form of THC, the active ingredient. I won’t bore you with the bio-chemistry going-on, but this result is like the difference between beer-and-brandy.
This is where I like to make the analogy of a smart-phone, or pc, or even a TV, or picture, which you can interpret the experience of in two complementary ways. Firstly, what’s physical; the science and electronics etc. – the stuff your doctor or teacher or obsesses about which leads to yawns all round (except for techy-heads like me), or by the content (the meaning of the images and sounds). This goes for cannabis too. You can view scholarly videos of the bio-chemistry, but that is not why people consume cannabis; it’s the effect, stupid! Cannabis is like a multiplier, it magnifies experiences such as listening to music, viewing a film, seeing the funny-side of things, or even having sex (though with sex you do have to concentrate or you tend to forget what you’re doing and just get the giggles instead!).
So, eating cannabis is an extreme multiplier of experiences, and its quite easy to over-do-it for the reasons explained. For us old-stoners this is part of the joy-of-cannabis; it can still catch you out even after years of practice. As for beginners, beware. As my partner Marvella once explained to a friend who is an ex-teacher, “Question1: How do you know when you’ve slightly over-done-it the first night in Amsterdam? Answer1: By waking-up in a strange-bed in a strange-apartment next to a transvestite! Question2: How do you know when you’ve really over-done-it the first night in Amsterdam? Answer2: By waking-up in a strange-bed in a strange-apartment in between two transvestites! Dear reader – you have been warned!
By-the-way, take a leaf from Marvella’s playbook on how best to deal with situations like this. She immediately took control of the situation by clapping her hands twice, then asking “everyone for coffee then?”. She then jumped out of the bed, marched to the door and opened it, which then caused the vacuum cleaner stored in the cupboard to fall out with that plastic “clunk” noise you get when you drop a vacuum cleaner. This was followed by all the attachments of the vacuum following one-by-one, each with a distinctive clunk. You know the attachments; strange brushes and tubes that usually end-up under the sink. After wrestling them back into the cupboard she then asked “just remind me where the kitchen is”, before making the coffee and attempting to reconstruct the events of the night before with those little, but important details, like people’s names, including her own. Class, pure class.