Back in the early ’90s, I bought some Amsterdam “space cake” and learned that mighty lesson—never eat hash.
Except I didn’t learn, because, despite wandering the street with my girl for hours not knowing what city we were in, desperate to acquire a doner kebab just to re-establish some grounding for reality, I ate space cake again a couple of years later.
Just like before, it was among the strongest drug experiences in my life. And that takes some doing. This time we puked in the canal and fell into our sleeping bags on the sidewalk in the rain. I guess it had to be done.
It is easy to forget how uncontrolled cannabis dosing was until very recently. For years, I bought my weed from the same guy. I never asked what it was, never knew when it might be the same I’d bought last visit or when it would change.
“Dosing” wasn’t even in the vocabulary. I’ve written about microdosing before, a practice more and more common among long term (read “old”) cannabis consumers who have realized that a little bit is probably enough.
Not surprisingly, the youth of today have the opposite idea. As aging hippies used to complain about the too-high concentration of Gen X chronic, so now we pioneers of hip-hop and punk can now complain about 90% vapes and dabs. I’ve had the vapes, but not yet have I dabbed. I wonder what such a massive hit would do to me.
Dear reader, on 4/20 I put my body on the line for you.
After hacking from a dab professionally administered at the Barbary Coast smoking lounge in San Francisco, the only use-cases I can connect dabbing to are those shared with opiates.
If a 2.5mg mint can replace a second cup of coffee, a 90% dab-hit administered by a whooping hash-scientist with a name tag that reads “Jerry Garcia” is the intoxication equivalent of almost-too-much smack. It’s like that first time taking that extra vicodin, the one you regretted. The first time at least, but then … TA-DA!! … you have your own personal opioid epidemic.
And maybe that’s the thing. Because as soon as this type of gung-ho use became available, plenty of people and products went straight for the all-the-way-f’d use-case.
Given the dangers of opiate-happy doctors and fentanyl-cut street drugs, maybe dabbing has its place as a safer alternative to opiates.
“Just not this place,” say these lungs.
