Different types of cannabis suit different experiences and people. Here’s how to find your sweet spot

By John Garvey

For a three-year period of my life that was almost completely drama-free, I used to really enjoy a good, paranoid high. I would walk along the unlit, creekside walking paths that weaved through the neighborhood, take a few hits of Island Sweet Skunk, and try to tune in to my heartbeat, the muscles behind my eyes, and any prickling sensations of my scalp and hands. If you have both good mental health and comfortable circumstances, a paranoid high can be strangely pleasurable.

But most of the time, people want to avoid that. If you want a specific type of high, whether it’s relaxing, energizing, or serves a therapeutic purpose, it can be daunting to choose the right approach. Edible or smoke? Concentrate or flower? Indica or sativa? And so forth.

There are a couple of good, honest cannabis PR and marketing agencies out there, who see journalistic integrity as a part of marketing. But there’s also a lot of contradictory and misleading information from marketers and even seemingly objective sources.

What’s the best tool you have to navigate confusing and conflicting information about marijuana? Cross your eyes. Seriously, just take a moment to cross your eyes. Yep – there it is. Read on and I’ll tell ya how to use that nose.

Why we get high

When any intoxicating substance comes up, the quality of the user experience tends to take a back seat to how impaired it makes people. This brings up a point that is both philosophical and pragmatic: deep down, people care less about how high they get than about the quality of their experience. And we use substances, basically, for two reasons: levity and relief. We either want to subdue something unpleasant (rumination, anxiety, physical pain, etc.) or we want to elevate something pleasant, such as a recreational experience, creative pursuit, or social occasion.

This might seem academic, but there’s no getting around it if you want to …

Get high like a champion

The point of the “why” discussion is to make the case to check in with yourself before you get high. Checking in takes two forms.

Ask yourself why: “I’m getting high because I’m going to a concert and I think it will enhance the musical experience” is a very different answer than, “I’m getting high because I had a stressful week and need to mentally reset.”

This is why I opened up by discussing how I used to enjoy paranoid highs. What’s going to work best for you is situation specific. Indicas are generally relaxing; sativas are generally uplifting, but a little more likely to make you paranoid. This introspective check-in may also help you recognize if you’re just getting high for the wrong reasons and identify a better way of dealing with a situation.

Identify your bodily sensations, particularly where you’re holding tension and the quality of your breath. Basic mindfulness techniques go beyond the scope of this discussion, but tuning in and naming your bodily sensations can be a very effective way to curb anxiety.

Trust your nose. Literally

Trust your instincts, specifically your sense of smell.

As with food, your likelihood of having a positive experience is strongly related to whether you enjoy the smell of your weed.

This is not superficial or arbitrary. Terpenes, the aromatic compounds that give cannabis its scent and flavor, have literal effects on the mind and body. Terpenes smell familiar to us because they’re common in nature: Think of lavender, citrus fruits, pine trees, and black pepper.

The terpenes that give those things their appealing odor are also common in weed. You may not specifically, consciously recognize these odors in cannabis, or how they affect your mood. But you’ve been exposed to them over your life, and your affinity for them is influenced by intuition.

This isn’t to say that your sense of smell should negate considerations like budtender advice, user reviews, THC potency, or category (sativa, indica, hybrid). Your nose might not help you distinguish a high-energy, creative strain from a sedating strain that will help you get eight hours of restorative sleep. But if you’re going to smoke something, it should smell good – not just objectively, but to you.

There’s no party like a third party

Another way to get insights into strain characteristics that are (relatively) independent of marketing claims is to read Leafly reviews, which is basically Yelp for cannabis. While different factors, such as the reputation of the dispensary, influence whether the strain you’re buying is actually consistent with the label, Leafly reviews aggregate feedback from multiple users and provides you an educated guess about how a given strain will affect you.

There’s a lot of misinformation about cannabis’ therapeutic properties, including its impact on sleep, which is complex. For quick, accurate answers with little nuance, webmd.com is a better resource than your chiropractor’s blog. But informationisbeautiful.net has done better, compiling a lot of the research and presenting it in an appealing format with links to research papers.

Finally, some cliches are cliches for good reason: they’re valid and valuable. The golden rule of cannabis consumption is one such cliche: start low and go slow.

But if you think that’s no fun, now you know, it’s not the only mantra out there to get high like a champion. Let Toucan Sam be your pot shaman: Follow Your Nose!

John Garvey is a storyteller, freelance writer, illustrator, and nerd. You can see more of his creative ventures at clippings.me/johngarvey and CreativeFollies.com.

This story is in our May-June print issue. Click here to read the full magazine.