|
|
There
are two kinds of readers who caution me about the occasional
references to narcotics that appear in these pages. The
first group is composed of closet Nazis who masturbate thinking
about ruling police states in which law enforcement is so
pervasive that websites like mine are monitored by Johnny
Law. The second group is made up of all the poor damn fools
who have smoked themselves silly, wakin’ and bakin’ for
25+ years and are now experiencing the paranoia that high school
health class movies told us would eventually result from
extensive marijuana use.
Yeah, buddy, and we thought those movies were hysterical and a lot of hooey at the time. Come to think of it, at that same time, we also thought Grand Funk Railroad was a good band. In any event, if the police ever want to visit me and spend more time in my neighborhood, they’re welcome, though enough advance notice to make a pot of tea would be nice and, of course, I’ll have to retract this offer if Robert Downey, Jr. ever takes me up on my offer of lodgings.
Being a more-or-less law-abiding citizen these days doesn’t mean that I don’t remember narcotics, just that I'm too lazy, sedate and poor to look for them, and alcohol, which is legal, has always been my drug of choice, anyway. Well, memories of narcotics and rising alcohol prices recently made me try a little experiment – I gambled $20 or so on an ounce of “Wacky Weed,” a legal smoking mixture from an online source, and it worked for me.
This particular product is yerba lesca yenna laced with salvia divinorum, a fluffy, not-too-harsh herbal mixture. Once you start searching the Net for “marijuana alternative,” “smoking mixture,” “head shop” or some other likely catchphrase, you’ll find a lot of options, brand names and online retailers, and a huge range of prices. I can only speak for “Wacky Weed” from www.herbsmoke.com, myself, and it does produce a mild euphoria that, to the extent to which my memory allows me to judge, is a close cousin to a real marijuana high.
It’s not as strong as good pot was a quarter century ago, but you wouldn’t have bitched too much about quality if you’d gotten something with the impact of Wacky Weed on the street at the going 1976 rate for homegrown. It doesn’t produce hunger or a “crash,” and the impression it makes on the user is a little more physical and less mental than that of pot, but the feeling it produces is definitely a stoned feeling.
Because it’s factory cleaned of seeds and stems, it’s an almost 100% useable ounce. The biggest problem you’ll encounter is the occasional tough, twiggy spine of a tiny leaf, which will poke through a rolling paper if you’re as out of practice rolling joints as I am. The smoke is fairly mild, so holding it in is not the problem some marijuana used to cause. Remember coughing like a yellowjacket had just flown down your throat, spewing tears, snot, phlegm and catarrh every whichaway and still trying to convince yourself and your friends that you were having a good time? Well, Wacky Weed gives you a good time while leaving the lining of your trachea intact.
As I recall, the effects of pot max out at 6-8 hits … it serves no purpose for the average person to smoke any more at one session than that. Wacky Weed maxes out at 3-4 hits per session, said “session” being around two hours in length, similar to a peak pot high. Again, it’s milder than and not an exact twin to a marijuana high, but it’s close, and what a wild experience it is after a long, long hiatus.
Okay, I’ve indulged a few times over the past two decades on rare and special occasions, like at Wizard of Oz viewing parties, for example, but as far as being in my own house, stoned, alone and exploring, you might as well call me “Splif Van Winkle.” Remote controls for the TV and CD player are really great inventions. Movies on videotape … what a concept. CD sound, huge-ass speakers, housecats and recliner chairs all expand their missions into new dimensions and fulfill those missions most cushily.
There are some real assbiters out there; people who get high on bringing other people down, and these folks will tell you that Wacky Weed is a sham. You know the type. They’ll try it and fight like hell against it, some will even put their hands in boiling water a few minutes after trying it to stave off any chance of euphoria. Just don’t involve them in your Wacky Weed experience. Suggest to them that they might prefer standing in front of a candy store with a small child and saying, “No, you can’t have any of that,” and get back to your rolling.
5/10/01 Addendum
I've shared Wacky Weed with ten friends, eight of whom experienced mild euphoria much as I did. My theory, therefore, is that of all the herbs that one might smoke, marijuana has become the most popular because no one's immune to it, whereas a certain percentage of potential consumers are not effected at all by yerba lesca yenna, salvia divinorum or the other alternatives. In any event, Wacky Weed works for me and 80% of the friends I've shared it with to date, so I'm happy with it. Five attempts to share it were completely unsucessful for one reason or another. One guy tried it after five beers and couldn't tell whether it was doing anything or not. Two others lit up while exhausted and already in bed and went to sleep five minutes later.
Still two more, approached on the street, told, "Hey, this is a legal marijuana alternative I ordered recently, so here's a joint of it for you to sample," recoiled as if I'd tried to hand them cobras, though I knew full damn well that either of them would have gladly taken real marijuana from me if I'd handed it to them in a less public setting. This perplexed me until I realized, "Hey, both of those idiots are on probation," so I guess they have reasons most of us don't have to be paranoid. I still don't see the downside to it, though. If I told them I was handing them something legal, then handed them an illegal substance and they were busted for it, that would be a clear case of entrapment and they'd beat the rap. Besides that, it's offensive that these friends would think I was trying to set them up in the first place, but as stated early on in this article, I've noticed that longterm marijuana use does seem to cause paranoia.
A final friend, presented with a Wacky Weed joint, lit it up on a downtown street, took a big ol' viper's hit on it and passed it to me, exactly as one would do in a traditional pot-smoking session. This seemed like an attempt to entrap the law to me, because although the stuff is legal, there's just no reason to pass a handrolled, non-tobacco cigarette back and forth on Front Street unless you're really hard up for a ride to the police station. I've smoked the stuff walking through residential sections with no sidewalk traffic myself, but that's relatively inconspicuous because it doesn't look like pothead behavior. Anyway, the friend who lit up in a crowd stubbed the Wacky Weed out after realizing that it smelled like something other than tobacco, and I hope he enjoyed smoking the rest of the sample at home and will write to let me and readers know about it.
Yes, I would
call Wacky Weed a successful experiment. If this article
leads you to similar experiments of your own, set up a
sensible environment inside and outside your body for
experimentation. If you’d like to critique any legal
psychotropics here at Word On The Street,
please submit copy here.