Berry OG/ Photo by Brandon Soderberg / Courtesy Democracy In Crisis

When it comes to pure, multitudinous sensation, Berry OG’s like a fully thought-out and conceptualized four-course meal. There’s just so much going on — a breezy combo of feelz and flavors, all cooked up by someone whose taste for discord you can mostly trust. A sweet, almost apple dankness becomes a kind of baffling burnt rotten meat smell when you break open Berry OG’s generally big buds, but somehow that’s all right. And when you smoke this unfixed, Indica-dominant mix of OG Kush and Blueberry, it goes in real harsh and hits the back of your throat and stings like the first stirrings of a cold coming on, while on the exhale, it alleviates and rolls out all smooth-like, with a firewood aftertaste.

What quickly follows is a bleary, blurry body high, but then, once my eyes racked focus, my facial features felt as though they were tethered rather than static — like my eyes, nose and mouth could float a little and weren’t assigned a fixed spot on my face. Oh and then, ripples of pleasantness shot through my legs. And after that, a lengthy session of talking-to-myself-and-whistling, dopey dad-ness. I was a game show host grinning into the void. There is something vaguely hallucinogenic to the strain, where it has you opening up your own interface and going meta, seeing through it all, and being totally OK with that. There is something sinister about that though, happiness veering toward the mandatory, but it’s one of the many temporary conditions here and soon Berry OG segues into a purer, joyful, manic mode.

The buds, meanwhile, look like a tiny fake tree you ripped from the landscape of a holiday train garden and with almost as many light red and orange veins as the green. It’s got a distracting hyper-real quality, probably appropriate for a strain that conducts wonder of the edgy, dim, delighted and then frenzied sort. Form and content match here.

You can totally feel this high going away, the joy of temporality. Every second you’re a touch less tangibly stoned. It is the slowest drip of a comedown. And that “Flowers for Algernon ON WEED” thing should be anxiety-inducing, but the high’s strong and intense and brings with it, as I said, a cheap sort of Zen, a pragmatic at-peaceness disinterested in tension. And then, well, actively, even stupidly optimistic frenzy. Imagine a creative explosion with the lid on it. The limitations are far out there but there, and tangible nonetheless, which paradoxically makes it easier to push yourself and let the high go where it may go. 

You’re in good hands with Berry OG.

  • Strength: 9
  • Nose: Yukgaejang if you left it out on the table for a day
  • Euphoria: 9
  • Existential dread: 2
  • Freaking out when a crazy person approaches you: 2
  • Drink pairing: Tea without caffeine
  • Music pairing: James Dashow, “Oedipus Orca”
  • Rating: 8

Brandon Soderberg was the Director Of Operations and is a cofounder of Baltimore Beat. He is the coauthor of the book I Got a Monster. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of Baltimore City Paper. His work...

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