Before we get going, crucial inside baseball worth your time: Weed writing, I fear, is maybe entering its annoying explainer phase, with lots of glib weed hot takes that essentially add up to “this commonly understood thing about weed is in fact bullshit.” Vice Motherboard published “Weed Strains Are Mostly Bullshit” on 4/20 of this year and the Portland Mercury’s recent Cannabis Guide ran a piece titled, “Please Shut Up About Indica Versus Sativa,” which declared, “supposedly, indica sedates and sativa uplifts. But here’s the thing: That’s all bullshit.” Both pieces are ultimately about the weed science vanguard: cannabinoids and terpenes. The former is the thing that gets you high, which is so much more complicated and does not end at THC, and the latter is what makes weed smell and taste a certain way and affects precisely how it gets you high, apparently.
Both pieces are important—at this point cannabis is an industry and we should not be lied to about things we’re sold—though I’d also say it’s generally not a good look to tell people what they are feeling and what is working for them is “bullshit,” especially when it comes to matters of the mind and body. My advice: When you’re reading up on the supposed specifics of weed or hearing your dispensary person’s spiel about some sick hybrid, ponder the info the way you might use a horoscope, which is to say, understand that it’s not so much about truth as a series of suggestions or offerings to take or leave.
If your horoscope says you’ll be sweeter to strangers or whatever today, it planted that thought in your head and that may dictate how you act. Even if it’s not cosmically or empirically true, it might make you be nicer to a stranger on that day—hooray. Same with weed: If someone out there somewhere thinks a certain strain helps them with depression or cleaning the house or whatever, smoke it, consider that, and see if it helps you too. If it doesn’t, you’re still stoned, so NBD.
If this is all reading as a touch hippy-dippy, blame it in part on Big Buddha Cheese, a strain with a truly staggering, evening-out quality that will fill you with good feelings and send you on thought tangents of the “yes and” rather than “no but” sort. Primarily an indica, Big Buddha Cheese is going to calm you (or maybe not, indica and sativa are bullshit weed, men yelling on the internet told me). And it famously took first place in the Indica Cup category at the 2006 Cannabis Cup. It’s a hybrid of Cheese, a UK standard that has since been refixed here in the States, and mashed up with serious Afghani stuff from noted grower Big Buddha. It is smooth with a subtle sting on the back end of the inhale, which hits your palette slowly—a bland then suddenly sharp taste. An easygoing smoke that yields nearly no anxiety and for serious smokers may feel as though you’ve not even smoked at all. BBC’s beloved for its easygoing, ambient type of pleasant. No bullshit.
- Strength: 7
- Nose: The cheese section of your supermarket but also cheap ChapStick
- Euphoria: 8
- Existential dread: 1
- Freaking out when a crazy person approaches you: 1
- Drink pairing: POM Pomegranate Peach Passion White Tea
- Music pairing: Warm Brew, ‘Small Victories’
- Rating: 10