I don’t need my weed to be “bad-ass.” I don’t need anything to be “bad-ass” really, but in an attempt to describe certain strains that pack a real mind/body high punch, whatever Grub Street Pot Poet is naming this stuff recalls a bunch of teens in their basement coming up with names for their hardcore band—“tough”-sounding descriptors that connote intensity, chaos, brutality thrown out there in order to find one more way to basically be like, “This shit’ll fuck you up, bro.”
Ditto for this ultimately rather subtle if vehement strain that’s almost all sativa saddled with the dopey punk band name of Trainwreck. This strain is not at all bad-ass and will, as the preceding paragraph clearly indicates, send you on all kinds of thought tangents and riffs and into an interzone of general, brainy obsequiousness that would be truly intolerable (maybe they should’ve called this one Mind Trap!) if it didn’t bring with it a pain-relieving body high that’s truly something special.
There is usually an opiate-like feeling that comes with strains that are big on sucking the anxiety and pain out from under you for a while, but Trainwreck is more dreamy than cloudy (mainly, it seems, because it’s almost entirely a sativa with a low but crucial percentage of indica in there too) and is a strong example of the way cannabis is not only a way less addictive replacement for pain pills but a rarefied reliever all its own. It’s as if you inhale some Trainwreck—it has a delightful tangy, cologne sour taste that doesn’t recall any other strains—and it races through your body and latches onto your joints and then lightly pounds and massages them for a few hours. That must be the indica elements doing their thing, and it’s easily one of the most promising strains in terms of sativa and indica talking to one another—no, better yet, conversating, rapping with one another, you feel me?
Here’s how Leafly begins its description of Trainwreck by the way: “Trainwreck is a mind-bending hybrid with potent sativa effects that hit like a freight train . . .” So maybe they should have called it Freight Train instead? Being hit by a freight train is kind of different from being in a trainwreck. The former conjures a kind of immediate, maybe even blissful obliteration that isn’t far off from Trainwreck’s effects and the latter, a gnarled, burning and multi-part scene of chaos and pain. But hey, sounds bad-ass doesn’t it? Or OK, to be fair Wikileaf offers up this as the origin: “As the story goes the two brothers [from California who created it back in the ‘70s] had to pull their crop early because there was a nasty train wreck that happened near their grow site and they didn’t want it discovered, thus the name.” I prefer that possibly apocryphal story because it has a kind of scrappy, Townes Van Zandt-ian whimsy to it—and because, one more time everybody, weed is not “bad-ass.”
- Strength: 8
- Nose: Lavender-infused cheap beer
- Euphoria: 8
- Existential dread: 4
- Freaking out when a crazy person approaches you: 5
- Drink pairing: Just water (heavy dry mouth with this one)
- Music pairing: Power Trip, “Nightmare Logic”; or Townes Van Zandt, “The Late Great Townes Van Zandt”
- Rating: 8