DOSE:

8 hits

smoked

Cannabis

(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

235 lb

I only smoke the sweet leaf with my two closest friends, as they both know what I am into as far as conversation, music, food, and such; and I like to experience the pleasurable effects of cannabis most often in a controlled environment of quiet, relaxation, and serenity, with music being the exception.

I am not what you would call a partier, at least not through the use of cannabis, as I feel respectful towards the good grass’ penchant for allowing me to explore my mind, and to empathize with my friends on a much cooler level than say, just getting fucking jacked up on whiskey and weed and jamming to Pantera at a crowded college frat-house.

One of my favorite things about smoking cannabis is the unique musical experiences that are unlocked as a result of a really good stone. I also like how cannabis, at least for me, is a compromising, agreeable drug, in the sense that it lets outside factors such as music, television, and human speech and movement drive The Stone, instead of The Stone driving my perception of the outside factors so that these things become unrecognizeable.

I would like to share an interesting cannabis story, involving music and a really cool experience that I had just recently. I stopped at my friend Rob's house after class. I am freelancing and studying to become an arts and entertainment journalist, as I often do, just to see how he was doing. As per usual, he was sitting on the couch smoking marlboro full flavors and watching the stock reports on some news channel.

He had an open bag of some really excellent-looking bud laying on his coffee table, and a nice, clean-looking bubbler-pipe that was still smouldering from a series of hits that he had taken. I snagged one of his marbs and lit it with his windless butane torch that is shaped like a bullet and asked him about the grass on the coffee table.

He informed me that it was good Mexican Sinsemilla, which I had always wanted to try, and assured me that it was very sticky; very Cheech, very Chong. I always enjoy a good whiff of a new bag, particularly one that I could smell from halfway across the room, through an ambient haze of marlboro and pot smoke. And this stuff was just that pungent, filling my olfactory space with a woodsy, piny taste. The buds were very burlacious, looking like wet tarantulas, basking in furry/crystaline brilliance.

Without offering, or speaking, Rob began to fill his bubbler pipe, which generally holds about eight to ten large hits in a decent packing, with the furry, dank greens. He then pulled a large hit and spewed the thickest, creamiest white smoke I have ever seen, handing me the smouldering bubbler. I hit the Sinsemilla with a deep, long hit, because his bubbler-pipe was so clean and allowed for a smooth, easy-pulling drag. The grass tasted really pungent, but not harsh, and it really heated up my lungs, causing me to cough lightly, which I don't mind, if you catch my drift...

Rob and I handed the bubbler back and forth four or five times, and I was already starting to have the celophane veil of clarity drop over my vision. I call it my view from inside the aquarium of consciousness...Rob packed another, smaller pinch of the Sinsemilla, and we polished it off in two or three hits apiece, bubbling away with the same deep dragging hits. In all, I imagine I had smoked about 2-2.5 gms of really nice bud.

The Stone was immediate, intense, but not brain-melting, and I really liked it. At the time, I had been listening a great deal to an Australian artist, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, and I had the CD with me so that I could let my friend Rob, also a music enthusiast, listen to the man's band. As I put the disk into his stereo. He has real quality speaker components. I cued up the tune I wanted him especially to hear, the track is the last one on Nick Cave and The Bad Seed's Nocturama LP, entitled 'I'm On Fire', Rob went to pour us each a glass of Australian Shiraz, a pretty good wine if you don't get carried away with it.

We sat sipping wine, and discussing women, as per usual, while listening to the mildly cacaphonous song playing on the stereo. The song that we were listening to is a sort of tribal chant of poetry with flourishing/discordant guitars and swirling, ultra fuzzed out Hammond Organ. It's a very repetitive song, and when you listen to it with a hard buzz on, which we both had, The Stone just sort of melts into the song and it’s one of those deals where you start to really pick up on things that the artist wants you to, as the the music steers your Stone. At this point, my Stone, which was already heavy, got really intense.

The supreme acoustics of the Polk Audio system, combined with Rob's large, hollow living room setup has a way of separating the various elements of music, in such a way that you can pick out the various levels of instrumentation in a song, and just groove on one or two things, such as, say, the lead guitar, or the organ's bass line. The guitar line in this particular song was where my head was at.

My buddy Rob was digging on that part of the song as well, because it had a strange quality to it. I've never been a really a big noticer of visuals when I smoke cannabis, but I think the cues from the music were throwing me into a bit of sensory overload, because this is the point at which my cannabis-laced perception of Nick Cave's song went into Whale Overdrive. By this time, I was picking up some cool, firefly-sized whitish-yellow tracers swerving from the speakers. The tracers seemed to time themselves with the flourishes of guitar in the song, as the speaker closest to me would release staccatto spurts of squiggling, tracing 'pellets' of light. It was as though the notes of music were giving birth to little bullets of light, sending these revved-up, electrofunk babies streaking out through the pulsating woofers of the speaker.

The lamp on the end table to my left, as well as the standing lamp on the other side of the room, as far as the little b.b.’s of light are concerned, seemed to function as magnets or attractants, as the little bullets of light would accelerate, squiggling towards and appearing to bounce off the lamp shades. It was as if the room were on fire with hundreds of whitish yellow glowing streaks of light, all in time with the song playing on the stereo.

I don't think that Rob was experiencing the same visuals as I was, because when I asked him if he dug the guitar part of the song, which he was air guitaring to, he just said something to the effect of, “Yeah, this shit is Insane Gargamel!”, or something like that, but no mention of any tracers or light streaks. Rob’s imagination and perception work a lot differently than mine (as everyone is a little different), but he was definitely entranced by the song as much as I was, so I just dropped trying to explain the phenomenon that I was picking up on and kicked back to enjoy it on my own. Eventually, the little “light show” just sort of faded, as I had begun to shift from appreciating one aspect of the song to another, and another, and another.

The rare weed visuals that I have flashed on in the past have all sort of worked in the same way, to where if I shift my concentration, say towards some cloud of thought that has floated in, or some conversation that is going on, the visual will just dissipate. It has always been tough for me to consciously groove on a visual or something like that, because like I explained earlier, outside factors sort of steer my Stone as a free flowing entity. And I enjoy that, because my Stones in this way seldom grate on my nerves or get me stuck on some monotonous plateau; but because of their maleability, and the way that they constantly morph and change, my Stones always keep me coming back for more experiences that allow me to enjoy my life and the world around me…

I just really enjoy musical experiences like that, and I think it is one of the main reasons behind my sincere enjoyment of Cannabis. Not that I am a hard-line type of guy who thinks that everthing enjoyable can automatically be enhanced by pot, but I like the idea of lighting up a joint, and just chilling to music, because of the relaxed, opened-up headspace that good Cannabis can help to put you into.

Thanks for letting me share, and enjoy your lives in kindness and acceptance of others...

Niadh

Exp Year: 2004	ExpID: 37725
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: May 4, 2007	Views: 6,535
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Cannabis (1) : General (1), Music Discussion (22), Glowing Experiences (4), Small Group (2-9) (17)