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Products - Spice-Like Smoking Blends

Experiences With Cannabinoid Smoking Blends

I have spent a couple of years as a moderate-to-heavy pot smoker, and recently tried a number of cannabinoid smoking blends (having largely given up pot due to life-changes). I noticed a number of similarities with cannabis, but also a number of differences, which were subtle but potentially important.

To make this meaningful, I should probably outline what pot generally does to me first, as the experience can be somewhat subjective.

Cannabis usually:
* Makes me dreamy and prone to 'revelatory' thoughts.
* Makes me feel like doing creative things.
* Makes me susceptible to being hypnotised by screens and the like.
* Improves the quality of sensations - especially tactile sensations.

I tried a number of smoking blends, and all of them had pretty consistent effects. The blends I tried were:
* All the Spice formulations (Gold, Silver, Diamond)
* Kronic
* Smoke
* Dream and its stronger cousin Marley

All of these blends gave a sensation very similar to being stoned. However, on more consideration, the experience is more like a trip than a stone in the traditional sense. It almost feels like someone attempted to tailor a psychedelic drug to mimic a cannabinoid.

This led to a number of moments while high where I found myself 'losing my footing' (metaphorically speaking) and finding myself in mental territory I wasn't quite expecting. For example, Dream and Marley have both given me sub-hallucinations (particularly in low-light) which could have been disturbing in other circumstances.

I also found that the smoking blends (particularly the Dream brand) made me slightly but definitely clumsy. Again, it never caused me any harm, but it was an effect I'd never noticed with cannabis and it took me by surprise. The kind of clumsiness I'm talking about is on the level of catching myself on door frames or dragging my toes when I walk. I also experienced more 'stoned tongue' moments on these blends than on cannabis.

The final issue I noticed was the potential for addiction. I smoked cannabis heavily (at a minimum once a day) for two years, but had no particular adverse effects when I came finally off. After smoking Dream for about a week, I found myself experiencing quite strong cravings - even going to the point of searching through my bag and pants pockets for crumbs that fell out when I melted a hole in my baggie. This disturbs me in retrospect.

I don't think people should necessarily avoid these smoking blends - I found that all of them had positive effects on my creativity, and were generally fun to ingest in the same way as cannabis. My main concern with these products is that experienced cannabis users (such as myself) may be caught out by these subtle and insidious side-effects.

Exp Year: 2010	ExpID: 88184
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 28
Published: Jul 16, 2019	Views: 1,315
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Products - Spice-Like Smoking Blends (472) : Addiction & Habituation (10), Retrospective / Summary (11), Unknown Context (20)