As a major anxiety sufferer and California resident, I’ve had a prescription for medical marijuana since 2006. In the decade since, I have tried — and made — all sorts of crazy cannabis products, but these days every time I go to the dispensary I see some new thing that you can eat or drink or rub on your body. As a public service, I decided to test out some of the more intriguing options to see whether they live up to the hype.
I’m getting high for you, folks, and don’t you forget it.
So what happened this week when I got too high in the name of weed science and tried a product made to counteract the negative effects of too much marijuana? Oh, you’re gonna want to find out.
Product: Mary’s Rescue Tonic
Purchased from: Emerald Room in Los Angeles
Ingredients: 1500mg of a proprietary blend, 100mg N-Acetyl-Cystine, 200mg L-Theanine, 150mg 5-HTP, 400mg Magnesium Citrate, 100mg Inositol, 500mg Vitamin C, 50mg Potassium, 3mg Sodium, Organic Cane Sugar, Natural Bardeaux Cherry Powder, Sodium Benzoate, Xanthan Gum, Potassium Sorbate, Citric Acid.
Suggested dosage: One 2oz bottle.
Actual dosage: One 2oz bottle.
Flavor: It didn’t taste great; it didn’t taste awful; it didn’t taste like anything, really. It comes in a 5-Hour Energy-sized bottle — you add water to the powder and shake it up and then chug all in one go. Something like this is really more medicine than food, and as long as it can be swallowed down without making me nauseated, it’s doing its job.
The experience: Oh boy, this was a fun one. So in order to truly test the efficacy of this potion, first I had to get high, really really stupid high. Did I ever! First I smoked a joint, then I went ahead and finished a bottle of blackberry weed syrup. An hour later, when I was definitely stoned but still enjoying myself too much, I ate a 100mg Rice Krispie treat. Thought about polishing off a 150mg bag of Weetos to really put me over the top, but turns out I didn’t even need it.
I took a shower because my hair felt impossibly greasy and when I got out I was roasting. To be completely honest I barely remember the hour or so that took place between the shower and when I finally decided to drink the tonic. My eyes weren’t looking at my phone screen right and I was having all sorts of thoughts about what love really means and the dilemmas of being a millennial adult and whether or not my tweets count as poetry and on and on and on. Finally, when my brain felt like a marshmallow bobbing in a pool of hot chocolate, I figured I was as high as I was gonna get and it was time to come down.
Mary’s Rescue Tonic is formulated for any situation where you’ve gotten too messed up, whether from edibles, dabs, or whatever. It doesn’t purport to sober you up, but, per the company’s literature, “may help reduce anxiety, relieve paranoia, and restore the user to a more grounded state of mind.” As I was feeling pretty anxious, mildly paranoid, and indubitably un-grounded, I was looking forward to finding out if this little bottle could do everything I was hoping for.
And fuck if it didn’t work like goddamn gangbusters. Pretty much immediately after I drank it, I started to feel calmer and clearer. My anxiety went away, and though I definitely was not in the realm of sobriety, after an hour I was having coherent thoughts and was able to write a text without deleting it eight times first. By the end of the night I was mostly just tired, mind and body exhausted by the chemical rollercoaster ride. Being too stoned usually keeps me awake — I accidentally took some weed pills thinking they were Advil a few weeks ago and was up until 5 a.m. — so it was nice that the tonic seemed to shut off the overworking part of my brain and allowed me to just drift off into a comfortable oblivion.
Conclusion: Six out of six, top marks, all the prizes for Mary’s Rescue Tonic. No one knows better than I how easy it can be to accidentally — or purposefully — ingest too much marijuana, and most people have a story about that time they had three of Matt’s brownies because they weren’t working at first and then ended up mud-wrestling alone in a compost pile after eating an entire pie. My point is that we have long needed an antidote to overdoing it, and I’m thrilled to report that that elixir is finally here, and it really fucking works. Keep some in your medicine cabinet just in case.
