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 went a little overboard with a high-dose cake pop? Did I write some long-form erotica? Did I learn all about recreational GHB use in the ’90s club scene? Did I keep a surprisingly strong handle on my shit? Let’s find out.
Product: Kush Kakery Sage N’ Smores Cake Pop
Purchased from: Exhale Med Center in West Hollywood
Ingredients: High-grade marijuana, smores chocolate, smores cake, sprinkles
Suggested dosage: The entire pop contains 222mg THC which the label suggests is 4 to 8 dosages, or somewhere between 25mg to 56 mg per suggested dose.
Actual dosage: Okay, so this has been my beef with this product from the start. A cake pop isn’t something that you eat an eighth of and then save for later. That shit doesn’t keep. A cake pop to me is, by definition, a single serve item. Maybe, maybe you share it with a friend, but even then, what is the point of having one little pop with so much damn weed in it? I tried to eat the whole thing for the sake of research but ended up having to spit out the last bite because I was getting nauseated, so I’m gonna wager my dosage was around 180–200mg.
The flavor: Well, as you may have guessed by now, I was not enamored with the experience of consuming this item. It was not just the taste itself, which was very weedy and not good, and which brought to mind the shitty pot brownies my friends used to make in college; it was also the texture. Thick and gummy, it coated my mouth and tongue as I labored to chew and swallow the wretched thing as quickly as I could. More like a ganache than a cake, it was probably the worst edible experience I’ve had for this column — worse than that awful trail mix, even. But I got (most of) it down with the assistance of a lot of Diet Coke, and waited to see what was gonna happen to me.
The high: Obviously I was expecting to get stoned af, which I did. What surprised me was what a chill, functional stoning it was, and that it didn’t wreck me as much as other products have. I ramped up for the evening by writing some personalized erotica, and by the time I was done my head was swimming so I went outside for some air. “Are you super high???” my friend texted me to ask. “Yes. V high. Doubleplus high.” was all I could say in response.
The real shocker was that I had no munchies at all. I nibbled on some popcorn and pork buns, but I had been expecting an all-out snack frenzy and was thankful when it never hit. Eating a ton of edibles and going out on the town is exactly the sort of thing I would have done when I was younger, but these days I know better. I didn’t even entertain the idea of leaving the house; instead I settled in and watched Glory Daze, the Michael Alig club kid murderer documentary, which was full of bright colors and drag and true crime, which are three of my favorite things. It definitely did not disappoint.
I was expecting to go to bed still blazing away, but surprisingly the high wore off after three or four hours. I actually felt myself start to come down pretty hard, so I had to smoke a nighttime bowl to even out again. Drifting off sometime before 11 p.m., I had a night full of strange although not unpleasant dreams, and woke up without a trace of a hangover.
Conclusion: Two out of six pot leaves for this cake pop. It was just so gross, and even the chocolate-filled marshmallow on top that I toasted in the oven didn’t make up for how difficult it was to simply consume. The high wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great, and I still contend that the dosage is too high for this particular product. Ah well, onward and upward!
