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 let’s find out what happened this week, when I brewed up a hot cup of weed coffee in its own little Keurig pod. Did I get crazy paranoid that my boyfriend was mad at me when he was just trying to watch baseball? Did I manically bake an amazing apple pie? Did I deepen my obsession with OJ: Made In America? Let’s find out.
Product: Jane’s Brew Gourmet Cannabis-Infused Coffee (Medium Roast)
Ingredients: Ground coffee, cannabis oil
Purchased from: Exhale Med Center in West Hollywood
Suggested dosage: Each prepackaged Keurig pod contains 20mg THC, which seems like a perfectly reasonable dose for anyone.
Actual dosage: I drank the whole 20mg cup, obvi.
Flavor: Oh boy, is this shit dangerous. Taking wake-and-bake to the next level, it was perhaps one of the most delicious edibles I’ve ever had the pleasure of imbibing. I could absolutely see myself enjoying a hot mug of pot coffee on a lazy weekend morning or serving it to friends to make brunch a little more… kicky. The taste of weed is barely noticeable, and the coffee itself is a high-quality blend that goes down smooth and satisfying. It was as easy to make as any other coffee pod: I quickly made an 8-ounce cup in the Keurig machine, added a little cream and sugar, and enjoyed it down to the last drop, as it were.
The high: Well now, this was an interesting one. I wasn’t expecting to get too high off just a 20mg dose, and at first I didn’t. It hit me slowly, gradually, and when it did, man, it tweaked me the fuck out. My boyfriend was over and we went to get groceries and treated ourselves to a shitload of McDonald’s and then came back home, and I started baking while he watched a baseball game (because occasionally I can be quite domestic and traditional).
What was unfortunately nontraditional, however, was how anxious and paranoid I got as the pot coffee kicked in. At first I didn’t even realize what was happening and why, because it was a good 90 minutes before the effects began to take hold. But I was making pie and constantly looking over at my boyfriend and thinking he was mad at me when he was just trying to live his own truth and watch his damn sports ball. I was hot and flushed—partly because of the preheating oven and partly because of the wild mix of caffeine and cannabis rushing through my system.
Identifying the problem helped me chill out a bit and ease off the paranoia — well, that and my utter fascination with the OJ documentary— but I was still up late, unusually anxious and with my thoughts racing. I drink a fair amount of caffeine and don’t usually have these types of issues, so it was something about the combination of drugs in my system that fucked me up so hard.
Conclusion: Despite my strange experience, I’m still gonna give four out of six pot leaves to the weed coffee. It was just that delicious, and it’s always possible that knowing what I’m getting into will help ease the anxious side effects. Definitely would drink this high again.
Eloise LeBel is a writer in Los Angeles. She previously wrote about the daddy of indica strains for MEL. Find her on Twitter and Instagram.
