Like when people talk about sativa this and indica that and hybrid whatever and bubble gum triangle diesel cheese kush is there any actual science behind it? Or is it just all marketing?
Yes and yes. Strains are real; but I've also had people sell my own weed back to me with a different name
Different strains of weed have different genetics and terpines, which are the chemicals that give the weed it's particular smell and flavor. These chemicals don't get you high , but they interact with the thc and change the high. For example limonene gives weed a citrus smell and is one of my favorites as it makes a more euphoric high that gets me fucking giddy. You won't really know for sure what strain you have unless you know the grower, or you get from a medical/recreational state and they give you the strain and damn percentages of every cannabinoid and terpine right on the container.
My understanding is that terpenes don't directly interact with the THC, but they do interact with receptors in the body's endocannabinoid system in a way that alters the high
Maybe due to the extreme drop in blood pressure that some strains can cause? That happened to me on some THC-p gummies recently.
Yes there is. Sativa and indica are very different from each other. Indica is more relaxing and tranquilizing and sativa is more social and causes a lot of paranoia, in my experience.
The differences vary from strain to strain. Most differences are subtle but there are some (like green crack) that can be more intense.
This is Norwegian Butt Fart Sour Squash, it's a hybrid of Danish Jizz Bomb and Strawberry Dick Squeeze, it's a forty percent indica, fifty percent sativa, ten percent chalupa blend, a little more mellow than Algonquin Toe Jam, but it's definitely a premium strain bro :stress:
Yeah when I go two hours without hitting my Cartnite dab team I strain myself silly, it's seriously unhealthy bro.
-7DeadlyFetishes
hitting my Cartnite dab team I strain myself silly
:jesse-wtf:
So I may or may not have been listening to a audiobook while typing that comment leading to gross spelling errors, that being said I will not correct myself cause it's probably funnier if I leave it that way.
-7DeadlyFetishes
They can look different and smell different but the names are essentially just marketing. There's no real consistency to them (as in, multiple totally unrelated lineages being sold under the same name, the same "strain" being advertised by one seller or dispensary as being one variety and another at another, etc.) and even the idea that indica and sativa are different species that produce "different highs" is completely unsubstantiated. It's just marketing. Literally the only demonstrated difference in terms of psychoactivity is THC and CBD content.
(Stoners don't like it when you say this.)
https://www.insider.com/why-theres-no-difference-between-indica-and-sativa-marijuana-strains-2020-4
There are scads of psychoactive alkaloids in cannabis besides THC and CBD. The differences between in highs between indica and sativa strains comes from the proportions of these other alkaloids.
Indica and sativa are more like descriptors though, there aren't actually sperate species. I mean, if they were literally different species there wouldn't be so many "hybrids" on the market. But think of it as being like the difference between granny smith and red delicious apples.
There are scads of psychoactive alkaloids in cannabis besides THC and CBD.
And there is no evidence that they have any perceptible effect on the actual high.
The differences between in highs between indica and sativa strains comes from the proportions of these other alkaloids.
That's the claim, the idea of the "entourage effect", but there's absolutely no evidence for it. It's just marketing.
https://sci-hubtw.hkvisa.net/10.1080/17512433.2020.1721281
This paper doesn't really support your position. This paper only looks at THC, CBD, and terpenes. It doesn't even mention CBL or CBDL. And it's a paper about medical utility. No shit, an imprecise constellation of alkaloids is less suitable for precise medical usage than drugs delivered in measured and controlled portions.
That other cannabinoids are psychoactive isn't really controversial. Ergo, if you consume different quantities/proportions of those cannabinoids, you will experience different subjective effects aka different highs.
This paper only looks at THC, CBD, and terpenes.
Not true. The relevant section "6.3.5. Subjective and intoxicating effects" looks at the difference in subjective effects between pure THC and nabiximols, which is an extract from the plant, which contains all the compounds that could be relevant at the concentrations they're found in the plant. And none of the studies they cite found anything substantial. If there were an entourage effect from the levels these other psychoactives are found in the plant, it would show up there.
That other cannabinoids are psychoactive isn’t really controversial.
Yes, it's a question of whether they do anything at the doses they're found in weed. That's why studies investigating this use extracts, not pure samples of these other cannabinoids.
Ergo, if you consume different quantities/proportions of those cannabinoids, you will experience different subjective effects aka different highs.
Not necessarily. There's the issue of the threshold dose. The claim of the entourage effect is that they'll modify the high even though they're each found in weed at levels below their respective threshold doses, despite not doing anything on their own at those doses, and that hasn't been demonstrated.
As a comparison, if you give someone 1mcg of LSD, they won't get 1% high on LSD, they're just not going to notice anything. It probably also wouldn't do anything perceptible if you mixed it with a regular dose of another psychedelic.
So, that's my bad for not reading the paper with sufficient thoroughness, but drilling in on that section, are they not specifically comparing pure THC to the nabiximols. They're not comparing extracts from different strains to one another. And they specifically say that users did report a subjective difference
In other words, this paper didn't find substantial differences between different strains of cannabis, but they weren't looking for it. The experiment they're referencing wasn't designed to explore the distinction we're talking about here.
Well, what they were looking for was the entourage effect, which is supposed to be the mechanism of the different strains' supposed different subjective effects beyond THC and CBD content. I linked this paper because you brought it up:
There are scads of psychoactive alkaloids in cannabis besides THC and CBD. The differences between in highs between indica and sativa strains comes from the proportions of these other alkaloids.
If they failed to find solid evidence of any subjective effects beyond THC and CBD, it stands to reason that these other alkaloids most likely have no impact and that any differences between plants are just due to THC and CBD content. Unless some strains happen to have enormous amounts of other cannabinoids, but that would have to be demonstrated.
And a separate issue, which is discussed in the article I linked before, is that there's no standardization for what constitutes a particular strain. In practice, they're labeled almost completely arbitrarily, which makes it hard to do direct comparisons. Another problem is that the idea that sativa and indica are even really meaningfully distinct genetic categories, not just superficial morphological differences that have nothing to do with their underlying biochemistry, is on shaky ground. (And that "ancestry" is a big part of how they're identified, etc.) And yet another problem is that individual genetics can have less of an impact on the plants' biochemistry than soil, growing conditions, etc. So if we:
- can't reliably determine what "strain" any particular weed belongs to, and
- don't know whether "indica" and "sativa" are even genetically distinct categories, and
- can't rule out the effects of environmental conditions that have nothing to do with the "strains" at all
then it would be very difficult to test any "strains", and we really can't say things like, "sativa is like x" and "indica is like y".
The associations that people tend to make with them aren't based on any actual evidence is the fundamental problem, and again, what we do know about the influence of non-THC and non-CBD cannabinoids on the subjective effects of weed is that they don't seem to make a difference.
These kinds of claims are myths that mostly just get propagated to improve sales.
Idk if this is relevant at all, being anecdotal, but I had an person I knew who ran a couple medical shops down in the south and he said the weed they used for medical testing was normally 100% dogshit mids most of the time, no matter the strain, which was part of the problem of actually getting legalization. Idk though, he always was kinda sketch and totally wrapped up in the business of the thing.
But that's just one substance. Let's say you gave someone a singl of LSD, LSA, AL-LAD, ETH-LAD and LSZ each? Would that cause a threshold reaction or microdose of some sort?
I'm not sure if this is a false equivalency because I don't know too much about chemistry. If I'm wrong, could you please explain why? Thank you!
If you gave someone 20% of the threshold dose of 5 different psychedelics or cannabinoids, it would probably have an effect because they'd be acting in more or less than same way on more or less the same receptors. Any subtle differences between them would probably not be distinguishable.
But that's not what we're dealing with cannabinoids other than THC and CBD in weed.
CBN, CBG, CBDL, THC-v, THC-p, the D8/D10 isomers - all active cannabinoids that have been discovered to naturally occur in weed. I don't know what concentrations they've been found in or how prevalent they are, but it seems like there is enough there to account for some variability? We're really only just starting to scratch the surface with lesser known cannabinoids.
Idk shit about weed but I wouldn't doubt it, think of how many types of apples there are and they're all the same species. What I would doubt is that there's much standardization, so yeah it's probably a lot of marketing.
Sativa and indica are actual species names though so it's more meaningful than goof troop ass names like Deep Orange Chugbone
It's pretty wild because in my experience 100% absolutely there are differences, like big time differences, and I have friends who also experience different highs based on strains. But then I have a friend who says every high is the same no matter the strain, and I've read lots of people saying the same thing. So I'm super confused about why there would be such radical differences in experience.
Placebo effect? Or whatever you call it when people get convinced they're drunk after you give them virgin cocktails because you tell them its just got super smooth, high-end vodka?
It's a mild psychedelic, a class of drugs characterized by highly contextual experiences.
So yeah it's like if a drug could have substantial placebo effects on top of the normal placebo effect
I really don't think my brain is creative enough to invent wildly different and unpredictable affects of different strains, but sure?
Both. Growers and people that preserve seeds and stuff like that and take it seriously are pretty much the only way to know for certain.
See I'm just used to skunk, regs and kush meaning shitty, meh and potent weed respectively. So when people talk about this strain being good for creativity and that strain good for chilling and this one has a head high and that one is a body high, like is there anything at all to that? Or are all weed cultivars' effects just the THC vs CBD balance in whatever you're smoking?
Head high = sativa dominant, body high = indica dominant. Sativas originated in generally warmer and more humid areas and tend to have taller stalkier plants where indicas originating from cooler dryer climes are smaller and bushier. Indica is vastly more common at least in North America both because the shorter plants are easier to manage indoor growth and at this point just general popularity. Sativa is more likely to make you anxious if that's an issue as well, I personally prefer a sativa but generally have a large variety. Thc/CBD percentage are somewhat aside from that. Growing conditions and stuff affect that a bit more than strictly phenotype, I've found.
Oh, to be in a weed aware area. Here, it's 'indoor' or 'outdoor', with the good stuff called 'hydro'. Noone knows any better and I hate it
Jesus, that's some mid 2000s shit. Federal legalization is pretty cool. You can just get high quality shit in the mail for like, nothing.
There's no trichomes on this bud
"Yeah but its got heaps of red hairs"
Ive known two people who grew way back. One grew for personal use, one grew for cash. The personal bud was well tended, pristine, just gorgeous.
The cash crop was 10wk out the door, pumped full of PGRs and then sprayed with cola to make it sticky. Black market sucks.
Finding out that some weed gets cut with animal hair makes that adjective so much more revolting.
A TON of new naturally occurring cannabinoids have been discovered since the 2019 Farm Bill made it legal to do research into "hemp." They've discovered noids like THC-v, which is more energizing and suppresses appetite, or D8 THC, which hits you like a super lightweight indica. Unfortunately, there's still very little research into this area.
But don't discount the power of marketing. I doubt there's really as large of a difference between strains as people say. After a long day at work, I'm going to smoke a bowl of whatever is in front of me.
I think I usually only notice the difference in strength between one flower and another, not so much different effects. I usually smoke just a gram or two of mids a month, and I tried some shit from a friend's roommate that had me fucked up in one hit. Could not believe the power of that stuff
The only strain i smoke that i know the name of is northern lights. Its smells like pinesol, and gets me fucked up. Thats all i know about this subject.
The first time I ever bought drugs, I was 17 and backpacking in Bucharest. The person I was staying with had some really shady drug dealers that they were in some kind of debt relationship to. A whole element of abuse that they didn't mention when they said "We should get some weed. I know a guy.". My background was pretty sheltered so I'd never seen how people buy drugs. I stood outside the apartment bloc with a bunch of lei in my hand waiting for someone who looked like a drug dealer who might be looking for me. Two very large Romani guys walk up and ask if I'm with my friend. I just try to hand them the money in broad daylight without any kind of subterfuge. They inform me that I can't buy drugs like a pizza and invite themselves into the apartment. For what worked out to about $40 a gram, I got some kind of shitty mids. I asked what the strain was and they said "orange".
For like three years I thought cannabis didn't work on me because I didn't inhale orange right. Instead I watched football while two guys alternated between yelling at the television and at my friend. Nothing could be more disappointing than orange.
Nothing could be more disappointing than orange
:ira:
it's the same as with any other domesticated plant's variety or "cultivar". the longer a plant has been around and cultivated, the more cultivars there tend to be. the distinction between them can be large or small, incredible or negligible.
because the people who are buying and selling them are the ones who tend to be telling you about them right now, you can trust they will inflate minor differences to appear sophisticated.
I think it's 50/50. Good genetics are important, but a lot of what makes good weed is soil quality. I always suspected that it's like wine or kratom - the key factor is where it was grown and how it was processed.
