Dosing is a bit of an art, and having a little too much (like alcohol) can make you doozy
Stress, fun, pain, people consume marijuana for a variety of reasons. It has long been known as a sleep aid, guiding you gently into the land of nod. But sometimes over indulging can induce sleepiness when you don’t want to be sleepy. Here are the best tricks to control marijuana induced sleepiness.
Marijuana affects our endocannabinoid system, which is different than alcohol which is a depressant. Alcohol affects the central nervous system. Once it enters the bloodstream, it circulates to the brain, where it proceeds to slow down the firing of neurons. When neuronal firings decrease at a normal rate, it can result in relaxation, fatigue, and sleepiness.
Seasoned marijuana consumers know their bodies well enough to have their favorite strains, which produce reliable effects that they can control. Less experienced users can struggle with consuming and remaining alert, even if surrounded by people or are consuming during the middle of the day.
Working out is one of the world’s best natural energy boosters, helping you sleep more soundly and decreasing fatigue. The more regular the workouts, the better your body will function. Many cannabis smokers report that exercising while high helps them work out for longer periods of time, increasing their focus and allowing them to have more fun.
Smoke smaller doses
If the cannabis you’re consuming is making you too sleepy, try reducing the dose, steering clear of couch-lock. Ingesting smaller doses of cannabis will also limit paranoia, anxiety, and the munchies.
Sativa!
While indicas are relaxing and tend to make you sleepy, sativas are known to produce uplifting effects that pair great with other types of activities. Sativa strains tend to create more cerebral highs that make it a good option for daytime smoking, working out or doing something creative.
If you’re at home or at a friend’s house and start feeling that powerful marijuana induced stupor, hop in the shower. This will help you relax and wake up, causing you feel refreshed and ready to do something fun.
Coffee or green tea are always great options for when you need a quick burst of energy. Some studies suggest caffeine can enhance the effects of THC and produce a more pleasurable and effective high. You should start slow when mixing these two elements, considering that one is a depressant and the other a stimulant.
And if the best tricks to control marijuana induced sleepiness aren’t working or you aren’t interested, you can always take a short nap.
Consumers are using marijuana like crazy and sales are booming, but it is a big leap to become a cannabis entrepreneur. Well, if you are part of the pproximately 3.26 billion people worldwide play video games, there is a solution. With 89.5% of video game sales happen in the digital world, you can experience what it is like to own a weed grow and figure out all the opportunities. Yes, Stardew Valley is the one, this video game let you grow and sell weed. Granted, it is a game, but you can see what people are doing and you don’t have to deal with Mitch McConnell.
Gamers consider enjoy the calendar of Stardew Valley. The popular game provides the opportunity to build the agriculture empire of your pixelated fantasies, tilling soil, rotating crops, and raising livestock. Thanks to a new gaming mod, you can now grow the hottest cash crop in the land — cannabis.
By downloading ‘Smellyhippie_’s’ Cannabis Mod you can become a full-blown ganjaprenuer, planting and cultivating marijuana plants. The mod includes 40 new items and 37 crafting recipes, including tobacco (for spliffs and blunts), and two strains for both male and female variants of cannabis.
New items like a resin sieve will separate the THC resin from the actual bud of the plant while a hash press can turn that resin into bricks of hash that you can sell. There’s even recipes for joints with different mixtures of marijuana or, if you roll like that, spliffed with tobacco. It’s an incredibly thorough mod for people who always wished they could turn their farm into a grow op.
With Canada and 24 states fully recreational and 40 states medical, it stands to reason the citizens of Stardew Valley would enjoy a consuming as well. However, the mod is dedicated only to the cultivation and production of growing cannabis. You won’t be getting high on your own farming supply.
Those interested in growing cannabis and those who already do so in real life will be impressed with the level of detail to cannabis production.
Once you’ve grown some weed, that’s where the real fun begins. Not only are you able to use new tools to separate the resin from the mature buds and press your resin into profitable hash bricks, but you can craft a variety of joints and blunts using your new product. There’s even an option to grow tobacco and incorporate it into your joints for all you spliff fans out there (we know who you are).
But cannabis enthusiasts and gamers alike have to be impressed with the robust options available in this grow op mod. While not as popular as Dota 2, the community is embracing it wholeheartedly. The only negative is you can’t sample what you grow in the game.
Patients’ lives improved in multiple ways after using CBD, including sleep, anxiety relief and hope. They began calling hemp a “miracle plant,” and we can understand why.
Chronic pain can be a tough diagnosis, yet about 20% of the population suffer from some sort of long term issue. For those of us without this condition, it’s hard to imagine what someone with chronic pain is going through. Chronic pain is usually secondary to some form of trauma, making a bad situation far worse. Imagine the worst pain you have every experienced and then try to imagine having pain day in and day out for months or worse, for years.
Imagine not being able to sleep and becoming chronically sleep deprived. Imagine not being able to find a comfortable position to sit, stand or sleep. Imagine your significant other or children wanting your attention and you not having the capacity to give any. Imagine not being able to have enjoyable sex with the one you love. Experiencing chronic pain continuously changes you. Depression and anxiety are commonplace among this patient population.
While physicians have access to tools to deal with pain, chronic pain is resistant to a quick fix. Interventional procedures, surgery, physical therapy and pain medications have historically been the go-to therapies to address pain. Historically, because they are accessible and inexpensive, narcotics — particularly opioid narcotics — have also been one of the go-to therapies.
Given the opioid crisis, physicians are less likely to lead with narcotics, and some of us are deciding not to prescribe them altogether. The problem with narcotics is they work. They work really well. Sometimes too well, leading to a patient becoming so comfortable they “forget” to breathe. So, while reducing the amount of narcotics prescribed to patients is a good thing, the problem is physicians don’t have a lot of good alternatives to recommend to their patients, until now.
Photo by OlegMalyshev/Getty Images
Not all of America has access to medical cannabis yet, but the whole country has access to hemp-derived CBD. The eight pain clinics I run in North Carolina have been recommending CBD to patients for a couple of years now and observing some incredible results. We continue to learn everyday what CBD can and can’t do for our patients in chronic pain.
Shortly after our exposure to hemp and CBD, we conducted a study on 100 patients early and learned some valuable lessons. Our patients’ lives improved in multiple ways including sleep, anxiety relief and hope. The patients began calling hemp a “miracle plant,” and we can understand why.
Sleep is an extremely important aspect of life. It is the time our bodies and brains rejuvenate ourselves and prepare us for the next day. Without good quality sleep, the toll on our bodies and mental capacities really adds up. But CBD helps with sleep. On average, our patients’ sleep duration grew from 4.5 to 6 hours, and they reported the quality of sleep was significantly improved. Patients even told us they started remembering dreams, which was a surprise for them. Given the amount of medications these patients take, it’s no wonder many of them had not dreamed in years.
Chronic pain wears on your nerves. It is common for patients to experience severe anxiety. Historically, patients have been prescribed benzodiazepines (Valium and Xanax) to deal with this problem. Unfortunately, the combination of narcotics and benzos has led to increased overdose deaths. During our study it was clear our patients experienced less anxiety. Instead of reaching for a friend’s benzo or alcohol to deal with their anxiety, they instead started reaching for their CBD oil.
Chronic pain leads to a feeling of despair and hopelessness. One wonders if the pain will ever end? Will I ever get my life back? An unexpected finding during our study was our patients were coming back to us saying they were hopeful. Instead of their glass being half empty, it was now half full. Hope is powerful. When you have hope, your mind starts to work for you instead of against you. You start to imagine things can be different. You find the motivation to get off the couch and get busy living instead of waiting to die. This feeling of hope inspired these patients to start engaging in activities we had encouraged them to do for years, like doing yoga, eating healthier, losing weight and moving more.
Photo by seksan Mongkhonkhamsao/Getty Images
Our initial assessment of pain relief was at first disappointing. We typically only see a 10-20 percent pain reduction on average when a patient uses CBD. While some patients reported complete resolution of their pain, it was the exception, not the rule. Patients with a strong inflammatory component or fibromyalgia seem to get the best results.
As we continue to work with CBD our knowledge of the power of this plant is growing as well. We are obtaining much better results as we work with our patients to think themselves out of pain. You might think I’m kidding, but I’m not. Chronic pain changes the brain and lays down dysfunctional pathways. CBD promotes neuroplasticity and neurogenesis — the formation of new brain cells developing into new pathways of thinking. We are encouraged and excited to continue to work with CBD to maximize its potential to address chronic pain.
If you are living with chronic pain, hemp offers you hope. CBD can be purchased online or over the counter in many forms in every state in the U.S., and many places around the world. The good news is CBD has a very broad safety profile, and you should feel comfortable trying it. Dosing is key.
Taking too much won’t harm you, but it might not help you either. Please be sure to talk to your physician about CBD. In my next column, I will offer some tips for having this conversation, particularly if you feel awkward about cannabis or hemp, or suspect your doctor might react badly to your interest.
No corkscrew? A broken cork in your bottle? No time to chill? Here’s how to navigate some of wine’s most frustrating scenarios.
If you drink wine like 75% of people, you’ve no doubt come across a situation where you screw something up. Years of experience as a sommelier have taught me how to handle most of those situations. Before you panic, here is the trick to open wine without an opener and other hacks to keep handy.
The Fresh Toast – You have been there, so here is a the trick to open wine without an opener and other hacks
Unchilled wine
Probably the most common issue that people have is they realize that, at the exact moment that they want a glass of rosé, the only bottle they have is at room temperature. If patience isn’t a virtue you possess, the absolute fastest method I’ve found to chill down a bottle without access to heavy machinery is to fill a large bucket with ice, add in half cup or so of salt (rock salt is perfect), and then fill about halfway with water. Put the bottle in, and turn it every 30 seconds or so. You should have a chilled bottle within about 5 minutes, though for sparkling wine you’d probably want to give it more like 10; the thicker bottles take longer to chill.
I face this one pretty regularly on the floor of the restaurant, and I have a range of tools at my disposal. Assuming you’re limited to standard wine openers, techniques here vary based on how badly broken the cork is. If the remaining part appears to still be solid, I’d just dive back in: this is where a waiter’s corkscrew comes in handy. If the cork is crumbling though, I often make the decision to just push the cork down into the wine. Some people would then filter the wine through a coffee filter, cheesecloth, or strainer, but I prefer to decant the wine into a clean vessel, and then pour it into another decanter: this allows me to get all or virtually all of the cork out without damaging the wine.
No wine opener
We’ve all been there: a bottle of wine and nothing to open it with. The best approach I’ve found is to us a fairly long key: your car key, perhaps, and to slowly work it into the cork. Once it’s in as far as it will go, you slowly twist the bottle while very gently pulling up. It can take a while, but it’s the safest method I’ve found, both for you and the bottle.
This does require at least a small bit of foresight: cleaning glasses is much easier if you don’t let the wine totally dry out, so at least putting some water in the glass at the end of the night will make your life a lot easier. I then like to use a wet cloth or rag, and no soap if I can avoid it, as I find that soap tends to leave streaks and stains on most wine glasses. If you have a hanging drying rack that’s ideal, but if that’s not an option then I start my glasses face down and then flip them about an hour later. I usually still have to polish them if I want them spotless (and by all means spend $8 on an actual polishing cloth), but it helps minimize the water spots.
When I was working with Elizabeth Falkner on her latest book, Cooking Off The Clock, we always found ourselves working on/eating from the book after I was finished shooting something and she was done at Orson and/or Citizen Cake. For Elizabeth, this was one of the times she really took to cook for herself, and as such, she always thought of this book as ‘Late Night Appetite’ . One late night treat, grilled oysters and cookies, is the surprisedly delicious treat you have to sample.
I was fortunate enough to be the recipient a lot of these meals, some as inspiration for the book. What I loved was that there was no meal off limits for late night, not grilled baked fresh or fried. Not sweet or savory.
Here are two recipes from the book I find particularly addictive and easy to make — late night, daytime or whenever that snacky feeling sneaks up.
Photo by Frankie Frankeny
Peanut Butter-Coconut Cookies
½ cup unsalted butter
1 vanilla bean
1 ½ cups rolled oats
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 ½ cups granulated sugar
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1 cup creamy peanut butter
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 ½ cups unsweetened coconut
2 teaspoons kosher salt
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
Melt 1/2 stick room temperature, unsalted butter in a saute pan over medium heat. scrape 1 vanilla bean (split the bean and scrape out the seeds) into the butter. Add 1 1/2 cups rolled oats and cook, stirring frequently, until browned and fragrant, about 5 minutes. Add 2 tbsp. baking soda, stir to combine, and set aside to cool completely.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream 1 stick room temperature, unsalted butter with 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar, 1 cup packed light brown sugar, and 1 cup creamy peanut butter (you can use almond butter too!) at medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 to 4 minutes. Add 2 room temperature, large eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition, about 1 minute each time. Decrease the speed to low and add2 1/2 cups sifted, all-purpose flour, 1 1/2 cups unsweetened coconut,and 2 tsp. kosher salt (I used less) and mix until combined. Fold in the cooled browned oats until evenly dispersed.
Roll the dough into golf ball-sized rounds (about 1 tbsp. dough each). Place the rounds about 1 inch apart on the lined baking sheets and bake until just golden, 12 to 15 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes on the sheets, and then transfer to a rack to cool completely. Repeat with the remaining dough.
Store the completely cooled cookies in an airtight container at room temperature.
Photo by Frankie Frankeny
Oysters In The Fire
24 fresh oysters in the shell
4 Tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 teaspoon Tabasco sauce
1 lime, quartered
Place the oysters on a preheated grill or on a baking sheet set over a fire and allow them to open ( from the pressure the steam builds up inside the puster as it heats up) about 3-5 minutes, depending on the heat of the fire.
Meanwhile, melt the butter in a small saucepan and add Tabasco.
Serve the open oysters with each drizzled with the butter mixture and a squeeze of lime juice. Serve immediately.
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Named one of the 100 Most Creative People in the US by Entertainment Weekly , Frankie captures images for some of the best names in culinary.
Frankie has helped create: The Art of the Bar: Cocktails Based on the Classics;The Model Bakery Cookbook; Miette: Recipes from San Francisco’s Most Charming Pastry Shop; The Green Eggs and Ham Cookbook and The Star Wars Cookbook Series. Follow her on Instagram,FacebookandTwitter.
Whiskey is one of the great treats in life. Once the most popular spirit, it lost ground to vodka in the 70s and 80s but is making a resurgence. Estimated to be a $66.5 billion industry in 2022, whiskey of all kinds has demonstrated massive growth, with several major whiskey categories doubling their outputs over the past 10 years. Scotch, however, is the biggest seller worldwide, with total sales amounting to more than American, Irish, and Japanese whiskeys combined. Here is some help in understanding the major catergories of whiskey.
All whiskeys are made from grain fermented and then distilled. When whiskey goes in the bottle, it has to be at least 40% alcohol by volume (ABV). With some exceptions, it’s aged in wooden barrels, although exactly what kind and for how long varies around the world. Variations in mash bill (the fancy term for the types of grain go in a whiskey), barrel type, aging time, and distillation technique are what account for the enormous breadth of this wonderful spirit.
Before we go any further, a quick word on spelling (there’s more detail here, if you’re interested): generally speaking, whiskey refers to American and Irish spirits, while whisky refers to a spirit made in Scotland, Canada, Japan, or anywhere else in the world. Personally, when referring to the spirit in general, I default to whiskey, simply because I speak and write in American English.
Scotch
The first written record of whiskey production, dating to 1494, comes from Scotland, and the country continues, in many ways, to be the center of the whiskey world (don’t @ me, bourbon fans). There are two basic kinds of Scotch whisky: malt and grain. Malt whisky is made only from malted barley. Grain whisky also includes other grains, like corn or wheat. The other legal distinction in the scotch category is between blended whiskies and single malt/grain whiskies. A single malt or single grain whisky is made at a single distillery; blended whiskies are made at multiple distilleries and mixed together.
Scotch can only be made in Scotland. It’s aged in used barrels—which may have originally held bourbon, wine, or port—for at least three years. Scotch is bottled at a minimum 40% alcohol by volume (ABV).
Generally speaking, Scotch blenders aim for a product which is consistent and drinkable. While there are plenty of good blended whiskies out there, Scotch snobs typically think of single malts as more interesting because each region and each distillery has a distinctive character (although it may be changing). Indeed, there’s quite a wide variation in the world of single malts, from lighter, fruit- or grain-forward drams to aggressive, peaty expressions heavy on salty and medicinal flavors. The list of most expensive whiskies in the world is always dominated by single malt Scotch.
Irish Whiskey
The word whiskey comes from the Irish phrase uisce beatha, or “water of life,” and the Irish are typically credited with being the first whiskey distillers. Just like their neighbors in Scotland, the Irish distinguish malt whiskey from grain whiskey
Scotch and Irish whiskey are different in several ways. One is Irish malt is very rarely smoked over peat, meaning it lacks the smoky, savory components of peated scotch. Another is the existence, in Ireland, of a category called pot still whiskey, which is made from a mix of malted and unmalted barley. “Green” barley contributes an added dimension of flavor which sets pot still whiskeys apart both from scotch and other Irish whiskeys.
Irish whiskey must be made in Ireland or Northern Ireland. In terms of taste, Irish whiskeys vary widely, from grassy to grainy to bourbon-like.
American Whiskeys
Photo by Flickr user Raphaël Chekroun
These days, thanks to the craft whiskey renaissance of the last fifteen years, the variety of whiskey styles made in the United States is as diverse as our great nation’s population. Historically, though, the landscape has been dominated by two categories: bourbon and rye.
Both styles have several things in common. Chief among their similarities is they must both be aged in new, charred oak barrels, a major source of flavor and aroma in America’s native whiskeys (remember scotch is always aged in used barrels).
Bourbon, which is by far the more popular category, is historically associated with Kentucky, which remains the seat of the American whiskey industry. Contrary to the popular imagination, however, bourbon can be made anywhere in the United States. Bourbon must be made with at least 51% corn, with the remaining 49% being some combination of other grains—typically malted barley and either rye or wheat. It’s a good entry point to whiskey for many drinkers, as its flavor profile tends to be sweet, leaning toward caramel, vanilla, soft spices, and wood.
Rye whiskey is bourbon’s northern counterpart, and although it’s long played second fiddle to bourbon in terms of sales, it’s been making a comeback in recent years. Rye, as you probably guessed, has to be made with at least 51% rye, with the remainder, again, being up to the distiller, but usually consisting of malted barley and corn. Rye grain imparts distinctive spice and fruit notes, making rye whiskey more assertive than its mellow southern cousin.
There are a number of other categories of American whiskey. They include Tennessee whiskey, which is essentially bourbon made in Tennessee and filtered through charcoal. Wheat whiskey is, you guessed it, made with mostly wheat. And blended whiskey—well, it’s a whole different thing.
Canadian Whiskey
Many whiskey drinkers turn up their noses at Canadian whisky, which is often viewed as inferior to Scotch or bourbon. But the fact is, our neighbors to the north have also been distilling for a long time, and history has yielded a distinctive style.
Most Canadian whiskies contain a lot of corn, just like bourbon. However, that’s where the similarities end. Canadian whisky has to be aged at least three years, a requirement which doesn’t exist for bourbon. There are also no restrictions on the type of barrel used—they can be new or used, charred or uncharred. In general, Canadian whisky is lighter, smoother, and less flavorful than American whiskey, which is the source of the snobbery around this spirit.
Finally, it should be noted Canadians commonly refer to all Canadian whisky as “rye,” for historical reasons. Canadian rye is not the same as American rye—it often doesn’t contain any actual rye grain.
Japanese Whiskey
With North America and the British Isles covered, we’re left with one other important whiskey region: Japan. Japanese whisky is similar to Scotch in most respects, because the industry’s pioneers modeled their product on Scotch. Commercial whisky distilling in Japan started in the 1920s.
Just like with Scotch, you’ll find both blended and single malt Japanese whiskies, and although this is a relatively young category, its profile is growing internationally.
Game nights rule. Hanging out with friends (new and old), holing up in a comfy home, and generally having a great, relaxing time. And there might even been so good food! Yes, game nights rule, as opposed to the movie Game Night, which looks like a hot mess. There is a reason movies open in February, you know.
Of course, a little bit of substances can help you relax and spur conversation to move the party along. Some wine, a cocktail, or some cannabis. But just like wine has its pairings, some games work better than others in that situation. Here are party games to avoid when high on marijuana
Jenga
Thought up by a Brit in the 1970s and trademarked just prior to its public debut at the London Toy Fair in 1983, current brand owner Pokonobe Associates says 2017 saw more than 80 million boxes, more than 4.3 blocks, sold around the world.
Despite a fellow Fresh Toaster disagreeing about its merits as a cannabis-friendly activity, this is not a good fit for a bunch of altered enthusiasts to try. Unless they like rebuilding falling towers. A lot. Cannabis can affect coordination and someone with a heavy buzz could take forever trying to figure out what block to move next.
Of course, there is the mellow vibe of there only being one loser — the tower collapser — and everyone else wins!
Twister
Inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame, class of 2006, it was originally pitched as “Kings of Footsie” to a potential investor who passed (can’t imagine why) in 1964. Milton Bradley bought the concept in 1964 and (thankfully) renamed it.
Twister made its first big splash when Johnny Carson and Eva Gabor played it on “The Tonight Show” in 1966. Competitors (haters) accused MB of selling “sex in a box.”
Rules are simple. Twister mat is unfolded and players — two or three are suggested — are then told by a “referee” where to put hands and feet on what colored parts of the mat. The ref determines this by using a spinner. You fall or touch an elbow or knee to the mat, you’re out. Last one … er … standing is the winner.
It really is fun and a more-is-merrier game. But as with Jenga it relies too much on motor skills, specifically the kind of balance difficult for most people to find sober. Playing this after indulging will lead to a lot of short games.
Operation
How’s this for a bad investment? The game’s inventor was a college student at the time and sold the rights to Milton Bradley for $500 and the promise of a job after graduation. Since then, Hasbro, who currently owns the rights, estimates the franchise is worth $40 million.
The game “board,” is a patient named “Cavity Sam” with a red light bulb for a nose. Cut into him (ouch!) are hollow spaces filled with plastic baubles such as “Adam’s Apple,” “Butterflies in Stomach,” and “Charley Horse.”
Two sets of cards are used. “Doctor” cards are shuffled and set aside. “Specialist” cards are dealt equally among the players. Players take turns drawing Doctor cards, which name a specific ailment to be removed with metal tweezers. Since Operation was one of the first board games to require batteries, the electrified board sounds a buzzer and Sam’s nose lights up if a player isn’t precise and touches the edge of the cavity the ailment is in.
If the doctor is buzzed the specialist gets a chance. Each ailment is assigned a cash value for successful completion. Richest player at the end wins.
Sure, being on cannabis and watching someone buzz out as Sam’s nose glows is fun. But again, motor skills. There will likely be a lot of short games. Bring extra batteries and make sure your malpractice insurance is paid in full.
An updated “Star Wars” edition was released to coincide with “The Force Awakens” in 2015. Surgery is performed on BB-8. A previous edition had used R2-D2.
Yahtzee
Possibly as old as dice, it was first sold as Yatzie in the early 1940s, and can trace its lineage back to numerous rolling-the-bones games. According to current rights owner Hasbro, 50 million games are sold each year.
Players take turns rolling six dice.The roller then has two more chances to roll all or some of the dice, filling out categories such as three of a kind with twos where the player would take the sum of the final roll where three or more dice are showing two. If a player can’t fill out a category, they must cross a category out and pass the dice to the next player. The game ends when all players can no longer roll due to all categories being filled and/or crossed out.
The winner is determined by adding up the scores from each category. High score wins.
This is great for involving a lot of people. But we’ve seen people fret over strategy and have trouble with math before they indulge. A strong buzz will only compound the problem. Maybe a modified card has five more “Chance” categories would speed things along.
Stoner City
A cousin of Monopoly evidently managed to stay just this side of infringement, the tokens are all bongs, the houses and hotels are plants, and a police car moves in the opposite direction of the players and if it lands on one occupied, that player is arrested.
It’s dumb and having something like this in your place will make you seem like a caricature. Who wants to be tagged?
Plus, if you buy it on Amazon the thing costs $78! Cannabis enthusiasts can certainly find better recreational uses for the money.
Their music and image are iconic and they gifted us the music to chill by
It is testament to talent their music maintains popularity with new generations. In fact, when streaming was just getting going, 57 percent of Beatle steaming listeners were between the ages of 18 and 34. These fans in less than a month pushed the music to the most streamed of any artist on Spotify. In the last 10 years they have had a Las Vegas show (LOVE), continue to hold steady on streaming and now have a new song release Now and Then thanks to AI. Add to it the Beatles and marijuana have a rich history.
The Beatles introduce change and new ideas in a variety of ways, from their music to haircuts (the mop-top), to helping drive analogue recording technology. They had the popularity of Elvis, but made it into a fan power base – the first of its kind driven by the artists.
There are millions of fans who love the Beatles and marijuana, and August 28, 1964 the future of rock ‘n’ roll changed forever, when Bob Dylan introduced The Beatles to cannabis. The two would and will be forever linked.
“I remember it pretty well y’know,” Paul McCartney has shared “We were staying in that hotel [the Delmonico in New York City] and we were on tour, so we were all together in the hotel suite. We were having a drink and then Bob [Dylan] arrived and disappeared into a backroom. Then Ringo went back to see him and after a couple of minutes Ringo came back into the suite looking a little dazed and confused and we said, ‘what’s up?’ and he said, ‘oh Bob’s smoking pot back there’, and we said, ‘oh, well what’s it like?’ and Ringo said, ‘the ceiling feels like it’s coming down a bit’.”
Of course, the music, the clothes, and the Yellow Submarine gives a strong nod to psychedelics. The hits are a constant favorite to those who consume who want to lose themselves in a positive, moment. With music and cannabis simultaneously triggering the dopamine system, the brain is chemically reinforcing two extremely gratifying behaviors.
Despite the differences which would later break them up, marijuana was a unifier during their best music making period. As John Lennon once admitted, they were “smoking marijuana for breakfast” during that period.
While making Help, Ringo Starr said: “A hell of a lot of pot was being smoked while we were making the film. It was great. That helped make it a lot of fun.”
A symbol of the marriage between the Beatles and marijuana is all the generations who listen to the music and whether you are a Boomer or Gen Z, it is on your chill play list.
Fall is here and people are gravitating to the kitchen to bake. The Holidays are around the corner, it is a cozy place during the dark wet weather, and everyone loves cookies – so why not embrace the holidays.
The story of shortbread begins with the Scottish medieval “biscuit bread”. Leftover dough from bread making was dried out in a low oven until it hardened into a type of rusk: the word “biscuit” means “twice cooked”. Gradually the yeast in the bread was replaced by butter, and biscuit bread developed into shortbread. In the UK, biscuits are cookies and scones are the UK version of US biscuits.
Thanks to chefs like California-based Loria Stern and her application of edible flowers they add color and excitement to the cookies. One of her greatest hits is the pressed flower sugar cookie, a trifle of unique beauty perfect for a party. The recipes can also include cannabutter if you want to give it a little extra excitement.
You can add edible flowers to so many foods, but a sweet cookie is an excellent place for their fragrant, vegetal glory, and it complements those similar notes in cannabis flower. Using homegrown flowers as Stern does is a luxury that some climates allow, but if you’re in an urban area lacking organic bachelor’s button and calendula, rose petals and lavender will also do nicely. Try it out as fall tips into full swing for a unique but rich consumable.
Sift sugar and salt into a large bowl. Add the butter and whip with an electric mixer until creamy and fluffy. Add vanilla and mix again momentarily. Fold in sifted flour with a spatula until the dough comes together.
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Chill the dough for at least 1 hour before baking. Preheat oven to 325 degrees when you’re 15 minutes away from baking, depending on you r
Grease a large cast iron skillet and press the dough into the pan at a 1” thickness all around. Sprinkle with flowers and sugar, then cover with parchment or plastic wrap and press the flowers and sugar gently into the dough to make them secure for baking and handling.
Bake at 325 for 15-20 minutes until the cookie is golden, but not brown. Be sure to rotate throughout the bake time to avoid uneven cooking. Allow to cool completely before removing from the pan with a long flat spatula.
Cut into wedges or break into rustic slices, and serve with a matching floral tea, the experience of smelling this combo alone is worth the baking effort.
Decarboxylate 2 grams of finely ground cannabis or .25 gram of concentrate. Put material in lidded mason jar or vacuum sealed bag with cannabis and one stick of butter. Heat in water bath just under boiling for at least 1 hour. Strain and cool to use in recipes.
Complete any high tea with these beautiful cookies, and when you have access to all of the amazing wildflowers that some west coast chefs do, take advantage!
In 1969 Life magazine shared “The counter culture has its sacraments in sex, drugs and rock” turn out all three have something in common
An anthem of youth and counterculture has been sex, drug and rock and roll. Since the 60s it has been been part of concerts, colleges, and early post school life. Deadheads, Blockheads and the Sex Pistols all rode the wave. Now science agrees music is a turn on like sex and marijuana.
Now, landmark research from McGill University in Montreal demonstrates the opioid system in human brains is directly involved in musical enjoyment.
“This is the first demonstration that the brain’s own opioids are directly involved in musical pleasure,” says cognitive psychologist Daniel Levitin, senior author of the paper.
While previous work by Levitin’s lab and others had used neuroimaging to map areas of the brain which are active during moments of musical pleasure, scientists were able only to infer the involvement of the opioid system.
“The findings, themselves, were what we hypothesized,” Levitin said. “But the anecdotes — the impressions our participants shared with us after the experiment — were fascinating. One said: ‘I know this is my favorite song but it doesn’t feel like it usually does.’ Another: ‘It sounds pretty, but it’s not doing anything for me.’ ”
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Although the neural underpinnings of music cognition have been widely studied in the last 15 years, the study found relatively little is known about the neurochemical processes underlying musical pleasure. Preliminary studies have shown both performing and listening to music modulate levels of serotonin, epinepherine, dopamine, oxytocin, and prolactin. Music can reliably induce feelings of pleasure, and indeed, people consistently rank music as among the top ten things in their lives bring pleasure, above money, food and art.
Aside from the strong findings, the study also suggests musical therapy may be much more effective than previously known. And musical therapy is not a “new-wave” form of treatment for improving mental health. It is one of many types of therapy.
“The idea of music as a healing influence which could affect health and behavior is as least as old as the writings of Aristotle and Plato. The 20th century discipline began after World War I and World War II when community musicians of all types, both amateur and professional, went to Veterans hospitals around the country to play for the thousands of veterans suffering both physical and emotional trauma from the wars.
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“The patients’ notable physical and emotional responses to music led the doctors and nurses to request the hiring of musicians by the hospitals. It was soon evident that the hospital musicians needed some prior training before entering the facility and so the demand grew for a college curriculum. The first music therapy degree program in the world, founded at Michigan State University in 1944, celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1994. The American Music Therapy Association was founded in 1998 as a union of the National Association for Music Therapy and the American Association for Music therapy.”
The McGill University study proved to be “the most involved, difficult and Sisyphean task our lab has undertaken in 20 years of research,” according to Levitin. “Anytime you give prescription drugs to college students who don’t need them for health reasons, you have to be very careful to ensure against any possible ill effects.”
Music’s universality and its ability to deeply affect emotions suggest an evolutionary origin, and these recent findings “add to the growing body of evidence for the evolutionary biological substrates of music,” the researchers write.
