"Madame Dudette! Come quickly, we are burning daylight hours. Vite! Vite! We must locate the shatter."
This is the prompting I heard as my foot hit the bottom of the last step, leaving the Ojibway dispensary.
With clenching buttocks and vaginas still on my mind I said, "Yeah, Kris and Janis were right."
Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose...
"Unless you've got cancer or chronic constipation from prescription pain medications, or both. Then, there's a lot to lose and get rid of."
On that note, I climbed back into the car and we listened to Janis Joplin's version of "Me and Bobby McGee" on our way to pay a visit to the Mohawks. Our next stop was about an hour away, but worth the drive because there are about 8 dispensaries very close to one another. This makes shopping for some good quality shatter and other cannabis-related sundries, a fairly easy task.
(This was posted to YouTube by briemkiki827 on April 9th, 2009. Originally this song was written by Kris Kristofferson. Back in the day (1969) it was first performed by Roger Miller and many performers after, have followed suit. However, it was Janis Joplin who really lit up the charts with her version of it which was released about 2 months after her death in 1971. She literally recorded the song in September 1970, died of a heroin overdose (at 27 years old) in October, then her cover was released in January (1971). Yes, another lullaby for me and one of the very first songs that I can remember singing along too. La da da La da da da La da da da da... )
You Either Like Joplin Or You Don't. It's Just Like Hash
Another really good friend of mine (who's in his early 60s) always teases me about my fondness for Joplin.
"Bec, (he'll say) when she sings, her voice sounds to me like her butt is being flossed by barbed wire. How can you like that?"
My response to this is, "Judge me all you want. (I love hash, too, by the way.) Janis had strong political and social opinions that are just as poignant today as they were 40+ years ago and I respect that.
The Second Dispensary Was Like A Small General Store
We began the process of trying to take in everything we were seeing. The glass display cases and the shelves were well stocked. There was a lot to look at and I was shocked to see the variety. Their strain selection was incredible and I recognized one that I am currently growing in my own cannabis garden. It's called Tangie Dream and I decided (on the spot) that I would buy some so that we could experience it before my own crop is ready to harvest and cure. I consider this to be time well spent in research and development.
I'm Not Kidding, That's How You Learn What You Like And What You Don't
When I finally made my way up to the main counter, I asked the budtender if I could take a look at their Lemon Skunk hash. The hash was unwrapped directly in front of the 3 of us. It was the biggest brick I'd ever seen.
From somewhere just behind me and a good foot above my head, I heard a slow deep whisper "TAB-AR-NAK Ma-dame ooh la la! Dudette! Do you see the size of that brick? I haven't seen hash like that since it was coming out of Montreal in the early 90's. C'est bonne!"
I laughed. Then I said "I'll prove that I love ya and I'll buy some for our next round. Well it's probably going to be 12 rounds." and then we were all laughing, even the budtender. The brick of hash looked like a full pound of butter. It's formed into the same shape and sold by the gram. What we were starring at (with gaping mouths open) was worth about $7,000 Canadian dollars.
With a few purchases made, we all got back in the car for a short ride down the street and around the corner to the final 2 dispensaries on our run. This was just enough time to listen to "Mercedes Benz" by Joplin. (Technically, we were all climbing into a fine piece of German engineering and I thought the song fit.)
(This was posted to YouTube by DiapoRetro on March 10th, 2012. Janis Joplin recorded this song for her Pearl album. That is the same album that Me and Bobby McGee is on. It is said that she recorded Mercedes Benz in one take and the song is about rejecting consumerism.)
We Continued Shopping. The Irony Was Not Lost On Me.
On this particular run, in addition to buying the suppositories we also bought:
- Infused gummie candies, (8 of which allegedly contain 500 mg of THC);
- 1 gram of White Fire shatter;
- 1 gram of Super Silver Haze shatter;
- 1 gram of Tangie Dream (dried bud);
- and 1 gram of Lemon Skunk hash.
The shatters are sativa and they are medical grade. They are commercially prepared and packaged. This makes a difference.
Pro-tip: When you buy shatter, you want to look for information related to how the shatter was extracted. Currently CO2 extraction, in a closed loop system and purged is the highest quality that I can buy. Shatter should be stored in a sealed silicone container. Some dispensaries will store their entire shatter inventory in a refrigerator. Waxed paper will not store it properly and will end up sticking to it. The shatter will degrade more quickly and lose its potency if it's not stored properly and it will pick-up moisture which makes it like taffy if it hasn't been dewaxed. This makes it difficult to actually "shatter" it and break into small pieces. When you use shatter, typically you break a small piece off at a time. A full gram of shatter can last about 3 weeks (for 1 person typically) so it's prudent to store it properly.
Shatters are one of the most potent forms of cannabinoid medicine. In our area the price ranges from $50-$70 a gram.
Prepared cannabis extractions, edible oils and infused food items are still all over the map in terms of consistent potency per dose. Case in point, are the gummie candies that you can see packaged in the photo above. There is 8 individual pieces, but each piece is a difference size. The dispensary where we bought these, physically makes them at the dispensary. I had heard good things about them from others, so we decided to try them. When I questioned the budtender on how to dose this, I was told to try a small piece and then work the math backwards to figure out what the THC dose is, in the bigger pieces.
Yeah, No
That's not how edible products should be sold considering that the industry standard is 10 mg of THC per portion at a 10% THC concentration. That makes this package of 8 gummie candies the equivalency of 50 doses, if 10% THC was used to medicate them. There just isn't enough information provided on the packaging or scoring for portion size on the actual pieces themselves, to dose this product comfortably.
I ate 1 small gummie bear out of this package and so did our friend. 
Stay tuned for part 3 of this story. It will be about the process of taking a gram of shatter and transforming it into a vapable liquid.
I welcome your comments and I invite you to follow me on my journey...occasionally it will be one experiment after another in an effort to learn. ;)
~ Rebecca Ryan