I plan on upping my marijuana intake for the next 4 years.
 
JR

You mean they're not legal? But...they're organic. 

There was strange law in the UK that magic mushrooms were legal until June 2007, if they were not processed, so dried was processed. There was an unawareness of this loophole, until it was due to be closed. A shop in the market made a killing selling magic mushrooms from around the world running up to that date. I hadn't had any shrooms for years, and always English that I had picked myself. So the change in law led to me trying out all sorts.  Some Mexican shrooms were a particularly smooth trip.
 

Just ordered pizza they couldn't eat.

:-)
 
I mimber that.

Psychedelics are about the ONLY drug I found actually enjoyable (and only organics like shrooms or mescalin, not LSD).  Never had any interest in even trying to smoke, snort or inject anything.  In fact, although I have no issue with a drink once in a while, those are few and far between.  I've had beer sitting in the fridge for a couple of months now...
 
I credit my deep appreciation of the world around me to shrooms though I haven't had any for a LONG time.  You'd think with all the rain and cows around here there would be some, but all of my friends (most of them pot smokers) have never seen any.  With the gorgeous nature all around I bet they would be awesome!
 
[Note that I have several "rules" about shrooms.  I only take a known amount, I only take them when I know I will be in a safe environment for the entire time and only around others that are also on them - never in public.  Trips are planned in advance when there's plenty of time to recover before having to DO things (like chores, travel or work). All entertainment like music, video and toys (including lights, thinks that sparkle and my light & sound devices) are all set up in advance and ready to go easily.  Food and water is also readily available BEFORE tripping (have some interesting things to taste out).  Everyone must help keep everyone else is a happy mood.]

bitflipper

sharke
Aw half the fun IMO is taking them in whimsical and/or inappropriate situations and trying to keep it together. We'd scoff them and get lost in department stores. Some particularly interesting times in the toy department...although these places usually had a patterned carpet which played havoc with the eyes. I have no idea how we never got arrested on shrooms. I liked supermarkets as well, the large ones usually have huge expanses of shelves with the same thing on (e.g. pop bottles) which turn into mosaic patterns when you're tripping. I always liked the contrast of trying to keep the hallucinations and hysteria at bay whilst interacting with a completely normal person in everyday situations.

In 1970 I participated in a party game (I was 18, so don't judge) where a plateful of Halloween candies - those nasty ones shaped like pumpkins - were served. One of them had a hit of acid in it. The game was to then try and discern who'd gotten the loaded pumpkin whilst the lucky recipient did his or her best to conceal it. Hilarity ensued as expected, mainly because unbeknownst to the participants, ALL of the candies had been loaded.
 
OK, you actually can judge me, as I was the organizer of the experiment. 

Damn I wish I'd played that. 
 
Encountering the parents on acid was always interesting. Unluckily for me, I grew up in a household in which marijuana was smoked daily and both parents like the occasional hit of acid. So there was NO hiding it. My mother would just take one look at my eyes and say "you're tripping aren't you." 

Legalization brought about an unexpected problem: the legal store-bought weed is much too potent. I want to relax, not become a zombie. I won't touch the retail stuff. Fortunately, I still have a large bag of the much milder crop I grew on my back deck two years ago.
 
A free market takes care of itself, though, and consumers my age are requesting a product more like what they grew up with in the 60's and 70's. Minus the seeds and stems, of course. I understand that growers are breeding just such a product in Colorado. I doubt it will be 10 dollars an ounce, though.
 

Mexican ditch weed, $20 a "lid". Truly a recreational substance. The stuff they've created these days isn't really what I'd call recreational because there's not a lot you can do after vaping something called Candy Skull Crusher. And with the price there's not a lot you can afford to do after buying it. I'm all for the Victory garden.

bitflipper
Legalization brought about an unexpected problem: the legal store-bought weed is much too potent. I want to relax, not become a zombie.

I'm sorry to hear that.  I had rather thought that once weed became legal, the marketplace would go back to something more consumer-oriented, and offer something other than the one-toke-and-you-are-totally-toasted-for-the-next-hour variety.  It will be interesting to see what develops as the California marketplace eventually comes online.

sharke
Yeah the modern stuff is too much. It's not so much that it's potent - hey who doesn't like value for money - it's the actual quality of the hit that's different. I am not very clued up on the science of marijuana but someone told me that today's weed has a much higher ratio of THC to CBD and that it's the CBD which "mellows out" the heady nature of the THC. With so much THC and so little CBD to balance things, the effect from today's mega-strains is just too crazy. Of course I may be talking nonsense - it's just what I was told by someone and the concept made sense to me. I definitely remember a much mellower, more pleasant experience from weed 25 years ago. I remember some years ago talking to a Jamaican guy in Nantucket who told me that they don't touch the hyper-strains because it's not a pleasant high compared to the natural strains they're used to. 
 
One thing I've noticed about the modern weed is that it sends me to sleep quite easily. I can't smoke much of it at all. Let's say I think screw it, I'm going to get super-high tonight and have a mega music session. Well I'm OK after the first bong but the second one just throws me into a sort of coma in which my head is in danger of coming to rest on my keyboard. And the room spins as well. I never used to get that effect from weed, I used to be able to smoke and smoke and perhaps I would start getting paranoid or too trippy or whatever, but I never had any tiredness or sickness or dizziness from it. 

All makes total sense to me sharke.
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOq3tK1ijH8
 

Back to the subject of sleep aids.  I visited my doctor yesterday for my annual physical (got the cholesterol levels of a twenty-something I'm very happy to report).  I asked him about his thoughts on prescription sleeping pills.  He said that more is being learned all the time and none of it is good about using this kind of medication.  Medications that were routinely prescribed even five years ago are totally "off the menu" now, at least at Kaiser.
 
When I asked what I should do when I come down with a cold, the only situation in which I previously used prescription sleep aids for multiple consecutive nights, he said Benadryl would be my best (and safest) bet - take two or three tablets if you want it to put you under.

Hi bitflipper.  Several things come to mind when reading your post.
 
The American culture we live in today is one of false fronts.  No one wants to show any weakness or deficiencies.  We are all perfect, and I am even more perfect than you.  This is all too much at the forefront of our society, especially coming out of an election year when every candidate is so perfect, how could you vote for anyone else?
 
Your post here displays the opposite.  You are revealing an area of your life which you are requesting input.  This is an example of humility, something sadly lacking in America.  Thank you for your honesty.
 
Even though I have not read all of the replies to your post, they seem to come from an experiential point of view.  Maybe my reply will touch on this from an informational point of view.
 
Your subject line states “cutting back”, as opposed to quitting.  So the question is why are you cutting back and not quitting altogether?  Do you want to lessen the negative effects but still hang on to something that is a comfort zone of sorts?  In other words, don’t you want to do without it entirely?  Or, is this too hard to imagine living without?  If I were to post that I was cutting back on eating sugar cookies, then all I have to do cut back.  But why don’t I quit eating them altogether if I know they’re not doing me any good?  And why even post such a thing?  Your posting of this subject reveals that you’re looking to fix some issues that you believe are related to the level of marijuana intake.
 
So here is the informational part.  Two of the essentials for the life of the body are oxygen and nutrition.  Oxygen we obtain by breathing the air so our lungs can pass that oxygen along to the bloodstream.  Nutrition we obtain by eating food.  The reason we eat is because our brain is telling us to replenish the nutrition that has been used in metabolic processes; therefore we feel hungry.
 
Let’s start with the oxygen.  We are meant to inhale clean air.  With the intake of any smoke, which is a toxin, that process is hindered.  Can the body still survive when inhaling smoke?  Yes, up to a point.  Any toxin entering the body will divert attention from experiencing normal metabolism to dealing with eliminating that toxin.  In other words, some of your body’s energy supply is now used for housecleaning instead of vitality.  I can just hear some of you reading this and thinking, “Wait a minute, I’m not smoking all day long.  It’s only from time to time” or however much you do smoke.  Now you enter into justification, or trying to defend something that’s harmful.  A little bit of toxins won’t hurt that much.  But I don’t think you would justify putting your head to a car’s tailpipe for a few minutes every day and say, “I don’t do it that often”.  All of a sudden that becomes a different topic.  No, it’s the same thing.  Why do something to damage your body?  Does our air have pollutants in it?  To varying degrees, it probably does.  But don’t use that as an excuse to make your desire valid.  The body and brain need clean blood to function properly.  So, it’s best to give it what it wants by breathing clean air.
 
Now to touch on the nutritional aspect for a minute.  The body needs a good supply of nutrition which is obtained through eating food. The question then becomes, “what is food”?  Sadly, in America we don’t know the right answer.  We go to the food store to buy food and then eat that food.  However, the majority of that food purchase is not really food even though it is marketed as such.  This is why America is in epidemic levels of chronic degenerative diseases and increasingly obese.  Our bodies are trying to survive on this food that has little value.  The next time your car’s fuel gauge is low, go to that same food store and buy 5 gallons of orange juice and put that in your tank.  No one would ever think of doing such a thing.  The car needs gasoline.  Our bodies need proper nutrition but we’re putting the equivalent of OJ into a car’s gas tank.  After your car is towed, what would your mechanic then suggest?  “It looks like we need to do valve replacement surgery”.  (A little sarcasm there).  No, he is going to tell you that you put the wrong fuel in there.  A car simply will not run without the proper fuel.  Our bodies can tolerate more wrong doing than a car, but over time, we’ll end up at the “mechanic’s shop” too.
 
I’m sure you know that scurvy is a condition related to a vitamin C deficiency.  Vitamin and/or mineral deficiencies absolutely result in impaired bodily functions.  But there is no such thing as a marijuana deficiency.  It is not essential for the vitality of the body.  In fact, it takes away from the vitality of the body.  A headache is not a condition related to an aspirin deficiency.  But we think that simply taking a pill or medication will solve the problem.  The lack of aspirin in the body did not cause the headache.  The real issue is doing a multitude of wrongs to our body and then asking the doctor for a pill to fix everything.  Don’t tell me to change anything I’m doing wrong.  Just medicate me.  It’s okay to leave your entire house open in the winter.  Just crank the heat way up to compensate.  Wouldn’t it be more efficient to shut the windows and use much less heat?
 
We would rather deal with the outward symptoms than the root of the problem.  If you can follow the symptoms back to the problem then you’re on the right path.  If all you’re doing is comforting your symptoms, then you will be caught in a never-ending loop.  If you boosted too much high-shelf EQ on your overheads track, don’t stuff cotton in your ears and think you’ve solved the problem.
 
Now, after all of this talk about giving the body what it really needs so that it functions efficiently, you probably think that making nutritional changes will fix everything.  Well, it may not be that easy.  From a logical standpoint, sure, it makes sense.  But living is more than just logic.  We are all emotion-filled as well.  The loss of a loved one can be a highly emotional experience. 
 
I have learned from excellent teachers that, by far, the most controlling aspect of our lives are our thoughts.  You ate that slice of pizza because of a thought.  No one ever accidentally ate anything.  Our mind and our brain are the controlling factors of dealing with everything in life.  Food choices, substance choices, etc.  You have a free will and hopefully use wisdom in making decisions for the best outcome for your and other’s futures.
 
At this point, some of you might be mad at me for making these comments; seemingly turning everything into “Just do this and everything will work out”.  Some of you might have an entire list of unanswered questions based on these topics.  I decided not to go into detail for the sake of space.  This thread could go on and on.  I am only replying here based upon what thoughts were triggered in me from what I read.  Maybe this will be of some help or trigger more interest to learn more.  It has helped me tremendously.
 
Finally, bitflipper, I really appreciate your knowledge in reference to all things Sonar.  I always get something out of your replies.  Keep up the good work.  This Cakewalk community is better because of your involvement.