I resisted the idea of trying cannabis during high school and college.
I had friends at the time who offered me joints to hit, but I always turned them down. The programming from early school drug programs stuck in my mind for years until I met an amazing woman who uses cannabis medically. She never pushed the drug on me, but I could tell that she was better with mood–control and emotion regulation than I was. After realizing that this was in part from her cannabis consumption, I asked her one day if I could take a hit off her joint. She agreed and I spent the next three hours feeling the best I had for years. We walked around the city at night and had a wonderful date. I realized that I was avoiding a wonderful thing this entire time, but I was happy to experience it later rather than not at all. Now I’ve been using cannabis for years and I’ve been trying to switch to marijuana edibles out of convenience. However, all of the cannabis edibles I tried at the dispensaries were just too weak to affect me. I wondered if there was something wrong with me and if my body just couldn’t absorb THC through my digestive system. All of that changed when I finally tried RSO, or Rick Simpson Oil. This product is made from a strong solvent extraction of cannabis flower buds, typically with ethanol, carbon dioxide, or butane. Instead of distilling the oil, it is administered orally at this stage. Distillation often strips away terpenes, flavonoids, minor cannabinoids, and fats and lipids. Believe it or not, consuming a cannabis extract with all of these components preserved makes for a particularly potent experience. Unlike other cannabis edibles, RSO knocked me off my feet on the first try.