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I know several folks who dabble in cannabis exclusively to help them fall asleep. I have never been one of those people.
Sleep-specific products that feature alternative cannabinoids like CBD and CBN have served my infrequent insomnia so well that the concept of a fat blunt with 283 mg of THC before bed—even if coated in sleep-supporting herbs—definitely feels superfluous. Though I often smoke before bed, I don’t necessarily smoke myself to sleep, and certainly not with a 2 gram blunt. So it was with a healthy skepticism that I lit Sun God Medicinals’ THC Hypnos Sleep Herbal Blunt at 10:30 pm and tucked myself into the corner of the couch to watch an hourlong episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars.
I planned my night with Sun God Medicinals’ mega-spliff to be flexible. If the blunt’s high was too intense, I was ready to ride its wave. If it put me to sleep, I could comfortably conk out where I sat. Being prepared for two distinct outcomes put me in a good position to experience them both—which I did, though not in the way I’d anticipated.
SETTING THE SCENE
Sun God Medicinals is foremost a naturopathic producer of wildcrafted herbs. It’s been manufacturing herbal teas from its Southern Oregon farm since 2012 and, in 2016, began incorporating therapeutic hemp in its formulations. Sun God has maintained its bohemian energy since crossing over to cannabis, using locally grown, organic flower to infuse its already established herb blends with cultivar-specific effects.
Sun God’s infused blunts are the newest addition to its product line, each using premium cannabis, CO2 oil, kief and a potpourri of cooperative botanicals. Available in either Hypnos sleep-supporting or Heka “mind-opening” varieties, the resulting spliffs look like surreal, alien bouquets of rock candy. With 2 grams of rolled material, the blunts are substantial in size, stuffed in a perfunctory hemp cone with an inch and a half of flower petals, crushed shoots and muddled herbs encrusting the head.
The perfume is a muddled mélange that, in my nose, bent slightly savory, kind of like a window box of kitchen herbs. The Hypnos blend features mullein, skullcap, catnip, lavender, lemon balm and hops atop a Northern Lights cultivar dusted with Golden Papaya kief and dipped in Apple Jager live resin. None of these botanicals smelled particularly sweet, and even though each has its own particularly savory, floral perfume, they came together in a way that was neither offensive nor mild. Aromatically, they reminded me of herbes de Provence, a portent of the flavor profile that would follow.
THE BEDTIME BLUNT EXPERIENCE
Lighting this blunt is an event. As soon as the flame from my Bic touched the herb-encrusted tip, the crunchy coating sparked up like a peewee firecracker. I handed it to my partner and tied my highly flammable head of cotton-candy frizz into a topknot to avoid any coiffure casualties. The sparky introduction was relatively short lived: A few puffs past the initial whiz bang, the botanicals had burned through the poppingest of their flammable parts. But, dang, those first few inhales were a confusion of disparate flavors and sparky flowers. There was a whisper of charcoal under the herb blend as it burned, but before the herbs evaporated under the fire, they tasted of—and I mean this in the best possible way—a casserole.
“Does this taste like…a casserole?” I asked my partner. They took a deep hit, swatted a spark out of their face and nodded in agreement. This was absolutely not the mouthfeel we were anticipating, but neither of us was angry about it. It was an unexpected flavor profile that, at first blush, I thought I should feel repelled by. Instead, I savored the complexity and contemplated whether these casserole-ass herbs could take me to a place that felt as good as they tasted.
The first 15 minutes of our program flew by as we passed the blunt back and forth, barely clearing the encrusted tip. The burn on this spliff was so slow that even by Act 2, we hadn’t cleared the halfway point. Coughs arrived only after hubristic full-chested hits, but smaller sips of the blunt were clean and mild.
We arrived at a point in our program where trios of drag queens were competing against each other in a replica of a panel talk show. As each performer revealed some life-altering trauma or heartwarming act of acceptance, my partner and I melted deeper and deeper into their technicolor world, our eyes wet from anecdotes of parental rejection, sexual liberation, transition-retransition and overcoming the odds to fulfill impossible goals.
The high, which reached its fever pitch as drag queen Pandora Box unpacked the aging of her “twink” figure, hit me like a blast of ice water on a hot day. I was already comfortable, but when the high bloomed, it blanketed me in a kind of refreshing relaxation that I could feel under my toenails and behind my lips.
Not only did the blunt last through the entire segment, it made us sentimental as heck. By the time the last trio of queens had performed their “pink table talk,” we had only just begun to approach the filter tip. Between the two of us, this blunt lasted through more than half an hour of revelatory television.
Fifteen or so minutes later, we snubbed the filter of the blunt into an ashtray, and suddenly I felt locked in an infinite yawn. Since it was my legitimate bedtime, it was tough to pin down the difference between my own circadian sensitivity and the effects of the casserole blunt. I focused on the last 15 minutes of the program and then, still reeling from the sympathetic head high, called it a night.
I lay in bed for at least another hour before I finally fell asleep. I was just too high to suspend my consciousness. The body buzz was slow to taper off, and while surely that sensation is enough to massage some to sleep, it made me want to dance. My mind ran in one direction and my body pined to go in another, neither of which was a feeling conducive to sleep.
But like I said, I’ve never been a weed-for-sleep type of cannabis user, so to some extent I expected these effects. Your results will almost certainly vary, especially if weed and/or bedtime herb blends already make you sleepy.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Approximately two hours after I first fired up the Hypnos Sleep Herbal Blunt, I finally fell asleep. My partner also knocked around the house well past bedtime, too euphoric to be restful. In this way, we might have felt let down by the intended use of the spliff, but the reality was that this was a pretty awesome high that neither of us wanted to (or could) waste on sleep.
It’s worth mentioning that I woke the next morning feeling refreshed and well rested, which is assuredly just as critical to the efficacy of this blunt as falling asleep in the first place. So in that regard, Sun God Medicinals delivered. And I would enthusiastically use this product again, though probably not with the intent to pass out with any immediacy. In fact, I might take it to a dance party.
But, as with all things cannabis, your results may vary.
Get it from: Virtue Supply Co., 510 NW 11th Ave., 971-940-6624, virtuesupplycompany.com.