THE ENLIGHTENED VOICE
#11 | MAR. 2021
CAL I F O R N I A
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#11
budtender of the month
“Cosmic Galaxy Egg” by Artist Andrew Logan at the American Visionary Art Museum.
Dominic Miller of People’s OC in Santa Ana.
Leaf Nation’s Barron Wolfe interviews David Bryce Yaden, PhD, of the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research in Baltimore, on his life and career. shop review
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Alphonso “Tucky” Blunt
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MIKE ROSATI
equity entrepreneur
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Doobie Nights Santa Rosa
women in weed
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SHELBY MADISON HARTMAN MARGOLIN
Doubleblind Magazine Founders
Ketamine Therapy and You
Dr. Radu Kramer shares his wealth of experience and knowledge on the emerging field of Ketamine therapy, and reveals how the psychedelic treatment can help with depression and creating new paths.
////////// story by barron wolfe photo by scott semler
mar. 2021
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ERIC KAYNE
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JUSTIN STEWART
THE psychedelia ISSUE
MARCH 2021
issue
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CAL I F O R N I A
EDITOR’S NOTE CANNABIS NEWS BUDTENDER Q&A EQUITY ENTREPRENEUR STONER OWNER GREEN REVOLUTION DISPENSARY REVIEW STRAIN OF THE MONTH THE PSYCHEDELIA ISSUE PSYCHEDELIA 101 PSYCHEDELIC CANNABIS MICRODOSING JOURNEY M E D I C I N E M A N E D D I E F U N X TA PSYCHEDELIC RESEARCHER K E TA M I N E T H E R A P Y READING ENERGY N E W L E G I S L AT I O N EDIBLE OTM LEAFSHOTS C O N C E N T R AT E O T M WOMEN IN WEED CANNTHROPOLOGY STONEY BALONEY
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Marijuana products may be purchased or possessed only by persons 21 or older. This product has intoxicating effects and may be habit-forming. Marijuana can impair concentration, coordination and judgment. Do not operate a vehicle or machinery under the influence of this drug. There may be health risks associated with consumption of this product. For use only by adults 21 and older. Keep out of reach of children.
E S TA B L I S H E D 2 0 1 0
T H E E N L I G H T E N E D VO I C E
N O RT H W E S T L E A F / O R EG O N L E A F / A L AS KA L E A F / M A RY L A N D L E A F / CA L I F O R N I A L E A F / N O RT H E AS T L E A F
A B O U T T H E C OV E R
ILLUSTRATIONS by MR. MELTY MRMELTY.COM / @MR.MELTY
I’d finally decided to indulge in magic mushrooms, and unknowingly ate about three grams of blue-tinged caps (this was before identification of mushrooms or weed strains was common) and proceeded to have an epic melt at a house party. I don’t remember much, except for walking around a house with a container of Quaker Oatmeal, repeatedly asking people, “Why is the Quaker Oats man so happy?” I also reportedly ate a lot of raw oats.
CONTRIBUTORS
WES ABNEY | FOUNDER & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
BOBBY BLACK, FEATURES JOSHUA BOULET, ILLUSTRATION TOM BOWERS, FEATURES EARLY, PRODUCTION STEVE ELLIOTT, NATIONAL NEWS GEORGIA LOVE, PHOTOS ERIC KAYNE, PHOTOS MIKE RICKER, FEATURES MEGHAN RIDLEY, EDITING MR. MELTY, ILLUSTRATION MIKE ROSATI, PHOTOS ZACK RUSKIN, FEATURES SCOTT SEMLER, PHOTOS O’HARA SHIPE, FEATURES JUSTIN STEWART, PHOTOS JAMIE VICTOR, ILLUSTRATION DAN VINKOVETSKY, PRODUCTION NATE WILLIAMS, PHOTOS+FEATURES
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Thanks for picking up The Psychedelia Issue of the Leaf! WHILE I DIDN’T listen to my DARE instructors about Cannabis, or a few other fun substances in college, one warning I always believed in through my college years was to beware of psychedelics. We had all heard the stories of the friend who took 10 hits of acid and wasn’t the same, or the horror stories of eating the wrong mushroom and dying. To be fair, these are true warnings – and I took them seriously until one fateful winter night.
Needless to say, this wasn’t my idea of a typical college party night and I went back to my weed smoking ways for nearly a decade, with the memory of eating too many mushrooms burned into my brain as a powerful warning against psychedelics.
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“I FELT CONNECTED TO THE PAST AND PRESENT IN A WHOLE NEW WAY.”
Fast forward to my 29th birthday and I had tickets to see the Terracotta Warriors Exhibit at the Seattle Science Center on Friday, and chose to indulge in a little LSD at the suggestion of close friends. Standing in the immersive Augmented Reality exhibit with amazing color-changing, motion-triggered exhibits while in the presence of the 2,250-plus-yearold warriors gave me a feeling of connection unlike anything I’d ever felt. It was transcendental, and I knew in that moment I would have a new relationship with psychedelics. I felt connected to the past and present in a whole new way, which was heightened by the presence of ancient talismans meant to protect the Chinese Emperor in the afterlife. The experience changed my frame of reference in many ways, especially in regards to opening my mind and consciousness to new experiences.
Since that fateful trip I’ve had the pleasure of unlearning the DARE propaganda, and also ignoring the wooks at festivals offering drugs – instead finding a happy medium between research and controlled experiences, with much intention into the set, setting and those around me as I opened my mind with psilocybin, LSD and DMT in ceremonies that have had major benefit in my life. I went from scared to take a substance (for many good reasons) to being scared not to challenge my own frame of reference while confronting the issue of consciousness and my place in the universe. Today, that fear is what drives me to explore the final frontier of psychedelic therapies and substances. Over 2,000 years ago, Socrates famously said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I believe that wholeheartedly, and that the use of entheogenic plants is a way to explore one’s life in a way that should be part of everyone’s life experience. We have but a short time on this planet, and finding peace and meaning within the journey will help us to find peace when we reach the destination. While I don’t plan to go out like Aldous Huxley, I have learned from his writings and plan to be in a happy place when my brain releases DMT for the final time, as I pass into the great beyond. I hope my words can inspire those with fear about psychedelics (or life itself) to explore, learn and live in the moment – and that this amazing Psychedelia Issue put together by our amazing Leaf team can be an inspiration and guide to your future experiences.
-Wes Abney
Have a strain, product, or news tip that the California Leaf staff needs to know about? Contact us at tom@LeafMagazines.com!
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ABNEY
Editor’s Note
PUBLISHER WES@LEAFMAGAZINES.COM
WES
This month’s intensely euphoric artwork comes to us from the highly tuned mind of New Mexico-based psychedelic artist Kevin Vigil, better known as Mr. Melty, whose illustrations appear throughout the magazine’s special section. The work is as colorful as it is explosive, and as beautiful as it is daring. In our 2nd annual Psychedelia Issue, we wanted to explore how these powerful experiences can help body and soul to reach their full potential. Who better to lead us on our psychedelic journey than Mr. Melty, an artist “inspired by the beauty and powerful grace of our natural surroundings paired with the metaphysical elements of our inner being.”
cannabis NEWS
politics
california
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER VOICES SUPPORT FOR CANNABIS REFORM, POT STOCKS BOOM!
S
enate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s commitment to reform federal marijuana laws sent Cannabis stocks surging in February, thrilling advocates – but experts warn high hurdles remain for legislation to pass Congress, reports Marijuana Business Daily. With 60 votes likely required for passage in the Senate, today’s hyper-partisan atmosphere on Capitol Hill could make that a real challenge. Banking reform, however, is a more achievable short-term goal, as it enjoys strong bipartisan support.
The South
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ADVOCATES BACK SOCIAL EQUITY IN VIRGINIA MARIJUANA BILLS
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emocrats in the Virginia General Assembly say that social equity is important when ending the criminalization of Cannabis, and that includes ending the disparate criminalization of people of color. Separate bills approved by the Virginia Senate and House of Delegates in February would legalize possession of up to an ounce of weed for adults 21 and older. Both bills would also begin automatically AUTOMATICALLY expunging misdemeanor EXPUNGING marijuana offenses from criminal MISDEMEANOR records on July 1. MARIJUANA Reparations to people of OFFENSES FROM CRIMINAL color and communities hurt by RECORDS ON disparate Cannabis enforcement JULY 1. would include a program giving those who have been harmed preference for licenses to get into the marijuana business as cultivators, wholesalers, processors and retailers. Virginia’s new Democratic majority already decriminalized Cannabis last year, making simple possession of up to an ounce punishable by a $25 civil fine.
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percent THC would have been the potency limit for Cannabis flowers under a now-abandoned Colorado plan.
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debilitating conditions are covered under Mississippi’s medical marijuana law.
EMERALD CUP ADDS INDOOR AND GOES ONLINE FOR 2021 | For nearly two decades, the Emerald Cup has been the go-to festival and competition for people from all over the world who want to immerse themselves in California sungrown Cannabis culture. Historically focused on flower and products from the Emerald Triangle, the Cup packs out increasingly larger venues year after year, drawing huge crowds, legendary cultivators and killer mainstage entertainment.
BY TOM BOWERS
FOR THE 2021 EVENT, founder Tim Blake, his daughter Taylor Blake, and their team were excited to try something new by moving the competition to Los Angeles, and expanding the contest categories to include indoor cultivators for the first time in the event’s history. But, as with everything in this post-COVID world, the Emerald Cup has had “I’M REALLY GOING TO MISS THE IN-PERSON to reinvent itself in order to fit the new temporary pandemic paradigm. “I’m EVENT THIS YEAR,” really going to miss the in-person event this year,” founder Tim Blake said FOUNDER TIM BLAKE over a Zoom call in February. “Crisis is an opportunity. We have a crisis, and SAID OVER A ZOOM now we have an opportunity.” Blake sees this as a chance to develop new CALL IN FEBRUARY. judging procedures and categories, while also welcoming a broader, more geographically widespread audience with an online format. In order to make the event work, the Emerald Cup has partnered with Social Club TV for a digital broadcast of the awards. The Cup still plans to continue its tradition of complementing the awards ceremony with killer entertainment on the livestream, featuring a to-be-announced lineup of comic and musical entertainers on board to liven up the proceedings. Judging, much of which has involved in-person analysis and deliberation in the past, has moved to Zoom for everything but the initial flower assessments and a final assessment, which will happen in-person in a safe, socially-distanced fashion in Petaluma. Nearly 100 judges will weigh in on more than 40 categories, before the Cup selects winners in each contest. Aside from the temporary changes to the format, Blake says the Cup is making a significant alteration to the way it handles flower categorization. This year, flower entries will be grouped by their primary terpenes, with the best in each class heading to the awards. This change, coupled with the fact that this is the first year in history that the Cup will entertain an indoor flower category, means everyone’s favorite consumer-facing California Cannabis competition is only getting more interesting in the wake of 2020. Stay tuned for more updates, as we’ll follow the Emerald Cup as the team works to put together a celebration of harvest for the fall, and preps for the real live and in-person Los Angeles debut in 2022. In the meantime, we’ll catch you online. THEEMERALDCUP.COM HEALTH & SCIENCE
NEW STUDY OFFERS EVIDENCE THAT LEGAL CANNABIS LEADS TO FEWER DEATHS FROM OPIOIDS
C
ounties with more Cannabis dispensaries saw fewer opioid-related deaths, according to a new study recently published by the University of California, Davis, reports The THE STUDY’S RESULTS Sacramento Bee. While study co-author Greta Hsu cautioned that correlation is not SUGGEST A POTENTIAL causality, she said the results suggest a potential relationship between greater prevalence of RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN dispensaries and fewer recorded opioid fatalities. “Given the alarming rise in the United States’ GREATER PREVALENCE OF fentanyl-based market and in deaths involving fentanyl and its analogs in recent years, the CANNABIS DISPENSARIES AND question of how legal Cannabis availability relates to opioid-related deaths can be regarded as FEWER RECORDED a particularly pressing one,” researchers said in a statement released by UC Davis. OPIOID FATALITIES.
73
percent of North Carolina voters favor medical Cannabis according to a new poll.
67
percent more Cannabis was bought by Americans in 2020 than in 2019.
$300m $831m dollars in annual revenue is the estimated amount that would be added to Virginia’s coffers if adultuse Cannabis were legalized.
dollars in revenue was reported by Oklahoma medical Cannabis dispensaries in their first year (2020).
STORIES by STEVE ELLIOTT, AUTHOR OF THE LITTLE BLACK BOOK OF MARIJUANA
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interview
W H O ’ S Y O U R FAV O R I T E B U D T E N D E R ? T E L L U S W H Y ! E M A I L N O M I N A T I O N S T O T O M @ L E A F M A G A Z I N E S . C O M
WHETHER IT’S GETTING HYPED ON NEW STRAINS, BONDING WITH THE TEAM OR HELPING PEOPLE FIND RELIEF FROM WHAT AILS THEM, MILLER LOVES HIS WORK.
DOMINIC MILLER CALIFORNIA LEAF
Budtender of the Month
leafmagazines.com
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We were elated when an email came across our desk from a reader wishing to nominate Dominic Miller – a guide for People’s OC in Santa Ana, for our Budtender of the Month column. This
anonymous reader relayed how Miller recommended products and strains to help them overcome anxiety and they have relied on his recommendations for over a year.
mar. 2021
ENTERING THE INDUSTRY
As a grad from Cal State Fullerton with an emphasis in marketing and microbiology, Miller got a job at a microbiology lab. When that company decided to diversify its revenue streams by beginning to test Cannabis products, Miller caught a window into the sprouting industry. “That gave me so much more insight,” he said. “You actually see all of these medical professionals who have done more research into Cannabis, and who are seeing the positive side of it. I was able to get into Cannabis testing through that, and that’s when my interest started to grow.” Driven by fate to embark on a journey into the Cannabis industry, he found himself caught up in a growing community full of opportunity to help people and have fun doing it, while simultaneously building a career. BECOMING A GUIDE
People’s OC takes its role as a source
of information and relief seriously, and as such, the company refers to its floor staff as guides, rather than the commonly accepted budtender nomenclature. As a guide for People’s, Miller finds a lot to keep him fulfilled. Whether it’s getting hyped on new strains, bonding with the team or helping people find relief from what ails them, Miller loves his work. He especially loves helping change outdated attitudes about the plant. “The majority of our customers are probably over 40 and heading into 50,” he said, “and you get all of these people who may not have tried Cannabis before … That’s one of the best things, seeing the opinions of Cannabis swaying toward the more positive end.” The most important thing about being a guide, he says, is to stay informed and be genuine. “Have the confidence in yourself,” he said. “Be you when you’re trying to interact
with customers. You want to come across as genuine, and genuinely be you. That’s one of the benefits of being in this industry. You can show more of who you are, in a sense.” A BONG AND A BLINTZ?
“I’m a huge sativa guy. I love that uplifting feeling,” he said. He especially digs playing video games with his friends, and watching the Los Angeles Angels play after enjoying some flower out of his favorite bong. “I also really like Absolute Extracts Lost Farms Gummies,” he said. “I’m not a huge edible guy, because I have a super high tolerance, but Lost Farms Gummies really slap. They’re phenomenal.” The self-described flower enthusiast is partial to Durban Poison, Lava Flower and Quest strains. And when it comes to consumption, he favors one method over all others. “I’m smoking a bong, for sure,” he said. “I think that’s the quickest, strongest high. I don’t waste weed … if a joint comes my way, I’m smoking it.”
P E O P L E ’ S O C 2721 S G R A N D AV E . S A N TA A N A , C A | (714) 582-3446 | P E O P L E S C A L I .C O M
INTERVIEW by TOM BOWERS @PROPAGATECONSULTANTS/CALIFORNIA LEAF | PHOTO by JUSTIN STEWART @JUSTNLSTEWART
Check out our new varieties for 2021: OG Kush Hemp and Kush Hemp E1 3.0 See all the best hemp genetics in our 2021 Seeds, Starts and Clones Catalog!
sovereignnelds.com
equity entrepreneur
California Leaf’s Equity Entrepreneur feature highlights business operators and thought leaders who seek to build this industry in a way that sheds the prejudices of the past while reflecting on the rich diversity of the plant and the people who use it. Know someone who would be a great interview? Email Tom@LeafMagazines.com.
ALPHONSO BLUNT F O U N D E R | B LU N T S + M O O R E WHEN ALPHONSO “TUCKY” BLUNT stands in front of his dispensary, he knows he’s home. Located but a Stephen Curry heave away from the Golden State Warriors’ longtime arena in Oakland, Blunts + Moore made headlines as the world’s first equity-owned dispensary when it opened its doors in the fall of November 2018.
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hough the Warriors would acrimoniously depart for San Francisco and a new arena shortly thereafter, Blunt’s shop – run with business partner Brittany Moore – continues to cement its own legacy as a modern cultural and community hub for Oakland adults. At the center of it all is Blunt, a fifth-generation Oakland native who, by his own account, has been selling Cannabis in one form or another since he was a teenager. “I’ve been selling Cannabis since I was 16,” he said. “I’m 40 now, so to have people who were buying from me then, now coming into the store that I own to buy it? Talk about amazing.” In what can only be described as a true Bay Area origin story, Blunt told California Leaf that it was his friendship with Mike Marshall – the vocalist featured on Luniz’s immortal 1996 Oakland rap anthem “I Got 5 On It” – that jumpstarted his quest to opening the planet’s first equity-owned Cannabis dispensary. “The Luniz and all of those guys are friends of mine, but in particular, I’m close with Mike Marshall,” Blunt said. “One day, he called me and was like, ‘Have you ever caught a weed case in Oakland?’” Blunt had, in fact, caught a weed case. In 2014, Blunt was arrested for being in possession of a firearm (one he was licensed and registered to carry) and about $80 worth of Cannabis. Aware of the harsh mandatory minimums such charges carried, Blunt said he took the first deal offered by Alameda County – which was10 years felony probation. Though Blunt paid his required restitution (early) and successfully got his records first sealed, then later expunged, his probation status made him an easy target for law enforcement. Undeterred, Blunt kept at it. So, when Marshall called and pitched Blunt on Oakland’s new equity program in 2017, the Oaksterdam University graduate affectionately nicknamed “the one-man dispensary” by some of his clientele, was more than happy to listen. This was about a year after the city had initially announced its plans.
Shortly thereafter, Blunt found himself vying for one of four licenses being offered via a lotto ball format. The drawing took place in January 2018. When Blunt’s ball was one of the lucky four selected, his focus immediately turned to funding in the form of a deal that would not deprive him of majority control. Thus, Blunts + Moore did not seek any outside incubation assistance from another company, but instead found an offer in which Blunt would retain 100% ownership of his license. On November 24, 2018, the world’s first equity-owned dispensary at last opened. Recalling the excitement of those early days, Blunt acknowledged the significance of welcoming longtime customers he’d served outside of the law, now arriving at his licensed place of business to legally buy weed from him. “I was happy, but they were super happy too,” he said. “People have been telling me forever that if anybody was going to do this, it was going to be me. I heard that all the time because of how I moved around in the illegal space, so it was pretty dope. It’s humbling. It’s amazing.” In the landscape of the San Francisco Bay Area, the cultural overlap between music, sports and world-class Cannabis offers a perfect melting pot for Blunts + Moore to operate as a dispensary, but more than that, as a vibrant extension of today’s Oakland community. Among Blunt’s cadre of certifiably cool friends are three former Golden State Warriors – Al Harrington, Matt Barnes, and
“The space has nowhere to go but up. But it’s got to be going up with people in the space actually taking part in the decisionmaking.”
mar. 2021
Stephen Jackson – all of whom now have roles in the Cannabis industry. “I was introduced to Stephen Jackson in 2018 and now my wife and I have keys to his house in Oakland,” Blunt marveled. “To have that kind of relationship after two years of knowing someone is dope as hell. Normally, I’m real guarded, but for them to come here, play for us, and now all three of them are like my peers in the licensed Cannabis space? It’s very full-circle. Plus, they’re just cool dudes overall.” Given the trajectory Blunt has been on since his arrest in 2014, it’s understandable that he has no plans to stop at one Blunts + Moore location. To the contrary, his vision is to franchise the model he’s installed in Oakland in each new state that votes to approve adult-use sales. “Anywhere with legal Cannabis, they should have an equity program,” Blunt said. “And that first store under the equity program should be Blunts + Moore. The franchise model is pretty easy: Find another ex-felon, just like me – someone from the area who loves their city – and bring them in at 51%.” The idea is to be a resource for the next wave of Tucky Blunts, who in turn, will hopefully do the same as well. “The space has nowhere to go but up,” Blunt said, “but it’s got to be going up with people in the space actually taking part in the decision-making. We’ve got a lot of these big companies coming in and treating it like a normal business, but Cannabis is a different type of business and you have to treat it as such. They come in and try to buy us out, but they need to come and try to work with this.” FOLLOW @BLUNTSANDMOORE
STORY by ZACK RUSKIN @ZACKRUSKIN for CALIFORNIA LEAF | PHOTO by MIKE ROSATI @ROSATIPHOTOS
PICKINGFRUITS.COM
1-833-MUSHIES
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stoner owner
founder
Carlos Plazola Decriminalize Nature
HEALING THE WORLD
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Carlos Plazola, a Bay Area native raised in a Chicano family, didn’t discover the world of plant medicines until the age of 50. After several years of utilizing exercise, meditation and yoga to cope with the loss of his mother and having only modest success, he read Michael Pollan’s “How to Change Your Mind” and his eyes were opened to the potential for mushrooms to help him process and come to terms with the trauma he was suffering.
LEAFMAGAZINES.COM
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lazola has never done anything in his life in a small way. When he wanted to expand his horizons and develop a sense of what life was all about, he spent three months living as a hunter-gatherer in the rainforest at the young age of just 23. So, when he tried mushrooms for the first time, he consumed five grams and locked himself in his bedroom. Given that three-and-a-half grams is considered a macro-dose, a five gram dose is more than likely to be life-altering. And that’s exactly what happened. Plazola’s experience was so powerful and so transformative, he describes his life in terms of before and after that journey. “Before that journey, I didn’t even know what spirituality was. Now I’m fully spiritual as a result of that.” Since that time, he has dedicated his life to aiding in the plant medicine movement, founding Decriminalize Nature with the goal of developing and implementing legislation that protects these anointed compounds and ensures safe access for all those who want to partake in their use.
MAR. 2021
For Plazola, the people came in and said, ‘Hey progression of plant cities, you can legalize this by medicine is not about taxing it, and look at all this profit legalization, it’s about you are going to make.’ And then decriminalization. There’s a it became about the money and stark difference – the former taxation – that’s what’s happened implying illegality outside in Cannabis.” of a set of prescribed rules, “We understand what we did and the latter implying wrong in Cannabis, we want to “There was this legality until you enter a set do it right in plant medicines,” he beautiful healing of prescribed rules. emphasized. component of it “Decriminalizing And therein lies the overall in the ‘90s and Cannabis completely would goal of Decriminalize Nature – to early 2000s, and mean anyone can grow decriminalize all plant medicines then all these as much as they want for and create the opportunity for people came in themselves, their friends anyone who wants to have their and said, ‘Hey – as long as they don’t own relationship with these special cities, you can engage in any commercial plants. legalize this by activity,” Plazola explains. “We want to hold space for the taxing it, and Given that context, one healing component of it – not lose understands that Cannabis it. We’re not against profiteering, look at all this has been legalized, not we’re not against clinical and profit you are decriminalized. medical, but at least hold space going to make.’ From Plazola’s for the community component and perspective, choosing legalization as the healing component,” said Plazola. the avenue to free the Cannabis plant Since 2019, Plazola and the team at was the wrong one. Plazola himself Decriminalize Nature have successfully passed was a former legislator and lobbyist legislation in Santa Cruz, Calif., Ann Arbor, turned Cannabis industry proponent, Mich., Somerville, Mass. and Washington and played a significant role in bringing D.C., and are actively working with legislators Prop 64 into fruition here in California. in Grand Rapids, Mich., Salt Lake City, Utah, “I should have known better,” he Seattle and several others across the country to lamented. “There was this beautiful do the same there. To learn more about Plazola healing component of it in the ‘90s and the Decriminalize Nature organization, head and early 2000s, and then all these to www.decriminalizenature.org.
A Stoner Owner is a Cannabis business owner who has a relationship with the plant. We want to buy and smoke Cannabis from companies that care about their products, employees and the plant. You wouldn’t buy food from a restaurant where the cooks don’t eat in the kitchen, so why buy corporate weed grown by a company only concerned with profits? Stoner Owner approval means a company cares, and we love weed grown with care. Let’s retake our culture and reshape a stigma by honoring those who grow, process and sell the best Cannabis possible.
INTERVIEW by NATE WILLIAMS @NATEW415/CALIFORNIA LEAF
company profile
GREEN REVOLUTION How the edible maker went from dominating Washington state’s tincture market to making moves into the Golden State.
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leafmagazines.com
AT GREEN REVOLUTION, thinking outside of the box is an ethos that extends far beyond what packaging materials to purchase. Formed in 2015 by Leo Shlovsky and Edward Lafferty, the company quickly gained major market share with innovative products like watersoluble tinctures and an environment-first approach to doing business. After making their mark up north in Washington state, sustainably-minded manufacturing powerhouse Green Revolution is starting to clean up in California as well. STO RY b y ZAC K RUS KI N @ ZAC K RUS KI N for CAL I F O R N I A LEA F
mar. 2021
IN 2020,
the company took another big step by opening up operations in California. Speaking by phone with California Leaf, Green Revolution Sales and Marketing Director Joe Derr (right ) said the mission for the company today is the same one that has guided it from the very beginning. “For us, it all started with wellness,” Derr explained. “The reason we’re in the industry is to really change people’s lives. I think it always starts with the customer and paying attention to what they need and delivering on that. If you can really focus just purely on that, the rest will come.” SOMETHING IN THE WATER
Green Revolution’s first splash in the Washington state market was a water-soluble tincture that dissolves in any liquid upon contact. “Essentially, it took the tincture and the beverage categories and merged them into one,” he said. “Whatever you want to call it, it’s a product that’s uniquely positioned for both categories and it was a foundational product for us.” The company then released a CBD-dominant version, called Relief. But this was back in 2016, long before CBD’s ascent into the mainstream. “It was an absolute game-changer,” Derr noted, “because it was real, full-spectrum Cannabis oil. That took off for us too.” Today, Green Revolution has the top-selling tincture in the Washington market. In fact, they’ve actually been responsible for seven of the state’s 10 top selling tinctures over the past three years. In total, Washingtonians can now choose from over 120 different Green Revolution products across 11 categories. And in 2020, they decided it was time to let California join the party. GREEN IN THE GOLDEN STATE
It was just over a year ago that Green Revolution became a California resident. But finding a handful of small, family-run Cannabis farms using organic, regenerative practices to partner with in California did not prove to be an easy task. It’s one Derr had already encountered during his efforts to foster similar relationships with farmers in Washington. That’s because both there and in California, Green Revolution op-
ing up out of nowhere. It takes a bit of relationship building. It took about a year to develop one solid relationship.” But prudent patience has not deterred Green Revolution from making some noise in its first year in California. Even with the challenges of COVID-19 to contend with, the company has managed to stay busy. Thus far, they’ve released nearly 40 products into the market – with plans to up that number to over 100 by August. In the interim, their first items to land are already earning rave reviews. IF YOU KNOW BETTER, THEN DO BETTER
2020 was mostly awful, but it did feature a few bright spots for Green Revolution. In the fall, they took home “Best Tincture” at California’s WEEDCon Cup for Deep Rest (a tincture made with an all-organic, non-GMO avocado oil base and a formulated ratio of CBD, THC and CBN). Meanwhile, the brand’s all-organic real fruit juice Doozie gummies nabbed “Best Edible” honors at both the Seattle Sun Cup and Washington’s Craft Cannabis Cup. At the same time, Green Revolution continues work on its California operations, which includes finishing the build on its two-facility Palm Springs headquarters. According to Derr, one of the operation’s marquee attractions is a two-story building which will soon 21 house “one of the fastest beverage lines in Cannabis.” The company has also become a trendsetter in transparency by being among the first brands in California to embrace packaging with QR codes linked to proderates not as a vertical company, but instead as uct testing reports. a one-stop extraction-manufacturing-distribution “When we came in a year ago and started doing hub in partnership with a select number of small that,” Derr recalled, “there were only two or three othfamily farmers. er companies doing it. Now there are probably over “We’re creating, essentially, an ecosystem of 100. There are a lot of companies small farmers,” Derr said. Ev e n w i t h t h e watching us.” “And we will only work with c ha l l e n g e s o f COVI D-19 Acknowledging the bright and buy from them, which t o c o nt e n d w i t h , t h e spotlight that has shone on Green ensures there’s systematic, c o m p a n y ha s ma n a g e d Revolution since it first came to sustainable, consistent purt o s t a y b u s y. Th u s prominence, Derr noted that part chases being made to really f ar, the y ’ ve r ele ase d of the responsibility of being a support these farmers who n e a r l y 4 0 p r o d u c t s i nt o leader on environmental issues is are aligning with us.” t h e ma r k e t – w i t h p l a n s always looking to see where you Building such trust can t o u p t ha t n u m b e r t o can improve too. also require substantial o v e r 10 0 b y Au g u s t . “If you know better, then do patience, which Derr enbetter. That goes on every level, countered as he began to including Green Revolution. We have so many imseek out farming partners for Green Revolution’s provements to make.” California products. One area Green Revolution is looking to address “California was quite a bit trickier,” he said, right away: more environmentally-friendly packaging. “because it’s a multi-generational thing, but “We’ve sold millions and millions of units, and we there’s also that old-school mentality of not really want to do our part to continuously improve.” wanting to expand your network past a certain But in the true spirit of Green Revolution, words are point.” but the conduit to concrete action. Such difficulties were only amplified when Derr “One improvement that you’ll see this year, in Caliwent to visit the remote, tight-lipped environment fornia,” Derr continued, “is that we’re shifting to more of Humboldt and the Emerald Triangle. sustainable sources for packaging. We’ve still got a “Up there, it can feel like you’re on an island,” few product lines to work on, but we are currently he explained. “And that separation made it hard making a huge shift. We know that this to reach them. Also, a lot of these farmers have is incredibly important, especially in been pretty screwed over in the past. They’ve had terms of the impact this industry is going GREENREVOLUTION.COM experiences up there where they’ve had people @EXPGREENREV to have. What California companies do try to rob them and whatnot, so it requires a bit of @EXPGREENREVOLUTION is going to set the tone for the world.” trust, especially if you’re a bald guy like me show-
PHOTOS by GREEN REVOLUTION
shop review
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leafmagazines.com
DOOBIENIGH SANTA ROSA
mar. 2021
DOOBIE NIGHTS PAIRS ITS EXTREME VISUAL DISPLAYS WITH MUSIC PUMPING OVER THE SOUND SYSTEM, MAKING SHOPPING A MEMORABLE EXPERIENCE EVEN BEFORE YOU WALK OUT OF THE FRONT DOOR WITH A BAGFUL OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA’S FINEST. HIDDEN PLEASURES On the outside, Doobie Nights gives off a vibe so subdued you might miss it on your first pass down Santa Rosa Avenue. The nondescript white building looks somewhat like a sugar cube. If that’s the case, then the Doobie Nights dispensary is a potent dose of LSD hidden within that sugar cube. From your first step through the door, you’re hit with floor-to-ceiling psychedelic light displays projected upon – and emanating from within – intricately designed, multi-layer wallscapes. To reach the sales floor, you walk through a gaping technicolor maw cut into the visuals, leading through a hallway into a cavernous area lined with every type of Cannabis product imaginable. You won’t just want to shop at this dispensary – you’ll want to throw parties there. Before you know it, you’ll be trying to figure out how to rig up a similar set-up in your smoking den.
YOUR TRIP GUIDES Owners Tiffany Woods and Damon Crain call Doobie Nights an “experiential dispensary,” and we couldn’t agree more. Recently reopened to the public after a COVID-inspired stint of curbside-only service, the shop pairs its extreme visual displays with music pumping over the sound system, making shopping a memorable experience even before you walk out of the front door with a bagful of Northern California’s finest. To add to the experience, Doobie Nights plans to produce podcasts and IG Live broadcasts – complete with green screen video capabilities – in its upstairs offices beginning in the not-toodistant future, and will feature brand representatives and other Cannabis characters in its programming schedule.
“Singularity” by Carey Thompson | Acrylic on canvas
YOUR MERRY COMPANIONS
HTS
An amazing setting and vibe will only get you so far (though in this case, that’s pretty far). Eventually, you have to deliver the rest of the experience. This is where the shop staff comes in. At Doobie Nights, the staff is friendly, knowledgeable and diverse in their tastes. Among the three people we spoke with on our visit, one of them passionately espoused the best flower to smoke out of a bong, another offered some suggestions for their favorite extracts, and another gave some sage advice regarding the shop’s significant selection of edibles. There’s something heartening about listening to someone who’s passionate about flower discuss her favorite strains, or a daily dabber point out his new favorite rosin – and the Doobie Nights crew puts that passion on display.
WALLS OF WEED Once you get a grip on the sensory overload that is this dispensary experience, you’ll be able to focus on the task at hand: buying weed. Doobie Nights focuses primarily on local products from Northern California producers, with a few exceptions. We counted nearly 40 flower brands, all at reasonable prices (indoor eighths from Pastry’s topped the list at $54). The shelves housed roughly the same number of edibles brands, satisfying every craving with a broad selection of refrigerated beverages, confections, tinctures, capsules – and just about everything else worthy of putting in your mouth. Doobie’s concentrates list featured more than 30 extract companies with a wide range of price points, from $16 to $80. Humboldt Terp Council Solventless Live Rosin ($70) and Wonder Extracts Full Extract Cannabis Oil ($80) occupied the top of that range; Honey Butter Bits & Pieces Bubble Hash offered their best value for the budget-conscious hash head ($16).
DOOBIE NIGHTS
3011 SANTA ROSA AVE. SUITE A, SANTA ROSA, CA OPEN 10 A.M. - 7 P.M. DAILY @DOOBIENIGHTS_707 DOOBIENIGHTS.COM (707) 919-3222
THE DOOBIE EXPERIENCE After our afternoon visit to this pot pleasure palace, we can honestly say that we can’t wait to go back. It’s a shop unlike any we’ve seen, and we were so taken with the entire vibe of the place, we came away wishing we’d spent more time actually perusing the shelves. But maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be. Doobie Nights isn’t a place to shop – it’s a place to be swept away, where the world melts into a swirling wash of color the moment you step from the nondescript parking lot into the vibrant world they’ve created inside this small, white, sugar cube of a building. Doobie Nights is a trip – and it’s one worth taking.
STORY by TOM BOWERS @PROPAGATECONSULTANTS/CALIFORNIA LEAF | PHOTOS by MIKE ROSATI @ROSATIPHOTOS
STRAIN OF THE MONTH
T h e le g e n d o f J e r r y G arcia we ave s like h e m p f abr ic t h rou g h th e A m e r ican c u lt u ra l t ape s t r y. The se nse o f co m p a n i o nshi p, fre e do m a n d u n b r i d le d cre a t i v i t y t ha t h e a n d T h e D e a d cha mpi o ne d a n d i n s p i re d i n a le gi o n o f D ea d h ea d s li ve s o n, lo ng a ft e r th e m a n h i mse lf de pa r t e d t he co r p o rea l re a lm .
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SOUR BUBBLE
MAR. 2021
GA R C I A H A N D P I C K E D.C O M | @ GA R C I A H A N D P I C K E D
CAL I F O R N I A
grown by
OG
GARCIA HAND PICKED 23.9% THC
TOP 5 TERPS: LIMONENE, MYRCENE, LINALOOL, BETA-CARYOPHYLLENE, BETA-PINENE.
IT’S KIND OF LIKE SITTING CROSS-LEGGED NEXT TO A BUS OUTSIDE OF A DEAD SHOW.
REVIEW by TOM BOWERS @PROPAGATECONSULTANTS/CALIFORNIA LEAF | PHOTO by NATE WILLIAMS @NATEW415
While putting together this Psychedelia Issue, we at the Leaf absolutely had to book Garcia Hand Picked for the Strain of the Month stage. What is more psychedelic than Jerry and The Dead? The minute I held an eighth of Garcia HP flower in my hands, I knew it was special. We see a lot of celebrity-based brands come and go at the Leaf – while there are some high spots, we’ve been vocal in the past regarding our skepticism of efforts to cash in on nostalgia and stardom. After spending some time with the Garcia HP flower, we can say that Trixie, Annabelle and the Garcia family honored Jerry’s legacy with this homage. Each eighth comes packed in a silkscreened jar, tucked away inside a box wrapped in swirling, hallucinogenic portraits of Jerry and vibrant, abstract patterns. When you open the top flap, you’re greeted by song lyrics, Jerry quotes, sheet music, abstract patterns and the Garcia Hand Picked logo – Jerry’s four-fingered hand on a guitar pick – smack dab in the center of what is undoubtedly the trippiest jar lid in the Cannabis industry. The Garcia family explored options for creating a brand to honor Jerry’s legacy for years, and finally partnered with Holistic – a vertically integrated multi-state operator with the systems and branding expertise to build Garcia Hand Picked into a national Cannabis brand. They launched in California, partnering with NorCal Cannabis for their indoor whole flower, and full-term sungrown farms in the Emerald Triangle for their pre-roll packs. We got our hands on a trio of tasty flowers, all selected by the Garcia family: the sweet, indica-leaning Peanut Butter Souffle, the deliciously potent, sativadominant Chem Diesel, and the indicaleaning hybrid we’ll discuss here – the Sour Bubble OG. A potent phenotype of B.O.G. Bubble, these light green nugs hit you with the gas, along with tones of earth and grass. It’s kind of like sitting cross-legged next to a bus outside of a Dead show. Somebody pass me a Samuel Smith’s Oatmeal Stout. The flower draws smooth, filling the mouth with fuel, followed by an almost immediate soothing euphoria. This isn’t couch-lock, but it’s definitely not “get up and do shit” weed. The effects amplify steadily as it creeps, and you may even experience a bit of a standing wobble if you’re not paying attention. It’s a perfect strain for swaying on the lawn at a concert, if and when we get to do that again. At that time, the Garcia Hand Picked tour bus, lovingly named Bertha, will be making its rounds throughout the country, spreading the love of Cannabis, Jerry, and The Dead. What a long, strange trip, as Jerry would say. At least we have good music, good Cannabis, and each other. And now, thanks to the Garcia Family and Holistic, we have a Cannabis brand that speaks to Jerry’s legacy.
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the PSYCHEDELIA issue
HAVE A SEAT AND STEP INTO * THE *
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In 2010, my inspiration for publishing a Cannabis magazine was the esoteric nature of a hidden medicine that had the power to heal and change the world, and it is that same drive that has led the Leaf to publishing this second annual special issue. What more noble a cause is there than freeing the truth? Especially when it brings healing for our minds, consciousness and spirits – which have been completely ignored by Western medicine for the last 50 years. In 2010, I asked a simple question that the Founding Fathers of our great country would have resonated with: If a law governing a plant is unjust, should I be willing to break it? My answer was yes – to bring freedom and knowledge to people suffering, and most of all, to provide hope that a plant could deliver revolutionary medicine that a laboratory-made pill could not. Just as Cannabis’ path to legalization came from decriminalization and activism, so is the march towards the legalization of psychedelics via entheogenic plants and synthesized therapeutics like Ketamine and LSD. The field of psychedelic research is exploding as laws loosen, allowing scientists, therapists and psychonauts alike to explore how these substances can provide huge medicinal benefits – including alleviating depression and PTSD, helping confront death in end-of-life therapy, and even regrowing neural pathways that can help unlock the true potential of human consciousness and the brain’s ability to heal.
Mar. 2021
PSYCHE*DELIA *
ISSUE * *
So, here I am in 2021 asking the same question I asked in 2009 as I was being arrested for Cannabis. Should we criminalize nature? Should we deny substances that heal, both clinically and in personal use? I believe the answer is a resounding, NO! The time is now to explore, learn and heal our species as we grapple with the realities of a digital society on a warming planet, spinning at 1,000 miles per hour in a huge cosmic expanse. As we continue to progress this movement, knowledge and empathy will be our most powerful tools in undoing the Drug War and the misconceptions of anti-drug propaganda. Showing the lives that are helped through education will lead to enlightenment, at which point our society will be unable to ethically condone criminalizing any type of drug use, especially when it is beneficial and brought to us by Mother Earth. I hope that you enjoy this Issue, and learn and share the knowledge you find with those you love – for it’s only by circulating seeds of knowledge that we grow into better people, communities, and together as a species.
Story by WES ABNEY @BEARDEDLORAX | Illustrations by MR. MELTY @MR.MELTY for LEAF NATION
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Story by MAX EARLY @LIFTED_STARDUST
COMMON PSYCHEDELICS cannabis Cannabis Sativa is a plant that contains the psychoactive compound of THC, as well as 500 other compounds, including 113 cannabinoids. Effects are traditionally euphoric, mood-enhancing, and known to reduce pain and nausea. It is the combination of these various chemical compositions that produce different reactions in humans consuming Cannabis. When consumed in higher doses, Cannabis is known to have psychoactive effects. Where is it produced? Indoor, outdoor and greenhouses Common amounts consumed: 1g joint 25mg edible serving 10mg of concentrate/maximum .1g Therapeutic usages: Anxiety reduction, mood elevation, depression, chronic pain, neurological conditions
LSD LSD is an indispensably powerful synthesized psychoactive compound. When consuming even the smallest amount, the effect on humans distorts all sensory perceptions. Visual and auditory hallucinations are known to provide sights of fractals, visualized sounds and changing colors. Where is it produced? Synthesized in laboratories. Common amounts consumed: Micro-dose = 1 ug (1/100 tab) Therapeutically = 100 ug (1 tab) Therapeutic usages: PTSD, repressed psychological trauma, anxiety, depression, psychosomatic diseases, addiction
psilocybin Psilocybin is a naturally occurring psychoactive compound found in many different species of mushrooms. Many patients have noted that psilocybin has helped to provide a deeper connection with the self and inner peace in therapeutic settings. Reports have shown that many patients of therapeutic psilocybin experience visions of patterns or faces that may appear warped. Where is it produced? Naturally occurring and grown in laboratories. Common amounts consumed: Micro-dose = .1-.25g Therapeutically = 2g Therapeutic usages: Depression, anxiety, addiction, OCD, end of life therapy
Ayahuasca Ayahuasca is a psychoactive plant-based brew or tea, containing MAOI and dimethyltryptamine. In recent decades, researchers have been discovering usages of
ayahuasca for treating substance abuse and other disorders. This mind-altering psychedelic helps individuals deal with past traumatic events, providing a sense of clarity. Typical dosages are still unknown, as this substance remains illegal within the U.S. Where is it produced? In South America by tribes. Dimethyltryptamine is extracted from Mimosa tree bark and other plants. Common amounts consumed: Unknown
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Therapeutic usages: Aids with overall psychological wellbeing and substance dependence.
TURN ON, TUNE IN, VIBE OUT EXPLORING PSYCHEDELIC MEDIA... Thinking about prying open your third eye by experimenting with some psychedelics? Or perhaps you just want to be better educated about entheogens? Whatever your trip, here are a few mind-expanding media recommendations to help get you in the right headspace for your journey toward enlightenment.
Fantastic Fungi
(2019)
fantasticfungi.com
Filmed in glorious 4K by the filmmakers behind “Moving Art,” “Fantastic Fungi” seamlessly switches between mind-blowing time lapses, stunning CGI graphics, and in-depth interviews with mycological mavens like Paul Stamets, Michael Pollen and Dr. Andrew Weil. This comprehensive documentary explores every aspect of mushrooms and their unique role in the cycle and evolution of life, including how their underground mycelium networks enable trees to communicate, how their psychedelic properties may have kickstarted human consciousness, and how their enormous medicinal and psychiatric potential is finally being studied after decades of demonization via the Drug War. A must-see for mycophiles. –Bobby Black
Entangled Life / Merlin Sheldrake
(2020)
merlinsheldrake.com/entangled-life
Written by tropical biologist and fungal researcher Merlin Sheldrake, “Entangled Life” is an incredible book dedicated to providing a further understanding of mycology and how fungal networks operate. For those of you yearning to learn more about mushrooms, their unique relationship with the environment around us and how they could potentially help save the world, this book is for you. Pick up a copy today and grow your knowledge on mycelium, microbiology and much more! –Max Early
Lonerism / Tame Impala (2012) official.tameimpala.com
If the Beatles were to make Sgt. Pepper today, this is what it would sound like. With Lennon-esque vocals and fuzzy riffs pounding along with sweeping synth star sails, your musical soulmate awaits through the mind of Perth, Australia’s Kevin Parker. Released in 2012, this is no new news for longtime fans who’ve seen the band headline festivals worldwide, but nothing has rivaled the impact on guitar-driven music since. The psychedelic highlight is Endors Toi, where the anxious mind is reassured that the safety of dreamland is only one long blink away. Yes, this was their commercial breakthrough, but for good reason: The ‘60s splendor matched with third eye imagination leaves something hidden in every note for the intrepid tripper. – Mike Ricker
the PSYCHEDELIA issue leafmagazines.com
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C
ommonly associated as an intoxicant or a depressant, Cannabis has a long history of being wrongly allied with laziness, procrastination and “burning you out.” More importantly, many have disregarded the fact that this sacred herb is much closer to being an entheogen and a psychedelic more than anything else. In our March Psychedelia Issue, we seek to expand your minds to the use of Cannabis as a tool to help with mood balance, increased creativity levels, and show you how to utilize the plant as a perspective-changing medium. Like other plant-based psychedelics, Cannabis is an excellent way to help us view the world through a different lens, giving us an appreciation for all of the little pieces that influence our scope of life. Smoking a bowl can help you smell and view the flowers in an entirely new way than you have ever encountered them before, or maybe make your favorite meal taste that much better. Both Cannabis and psychedelics can help us identify new instrumentals on a track that we’ve heard a million times, or provide a deeper connection to the lyrics in a song. Unlike inhaling Cannabis, when you orally ingest it, your body breaks it down in an entirely different way, creating a longer duration of effects. Once you have eaten an edible, the Delta-9-THC enters the liver and undergoes first-pass metabolism. This process removes some Delta-9-THC and metabolizes a huge percentage into 11-Hydroxy-THC. Once this has happened, the remaining Delta-9-THC and 11-Hydroxy-THC flood our bloodstream and penetrate vascular tissues like the brain and other muscles. Due to the increased 11-Hydroxy-THC, the effects are far more profound than any other way of consuming Cannabis, providing a more psychedelic experience overall. We are all familiar with the look on a baby’s face seeing something or experiencing a new sense for the first time. Plant-based entheogens like Cannabis and psilocybin can inspire that feeling of being a kid again – helping us further take in our surroundings, seeing them in a new way, and appreciating them for everything they have to offer in more depth. It is easy to go throughout life and not take a second to slow down to appreciate all that our short experience here has to offer. Plant-based medicines are a way to realize the beauty within every day, and feel the interconnectedness with Mother Nature and our fellow human beings.
Like other plant-based psychedelics, Cannabis is an excellent way to help us view the world through a different lens. Mar. 2021
CANNABIS IS A REAL PSYCHEDELIC
STORY by MAX EARLY @LIFTED_STARDUST/LEAF NATION | ILLUSTRATION by MR. MELTY @MR.MELTY
A JOURNEY OF MICRODOSING MUSHROOMS
CHASING SUNSHINE
I
am beyond grateful for having discovered the healing power of earth derived medicines at a young age. It’s entirely possible I wouldn’t be here today if the universe had led me in a different direction.
Growing up in California’s Bay Area in the ‘90s, Cannabis was available in abundance and if you knew where to look or who to ask, other substances weren’t hard to obtain either. I first tried Cannabis around 16 and instantly recognized its ability to make me feel more comfortable in my pubescent and rapidly changing skin. Like many during this challenging period of life, I struggled with a feeling of extreme discomfort living in my own body, which manifested itself as depression. At that age, I wanted to be a professional skateboarder and was pushing myself to my limits on the regular, sustaining frequent injuries as a result. I realized that I would heal much faster when I used Cannabis as part of my recovery regimen, and I became a believer in the plant’s healing ways – knowing deep down that what I had been led to believe about Cannabis was false. I had only ever taken a very small amount of mushrooms a couple of times while partying as a teenager – very much for recreational use – before meeting a now ex-girlfriend at the age of 21 who opened my eyes to the power of the fungus. After splitting three-and-a-half grams made into tea, I felt “better” in a way that is hard to describe – like taking a weight vest off that you had forgotten you had on. I knew somewhere deep within me this was medicine and another substance I had been misled to believe wasn’t good for me. We would brew tea a couple times a year, always using between two and five grams of Cubensis mushrooms. Because we were taking larger doses, these experiences were certainly what I would classify as “trips,”meaning they were intense, emotional, moving and certainly at times psychedelic. The resulting post-trip effects would last for months and felt like a mental breath of fresh air, leaving me feeling rejuvenated and thoroughly happy with a renewed lust for life. I maintained my same source and relative frequency of consumption for several years, until I made a significant discovery. Over the last five years, the culture around and mainstream acceptability of psychedelics and plant medicine had changed fairly drastically. More and more, I began to see articles
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It was like that little gray cloud that always put a damper on things dissipated and I could feel the sun begin to shine brightly once again. and hear stories about techies at some of the largest companies in Silicon Valley microdosing psilocybin and LSD to operate at their fullest potential. This intrigued me. Then, one day, I happened upon one of these editorials and something clicked. I realized that much like my evolution in understanding of Cannabis and how to use it, my approach with mushrooms was not wrong per se, but I could consume them differently to take better advantage of their benefits. So, at 29-yearsold, I bought a new coffee grinder, a basic capsule-making machine and empty vegetable glycerin caps, and began teaching myself how to microdose psilocybin.
My goal was to harness the positive effects of the mushrooms without dealing with the somewhat negative side effects of having to go through a mildly hallucinogenic and moderately intense experience to do so. It took some dialing in to find my titrated dose, but what I discovered through the process was miraculous and freeing. In less than a year, that depression that had never really gone away and had been with me for the last 14-plus years simply fell away. It was like that little gray cloud that always put a damper on things dissipated, and I could feel the sun begin to shine brightly once again. Altering my delivery method and frequency ended up being a life-altering decision and has made all the difference for me — with knowledge, comes power.
STORY & PHOTO by NATE WILLIAMS @NATEW415/LEAF NATION | ILLUSTRATION by MR. MELTY @MR.MELTY
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INTERVIEW WITH A MEDICINE MA
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A
42-year-old Cannabis cultivator and cactus collector, Funxta has tripped out hundreds of times on everything from psilocybin, peyote and ayahuasca, to MDMA, LSD and DMT. He’s authored numerous articles on psychedelics and helped lead the 2016 effort to legalize mushrooms in California. He’s studied under legendary Cannabis activists like Jack Herer, Ed Rosenthal and Rick Simpson, as well as renowned Sonoran toad expert Dr. Gerry Sandoval Isaac. MORE IMPORTANTLY, though, he’s helped thousands of patients with Cannabis oil and mushrooms – making him one of the most experienced alternative healers in Southern California. But whatever you do, don’t call him a shaman. “I don’t consider myself a shaman – I prefer to call myself a neo-medicine man,” Funxta clarifies. “Shamans do some hard, heavy work – they can draw deep demons out of people. I’m not comfortable doing that … I’m still fighting those demons myself.” For Eddie, those personal demons arose from a difficult childhood.
Mar. 2021
For millennia, indigenous healers known as medicine men or shamans have utilized psychoactive plants to treat ailments and cultivate a deeper understanding of the universes both inside us and around us. In recent years, a movement has been building to rediscover the therapeutic potential of these ancient plant medicines, led in part by modern-day medicine men like Eddie Funxta.
Growing up in the projects of East LA, he was denied knowledge of his Native American/Mexican heritage by his family over fears they would be ostracized. When he was seven, his parents divorced and he lost touch with his father’s Yavapai side, leaving him to be raised by his mother’s “hardcore Catholic” side of the family. Living in the ghetto, disconnected from his Native heritage, under an intense Christian dogma that he rejected, he was in his words, a “very bad kid.” But Eddie’s angry trajectory started shifting at age 15, thanks to the influence of a history teacher who assigned his class a research project on a controversial topic of their choosing. “Everybody was picking Hitler and other crazy shit,” he recalls. “Since I grew up listening to psychedelic rock like The Doors and Jimi Hendrix, I picked magic mushrooms and shamanism.” Eddie headed to the library, looked up psychedelics and found three books: Aldous Huxley’s “Doors of Perception,” an installment of Carlos Castaneda’s “Don Juan” series, and a cultural book about Mesoamerica that recounted tales of ancient shamanic mushroom ceremonies. “The stuff I was reading was amazing to my young mind,” he says. “I was blown away – I felt like a curtain had been pulled back on my reality.” A week after his class presentation, his friend Johnny showed up at school with a sheet of acid. Eddie and his friends threw a party, tripped out for the first time and had a life-changing night filled with “dancing, laughter, colors, compassion and connection.” In the following months, Funxta immersed himself in the new world that had opened to him – tripping on acid or mushrooms two to three times
a month and even selling them at school. After dropping out in 1996, he began growing weed and selling it to celebrities and dispensaries around Hollywood. It was at one such dispensary that he met a woman named Sister Somalia, who first opened his eyes to marijuana’s medicinal value – instigating Eddie’s transformation from a thuggish drug dealer to a compassionate caregiver.
Funxta began visiting homes, hospitals, hospices and clinics, offering Cannabis to cancer and AIDS patients, as well as addicts trying to kick methadone, meth and heroin. BEFORE LONG, he realized that many patients were unable or unwilling to smoke joints, and recognized a huge gap in the medical market. “We had flowers, dabs, topicals … but Phoenix Tears – or Rick Simpson Oil as most people know it – wasn’t being produced on an adequate scale in SoCal.” So in 2010, he set out to fill that need. Through mutual friends, he connected with Rick Simpson himself, learned how to properly produce the potent full-plant oil, and started to distribute large quantities of the product under the name Native Healing Oil. “I know Rick Simpson was upset with people calling it RSO,” Funxta explains. “I’m not Rick Simpson, so it’s not RSO – it’s NHO.” While his NHO was effective in treating many patients’ physical ailments, Funxta knew that emotional/psychological wounds required a deeper
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eddie funxta “Jack was microdosing a gram or two of kind of medicine. He recalls one particular patient Amanita muscaria a day,” he says. “Within six to that he helped transition from physical to meneight months, he’d regained his speech.” tal healing: A 57-year-old former beauty queen Of all the substances he’s taken, Funxta says who’d used NHO while battling breast cancer, but his most healing trip came from a combination was left with scars inside as well as out. of ayahuasca and yopo – a powder made from “She’d had a double mastectomy, lost her hair the dried seeds of a South American tree that’s and teeth … she didn’t recognize herself in the traditionally blown up into one’s nostrils. Taken mirror anymore.” Suffering from depression and together, these two substances panic attacks, she asked Eddie for produce a prolonged, profound help and he recommended mushshamanic experience. rooms. Though initially resistant, “For 12 hours I was in the deepshe eventually gave it a try. est, heaviest psychedelic space I’d “The very first dose I gave her ever been in,” he recounts. “I was shook her out of her depression carried away by the spirit world, I instantaneously,” he remembers died and was reborn, and gained proudly. “She called me the next a deep understanding and peace day with a completely different with myself and the universe.” outlook, saying she felt great. She Over the past decade, Funxta ended up starting a breast cancer has used Cannabis and other support group and becoming an entheogens to assist over 2,600 advocate for plant medicines.” sick and dying patients to recover Fungi aren’t just capable of or transition. In 2019, his career altering one’s state of consciousThe inspiring 2019 documentary of compassion drew the attenness – they can actually alter the on Eddie by Jeremie Norrie tion of filmmaker Jeremy Norrie, brain’s structure itself by rebuilding is available on Amazon Prime. who featured Eddie and several cognitive connections. of his patients in the film “About Cannabis and The late activist icon Jack Herer (whose family Cancer” – one in a trilogy of medical marijuana Eddie has worked with) medicated with mushdocumentaries produced for Amazon Prime. rooms after suffering a debilitating stroke in 2000.
“The stuff I was reading was amazing to my young mind,” he says. “I was blown away – I felt like a curtain had been pulled back on my reality.”
Another film about psychedelics is already in the works. “The last American witchhunt is plants,” he testifies. “Cannabis, mushrooms, holy cactus … any plant that alters your state of consciousness has been made illegal or portrayed as detrimental to society, when in reality they are what first brought people together to create societies and build civilizations.” Unfortunately, due to a bitter divorce that placed him in potential legal jeopardy, Funxta was forced to abandon his NHO brand indefinitely as of 2017. Nevertheless, after spending some time backpacking through Yosemite (hiking, vision questing and dancing under the stars), he’s rededicated himself to his spiritual mission – only this time, without the drugs. “I’m creating a natural healing space in the California desert … sound bath and singing bowl ceremonies, yoga, meditation – but zero illegal plant medicines,” he explains. “You don’t always need a hit of acid – you can find that healing space without it … it’s already inside you.” @FUNXTAZ_VISIONARY_COLLECTION
STORY & PHOTOS by BOBBY BLACK @BOBBYBLACK420/LEAF NATION | ILLUSTRATION by MR. MELTY @MR.MELTY
the PSYCHEDELIA issue
JOHNS HOPKINS CENTER FOR PSYCHEDELIC AND CONSCIOUSNESS RESEARCH david bryce yaden, PhD
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The psychedelic experience is one that many people have pondered, but is still beyond full scientific understanding. That lack of understanding by our culture has been a key factor in impeding these fascinating substances from going mainstream for therapeutic use – until now. As the landscape around psychedelic research continues to evolve, Leaf Magazines caught up with Dr. David B. Yaden – a postdoctoral psychedelic researcher at Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, and, full disclosure, this writer’s cousin, for a behind the scenes look at the latest developments in the emerging field – and how he found himself immersed in the world of psychedelic science. Follow him on Twitter, @ExistWell. I know it has been a long journey to attaining the position you hold today – could you give us some background info and a breakdown of your education? Where did the motivation come from to make it this far in your field? My journey to becoming a scientist studying psychedelic drugs started with an experience I had in college, that actually had nothing to do with drugs. It was an experience that seemed to come completely out of nowhere – of total unity and feelings of love for everyone and everything. I learned later that people call this kind of moment a ‘peak experience’ or ‘mystical experience,’ and I was lucky enough for it to happen to me spontaneously while lying on my dorm room bed. It left me wondering, ‘What the hell just happened to me?!’ That experience was so important and so positive in its effects, but it only
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lasted for a few minutes at most. Afterwards, I became fascinated with how brief experiences can have a long-lasting positive impact. For a while, I studied comparative religions, philosophy, neuroscience and psychology, just to see if I could find something to help me understand my experience. The most important book that I found with all of this reading was one by William James called “The Varieties of Religious Experience.” By the way, if you’ve had one of these kinds of experiences, you can help our research by describing it at www.varietiescorpus.com. I got my PhD in psychology, which trained me in how to measure and conduct studies on these
kinds of experiences. You can ask people to think back to their experiences and describe them, but to do good scientific work, you really need to be able to cause these experiences in a controlled setting. That’s where psychedelics come in – they provide a tool that researchers can use to trigger these positively transformative experiences in the laboratory. Researchers are currently finding all kinds of benefits (as well as a few risks) associated with using psychedelics to treat disorders like depression and addiction.
I know Johns Hopkins is a global leader in the field – can you give some insight into the program itself? What drugs have your team been researching?
“We have an opportunity as a society to treat psychedelics with more respect this time around.”
findings, describing a new theory or summarizing previous research findings. In the afternoon, I analyze data from studies that we’ve already run or work on launching new studies, which involves a huge amount of paperwork and thinking through safety issues. I try to schedule meetings later in the day, after I’m fried from writing and analyzing data. In the evenings, I usually go for a walk by the river to decompress. I work pretty much every day. I should say that this is how life looks for me during the pandemic – once it’s safe for the lab to return to normal, I will be administering psilocybin to study participants and helping to guide psychedelic sessions.
What are some of the greatest challenges to progress you and your colleagues have faced in your field?
Yaden stands outside of the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore.
The Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins is currently the world’s largest lab studying psychedelics. Researchers like Roland Griffiths and his colleagues have been studying psychedelics since around 2000, but this new center (funded by Tim Ferris and a group of philanthropists) will allow a lot more psychedelic research to happen. We have studied many psychedelics like DMT, 5-MeODMT, and especially psilocybin. Psilocybin has shown a great deal of potential as a treatment for mental illnesses while also being pretty safe when administered in clinical settings. There are so many open scientific questions about psychedelics. First, how does this substance change the brain to produce such a substantially altered state of consciousness? Second, how do set and setting influence this altered state of consciousness? Third, how does
the experience (and associated brain changes) from psychedelics tend to result in such positive psychological changes for so many people? Last but not least, what are some of the risks of taking psilocybin and when should some people avoid taking it for safety reasons? These are just a few of the kinds of questions that we’re conducting research to address.
Walk us through the average day of a psychedelic scientist? I love being a scientist and I feel incredibly grateful that I can spend my time trying to understand psychedelics and other questions about how the mind works … but it’s not very glamorous! I start my morning by making coffee and practicing meditation for about 20 minutes. I make sure that I write every day, so I usually spend the rest of the morning writing about new
I wrote an article with my advisor (Roland Griffiths, PhD) and my wife (Mary ‘Bit’ Yaden, MD) that describes a bunch of my worries about psychedelic research and use. Basically, I’m worried that there will be a lack of the necessary amount of care with psychedelics. These are really powerful psychological experiences that we’re talking about. The biggest challenge that I see is getting people to slow down and think carefully and realistically by paying attention to what the scientific evidence has to say. In general, we’ve already seen during the 1960s how psychedelic research and recreational use can go wrong and lead us to a dead end. We have an opportunity as a society to treat psychedelics with more respect this time around. My recommendation is to stick to what the science says. The full article is available at by visiting JamaNetwork.com and searching for “Psychedelics in Psychiatry—Keeping the Renaissance From Going Off the Rails”.
What has been your most shocking or unexpected finding in your work at Johns Hopkins? One of the early findings from psychedelic research at Johns Hopkins continues to blow my mind. Roland Griffiths and his colleagues found that in a sample of people who were given psilocybin in a supportive setting, twothirds of them reported that the experience was among the top five most meaningful experiences of their entire lives. In other words, people who took psilocybin and laid down on a couch with eyeshades for a few hours said that the experience was almost as meaningful as events like graduating, getting married, or the birth of a child. That, to me, is an absolutely amazing fact and the findings have been replicated in many studies since.
STORY by BARRON WOLFE @BARRON.WOLFE/LEAF NATION | PHOTO by ERIC KAYNE @PHOTOKAYNE | ILLUSTRATION by MR. MELTY @MR.MELTY
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INTEGRATIVE AND HEALING KETAMINE THERAPY dr. radu kramer
onsidered a wonder-drug since its origins as the most common anesthetic used by our soldiers on the battlefields of Vietnam, Ketamine has been utilized to save the lives of people and animals for decades – but has also received criticism for its illicit recreational use. As mentioned in The Harvard Health Blog, when it comes to modern day psychiatric therapy, intravenous Ketamine treatment is the proverbial “new kid on the block” for depression management, and even suicide prevention.
Dr. Radu Kramer is a nephrologist and internist who began incorporating Ketamine into his practice in 2019, and has practiced integrative medicine as a medical doctor for more than 25 years. Integrative medicine, or in Radu’s mind, “just medicine,” is considered to be a broader approach to evaluating and treating a person. As he explains, “Physical, genetic, immunologic and psychological elements must be diligently evaluated in order to identify a correct diagnosis. The treatment will focus on the cause of the disease whenever available, and will expand to involve the whole person. Mental health disorders alter the balance of the immune system. A less competent immune system does not resist or fight infectious diseases as well, generates inflammation, allows autoimmune conditions to develop and increases the risk of malignancies.” Many patients, close family members, and even Dr. Kramer himself suffer from depression and anxiety at times - which makes these exciting developments crucially important in more ways than one. “It’s a pleasure talking with you about Ketamine, as it has gained reputation in the management of treatment-resistant mental health disorders,” Dr. Kramer told The Leaf. “The intense pain associated with these conditions cannot be appropriately understood by those who have not experienced it. Unfortunately, the current conventional psychiatric therapies, while initially effective, tend to have limited and inconsistent long-term benefits and come with side effects, sometimes difficult to tolerate.”
HERE TO HELP HEAL
To better respond to those asking for his help, Dr. Kramer has taken several courses in psychopharmacology, participated in numerous meetings on newer therapeutic modalities in psychiatric disorders, and has attempted to remain current with any significant advances in this field. “When the studies on the effect of Ketamine performed in major universities and hospitals were released, it became clear that its new mechanism of action comes with an advantage in the outcome of those suffering from treatment-resistant depression (TRD), chronic pain, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), addictions and chronic migraines,” he said. For over 20 years, he and his team have been providing intravenous infusions with antioxidants, amino acids, vitamins and glutathione to decrease inflammation and enhance the function of the immune system. Plugging Ketamine into the equation was a turn-key process, but as Dr. Kramer explained, it needed slight modifications. “We prepared the office for Ketamine infusions by creating an environment where patients have additional privacy, and at the same time, can be monitored.” Potentially there could be serious side effects with anesthesia inducing drugs that’s why it is important to have such infusions performed in the presence of a medical doctor, other trained professionals, and in an appropriate environment.” The therapy also may not cure everyone’s depression and anxiety, as Dr. Kramer discovered through his own personal trials. In his case, his unpleasant feelings actually increased – but he admits he didn’t follow through with the same protocol he gives to his patients. “My personal experience is a constant reminder that everyone needs an objective guide through the therapy,” he said.
REDEFINING KETAMINE
For the past two years, Dr. Kramer and his team have conducted hundreds of Ketamine infusions for all the conditions previously mentioned. As he explained, “Ketamine is an anesthetic, but when used in subanesthetic doses, works more like a psychedelic substance
and has been proven beneficial in several mental health disorders, where conventional treatments were not nearly as effective. The fact that this represents over 50% of patients treated for depression, in the 21st century, is scary.” While there can be confusion over what to call Ketamine, it is officially classified as a dissociative – still, the inner workings of the substance remain elusive. “The precise mechanisms of action for “I believe that the reintroduction of Ketamine remain the other psychedelics, under the unknown,” Dr. Kramer explained. “We undersupervision of well-trained therapists stand that it stimulates and physicians, will forever transform glutamate, which is a the rudimentary modalities still in use neurotransmitter, meaning that it contributes today to manage mental illness.” to the transmission of a nerve impulse – like serotonin, dopamine, GABA and acetylcholine. The most common side effects are drowsiness, nausea, muscle spasms, blurred vision, hallucinations and confusion. Generally these effects resolve spontaneously over a few hours following an infusion.” At a time when we are being faced with increasing suicide rates, Dr. Kramer specifically noted the Harvard study that showed Ketamine’s ability to treat suicidal levels of depression, highlighting the instantaneous effect of the substance on the patient. “The impact on depression is practically instant, unlike any other treatment, and that is the reason it can change the desire to leave this world due to the enormous pain and hopelessness that often is associated with depression,” he said. “The fact that one can experience painlessness within minutes, gives those desiring an end of their sufferance by ending their lives a sense of hope, and their perception actually changes. The initial effect may last from a few hours to a few days. That is why we recommend building up a more predictable response, which requires six infusions over a period of two to three weeks. If the response is positive, we transfer the patients to Esketamine, which is a nasal spray and has essentially the same effect as intravenously-infused Ketamine.”
A MATTER OF ACCESS
Due to the fact that so few doctors are offering this treatment to their patients, medical Ketamine therapy can be difficult to gain access to – yet its availability on the black market makes it common at festivals and in clubs around the globe. When asked about recreational Ketamine use, Dr. Kramer said, “As a physician who pays a lot of attention to the Ketamine dosing, tolerability and benefits to patients with mental health disorders, it is difficult to endorse unsupervised use of Ketamine – as the risk of more profound anesthesia exists and the availability of life support mechanisms does not.” In other words, if you took too much, it could lead to needing medical attention that might not be available. “It is unfortunate that not enough physicians are open-minded enough … I believe that the reintroduction of the other psychedelics under the supervision of well-trained therapists and physicians will forever transform the rudimentary modalities still in use today to manage mental illness,” he concluded. “I have to point out how important it is to put an end to the primitive stigma associated with mental health that is quite alive in society and in families. The shame of being judged or ridiculed has prevented too many from getting help, and pushed them to suicide as the only solution to end the unbearable pain associated with major depression.” ComprehensiveHealingMD.com
STORY by BARRON WOLFE @BARRON.WOLFE/LEAF NATION | PHOTOS by SCOTT SEMLER @SWEATER.BOY | ILLUSTRATION by MR. MELTY @MR.MELTY
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READING ENERGY
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he world has spent the last year on house arrest. But instead of wearing a tracking collar, your ball and chain is a face mask. And if we’ve learned anything from watching horror movies for the past several generations, concealing one’s identity is a practice utilized by bank robbers, guerrilla taggers and Marvel villains. Some heroes wear masks, but at least you can see their mouths. And you can learn a lot from a person’s mouth. BUT WE ARE currently at a social disadvantage, unable to access the cues that facial gestures afford us in public interaction. Having become accustomed our entire lives to relying on our eyes as code sensors, determining true meaning through language is a vital nuance for accurate interpretation. So, hearing only a person’s voice offers limited perspective, and therefore, without the telltale crease in the corner of a mouth, the slight flare of the nostrils or the brightness of teeth, it is difficult to harmonize the limited data for an authentic read. What we are missing is subtle punctuation that relays intent. Because we lean heavily on the subconscious to guide our judgement, whether we are aware of it or not, these are the clues that lend comprehension to the charge of people’s words, be it negative or positive – which is paramount to our success as a species. And although there is a range of tactics we employ (albeit many dysfunctional), the one common goal we share is to procure love. Love directs everything we do – the way we dress, the way we work, the way we communicate. Love is as vital to our existence as food and water. It is what drives people to thrive. Without it, life is pointless. From the moment we enter the world, conditioning is imparted, marginalizing the spirit with borders and barriers, rules and institutions. Boys wear blue, girls wear pink. Go to school to learn the system, worship a higher power, work, provide, pay, repeat – until you get your Social Security and an RV to see the country roads of president carved
BY MIKE RICKER
These are the Soaring ‘20s, where open minds will save the planet.”
Mar. 2021
mountainsides and other national monuments that reinforce your indoctrination. Die and pass along your savings in hopes that your legacy will one day jump socioeconomic classes. We are born on the farm and the fences are high. There are some, however, who insist upon knowing their personal truth. That with which they were born – to rediscover the genuine soul inside the skin suit that needs a deeper meaning to reality prior to being manipulated into a societal role. And the more perceptive we become to the natural world, the more the answers to living a happy, fulfilling life will be revealed. And what connects everything we know is magnetism. Reading energy is the attempt to understand magnetism, or to harness the flow.
Flow is being in the zone, fully conscious and optimal, and this is where your potential shines. Psychedelics (Cannabis arguably being a light one) can heighten our ability to observe this magnetism from a place of humility, allowing the mind to break free of the perpetual static and oblige the instinct to interpret the language of the universe from the conscious level. This can relinquish the tension of the subconscious, which is what we all want – for this to get easier, lighter, less stressful. This is the reason we call Cannabis medicine. In the Amazon, ayahuasca is referred to with the same respect. And we know that much of the world’s sail is catching the wind of this plant-based decriminalization movement, as the galvanizing of fresh thoughts returns us to the origin from which we were originally derived – that being the soil. So, don’t worry too much about the mask. Because this is the beginning of a change. These are the Soaring ‘20s, where open minds will save the planet. And the more adept you get at letting go of your preconceptions – the dogma you’ve been saddled with since birth – the more the intuition will supersede the bad habits of applying useless labels and definitions to your world. Everything you need is here. You are provided for, just as a mollusk attached to a rock in the surf is brought the sustenance it needs. Your perception is what is holding you back and natural medicine can be a valuable tool to assist in breaking down walls that are blocking the view to the double rainbow. And when you see it, you will cry with joy.
ILLUSTRATION by MR. MELTY @MR.MELTY
PSYCHEDELIC LEGISLATION
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ike mycelium branching out beneath the damp forest floor, the movement to legalize entheogens and psychedelic compounds continues to propagate across the country. Sparked, no doubt, by the fact that Cannabis ended up being a zero-downside game for the public health and for the states’ tax revenue streams in legalized markets, the concept of plant and mushroom based recreation and therapy continues to lose its stigma. The movement has thrived beneath the surface for decades. Spiritual seekers and merry pranksters have fought this fight ever since the U.S. Government sought to criminalize and weaponize psychedelics in the 20th century.
IN RECENT YEARS, those underground tendrils started popping up above the surface, bearing fruit and spreading spores on the winds. In 2019, Oakland, Calif. and Denver, Colo. became the first cities in the country to decriminalize psilocybin-producing mushrooms, scoring a huge victory for myco-nauts and practitioners of entheogenic therapy. Then, in 2020, Washington, D.C. – the heartbeat of the country – voted to decriminalize psychedelic mushrooms, meaning a person could arguably trip out while wandering around the Washington Monument without worrying about being arrested. On the other side of the country, Oregon decriminalized all drugs, and – even more importantly for entheogenic therapy – voted to legalize psilocybin for use in a therapeutic setting. That’s the big word here: LEGALIZE. In decriminalized areas, psychedelics remain illegal but law enforcement is directed to not pursue arrests or convictions. Legalization means that not only will you not be arrested for psychedelics, but you can’t even get a “no tripping” ticket. That wedge in the door means the legalization movements for psilocybin and other psychedelic compounds are ripe for huge gains in the coming years. In the wake of those pioneering states and municipalities, other regions are starting to look at decriminalization as a first step toward building acceptance of entheogenic compounds. California State Senator Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, told the SF Chronicle that he plans to introduce legislation in 2021 that will effectively decriminalize psychedelics throughout the state. On the East Coast, lawmakers in New York are fighting to decriminalize psychedelics, as Assemblymemeber Linda Rosenthal introduced legislation in 2020 to remove psilocybin from Schedule I of New York’s list of controlled substances. On a hyper-local level, the City Council of Somerville, Mass. voted to decriminalize entheogenic plants and fungi in January of this year.
While the fight for legalized Cannabis continues to rage on, it’s becoming clear that psychedelics are the next thing. Larger and larger companies within and without the Cannabis industry are starting to move beyond the exploratory phase, and into the non-psychedelic mycological therapy space – no doubt in a move to set up standards, build out supply chains and begin to gauge consumer interest in mycological products. A Bloomberg report in December 2020 showed that the psychedelic market has been gaining traction with the venture capital sector, attracting many of the same investment firms that seeded the Cannabis industry. And powerhouse Cannabis companies are starting to enter the mycology space, such as Cookies in California, which recently released its Caps by Cookies line – which blends terpenes and cannabinoids with non-psychedelic, organic mushrooms. When looked at on the whole, all of these pieces add up to give us a view of where the entheogenic movement is going, and where it’s taking us. And that looks to be a bright, shimmery, trippily beautiful future.
While the fight for legalized Cannabis continues to rage on, it’s becoming clear that psychedelics are the next thing. STORY by TOM BOWERS @PROPAGATECONSULTANTS/LEAF NATION | ILLUSTRATION by MR. MELTY @MR.MELTY
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edible of the month
10MG THC PER POUCH ($8) Flavors sampled: Peach Passion, Pineapple Party, Stoned Fruit.
Pinching a packet of Sonder’s Space Crystals between your fingers, you know you’re about to embark on a journey for the mind.
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SONDER
SPACE CRYSTALS R EVI E W b y TO M B OW E R S @PROPAGATECONSULTANTS
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P HOTO b y NATE WI L L I A M S @NATEW415
PARKLING NEON technicolor lips sing out from against a silvery chrome backdrop, beckoning, “Come on, try me.” You rip open the bag and peek inside, like Alice peering into the rabbit hole. Yellowish, chunky crystals emit sweet and fruity aromatics from the bottom of the reflective mylar pouch. “What are you waiting for?” the crystals urge. “Eat me.” You tilt your head and tip the pouch over the horizon of your lips, spilling the contents onto your tongue. All at once, your mouth bursts to life in an electric Kool-Aid acid trip of flavor and sound, complete with visceral crackling mini-explosions. You hold the crystals on your tongue, awash in a sensory deluge. You’re time-warped back to your youth, when you stopped at the convenience store to stock up on sweets before the movies, stuffing your pockets and sneaking the contraband candy past the ticket-taker like a smuggler’s apprentice. This intense experiential burst of nostalgia is exactly what Sonder had in mind when they launched their line of Pop-Rocksinspired Space Crystals in 2020. They’re the perfect confection to feature for California Leaf’s first-ever Psychedelia Issue. Sonder is run by the wife-and-wife team of Faun Chapin and M Paradise, whose team developed the recipe using only natural ingredients, confecting the magical crystals with nothing but cane sugar, lactose, brown rice syrup and CO2. The combination creates thousands of tiny explosions that are so loud, they frightened my dog. The remaining ingredients are simple: coconut oil, natural fruit flavors, citric acid and CO2-extracted fullspectrum Cannabis oil. The popping pieces were born of something beyond mere nostalgia and kitsch. Chapin explains that the science behind the Space Crystals is as much about the delivery system as it is the fun factor. Space Crystals aren’t classified as an edible – they’re actually a sublingual. When you activate them by holding them in your mouth, lift-off comes on more swiftly than with an edible, because the Delta-9 THC is absorbed by the tissues of the mouth, rather than being processed into 11-Hydroxy-THC by your digestive system. The high is more like a combination of smoking and eating Cannabis, because much of the THC stays in its original form, offering higher peaks for a shorter duration than the experience you’d get from an edible. Simply put, it’s pure pleasure. Sonder’s vision is to bring a sense of exploration, curiosity and delight to their products. With the Space Crystals, they deliver that in spades – straight to your mouth.
S O N D E R T I M E .C O M | @ S O N D E R T I M E
leafshots
Albino Penis Envy, commonly referred to as ‘APE’ in the myco-naut community, is a high potency psilocybin mushroom known for its phallic-shaped fruits, pale white to blue hued stem, and pale blonde cap.
leafshots
APE
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#LeafShots celebrates the high art of incredible Cannabis photography. Tag us for your chance to be published.
STORY & PHOTO by NATE WILLIAMS @NATEW415/LEAF NATION
LEAFMAGAZINES.COM
Stronger and harder to come by than standard cubensis, this special cube strain is known to produce deeply euphoric and introspective experiences. APEs are more challenging to cultivate due to a relatively slow maturation period and the difficulty in collecting their spores, as the caps rarely show their gills and the spores are transparent.
Mrs. Zkittlez
Lemondrop Live Rosin As soon as you open the jar, your senses are rushed by skunky orange marmalade and store-bought lemonade terps. The aroma is profound – even fresh out of the fridge – and once at room temperature, the jar is bursting with citrus and funk. This blend of 70u, 90u and 120u micron fresh-frozen hash produces a beautiful, semi-translucent live rosin with a gorgeous clarity – confirming the significant presence of terpenes in the oil.
“Undertones of powdered lemonade drink – rich and citrusy with a complex fermented quality.”
@ KA LYA E X T R ACT S @TERPHOGZ_OFFICIAL
REVIEW & PHOTO by NATE WILLIAMS @NATEW415 for CALIFORNIA LEAF
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LEAFMAGAZINES.COM
70u-120u Live Rosin 68.26% THC | .22% CBD
Upon taking a dab, my first thoughts were, “Holy shit. A skunk just sprayed in an orange juice factory … And they also make lemonade there.” The flavor delivers a deeply gratifying rotting orange rind funk mixed with undertones of powdered lemonade drink – rich and citrusy with a complex fermented quality to it. It’s always nice when your dab is as potent as it is flavorful, and this live rosin doesn’t skimp in either category. There is an immediate and significant head change providing cerebral and low-key psychedelic effects, followed by a mild but noticeable body buzz that settles in and hangs around. While the pricetag is undeniably at the upper end of the spectrum, so is the quality. This is some premium, AA grade, head stash worthy fuego that’s available to consumers at the recreational level. This is not a budget buy or even your weekend splurge – these are the special occasion, bust-open-a-jar-and-blowsome-minds level terps. We’ll certainly be on the lookout for future collabs by these two brands, as this is some of the best rosin we’ve encountered on the adult-use market to date.
CONCENTRATE OF THE MONTH
KALYA X TERPHOGZ
feature
women in weed
DOUBLEBLIND MAGAZINE
MADISON MARGOLIN & SHELBY HARTMAN
DoubleBlind is a magazine, but it’s also a vision. Co-founded by friends and journalists Madison Margolin and Shelby Hartman in 2018, the project was the culmination of a mutual admiration the two shared going back to their days as classmates at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Following stints in which both worked as Cannabis columnists for LA Weekly, Hartman approached Margolin with a wild idea: a biannual print publication slash digital media company inspired by and in service to psychedelic medicine. Now at work on the magazine’s fifth issue (out in June), the pair spoke with California Leaf about their goals for DoubleBlind, the challenges of offering virtual mushroom growing courses, and what it means to have two women at the helm.
MADISON: ‘Set and setting’ should be as essential to the conversation about psychedelics as ‘don’t drink and drive’ is to alcohol. SHELBY: Obviously, the number one thing that everyone wants to know is where they can get the drugs. Unfortunately, we can pretty much tell them just about everything but that. And that’s a very real barrier for people, which is something that I often forget. We’re living in Los Angeles – the center of ayahuasca globalization and true underground shroom chocolates – so we forget that there are people all across America who literally don’t even know where to get shrooms or how much to take if they do get hold of some. At DoubleBlind, we’re very devoted to harm reduction. We’re also very clear in saying that psychedelics are not for everyone and they’re not going to solve all your problems. However, if you do choose to do a psychedelic, here’s some information on how to make sure that you are doing it in a way that is safe and that you feel supported.
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WHAT’S THE ORIGIN OF DOUBLEBLIND? SHELBY: Madison and I were both very passionate about psychedelics and we were both reporting on psychedelics for a bunch of different outlets like Rolling Stone and Vice. I had the idea when I was meditating in my apartment, in November of 2018, that I wanted to start a psychedelic magazine – and then I just called Madison and asked her if she wanted to do it with me. HOW DID YOU SHAPE WHAT THE FOCUS OF DOUBLEBLIND WAS GOING TO BE? MADISON: Psychedelics are the centerpiece of what we write about but I always like to say that psychedelics – and Cannabis, for that matter – are just ways of talking about everything else in the world. Whether it’s social equity, environmental justice policy, science, spirituality, queer culture, feminism, indigenous culture – whatever it is, psychedelics are our launching point to talk about all of these other things. DoubleBlind is not the first psychedelic publication, but the psychedelic publications that were already out there were catering to deep-state psychonauts – the ‘stoners of psychedelics’ or whatever. But there are, of course, people who read psychedelic content on Vice or Rolling Stone, and maybe they want to go deeper. We’re trying to exist at an intersection between Rolling Stone-style psychedelic content and the more esoteric stuff. We range in what we offer, from beginner content like ‘How to Take Mushrooms’ to other stories that expose readers to issues prescient in this time in psychedelic culture. COLLECTIVELY, WHERE WOULD YOU SAY WE’RE AT IN TERMS OF OUR UNDERSTANDING AND EDUCATIONAL LEVEL CONCERNING PSYCHEDELIC MEDICINE? SHELBY: I would say that there are still a lot of people who don’t understand what we might think of as the fundamentals of psychedelic therapy and psychedelic medicine. Madison has this saying...
Mar. 2021
IN TERMS OF HOSTING VIRTUAL “Set and setting COURSES ON MUSHROOM GROWING, should be as WHAT WAS THE VIBE LIKE? essential to SHELBY: We’ve had over 1,000 people around the world grow mushrooms the conversation with us and they’ve just fallen in love about psychedelics with the process. It’s been so amazing as don’t drink and to see this beautiful community of people go from not knowing how to drive is to alcohol.” grow mushrooms, to now being totally -MADISON MARGOLIN hooked on it and wanting to take their mushroom growing to the next level. We partnered with these three really incredible mycologists – Dr. Kay Mandrake of “The Psilocybin Mushroom Bible,” Darren Springer and Caine Barlow – and the three of them are basically going to be teaching people stuff like how to create their own library of mushroom genetics, which completely cuts the spore syringe uncertainty out of the equation. BUT THE IDEA IS TO OFFER THE INFORMATION, NOT CONVINCE PEOPLE TO GET ON BOARD? Madison: Right. Our goal is never to proselytize, but we’re also not trying to speak to people like we’re on the message boards of Erowid – we’re not going that deep. It’s not about trying to get square people to be into psychedelics, but if you’re the type of person who maybe took MDMA once at Coachella and now you’re hearing that MDMA is also really good for PTSD, and you want to know what that’s about? Then come to DoubleBlind! DOUBLEBLINDMAG.COM @DOUBLEBLINDMAG
STORY by ZACK RUSKIN @ZACKRUSKIN for CALIFORNIA LEAF | PHOTOS by GEORGIA LOVE @GEORGIALOVVE
cannthropology
WORLD OF Cannabis PRESENTS
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The Hippie Mafia It’s impossible to overstate the influence and impact of The Brotherhood of Eternal Love when discussing the history of Cannabis or psychedelics in America. Between 1965 and 1972, the Brotherhood emerged as the largest soft drug syndicate on earth – earning them the notorious nickname “The Hippie Mafia.” They smuggled tons of weed and hashish, then used the profits to produce and distribute tens of millions of doses of LSD – including the infamous Orange Sunshine, for which they’re best known. And it all began with a handful of teenage stoners in Laguna Beach… THE BROTHERHOOD BEGINS Travis Ashbrook was an enterprising young surfer from Orange County who loved weed so much that by the age of 17, he was smuggling kilos in from Tijuana. In 1964, he met a fellow pot dealer named Johnny Griggs. Griggs was a well-known boozer, brawler, and heroin user … but after robbing a stash of LSD from the home of a Hollywood producer and taking
mar. 2021
The Brotherhood of Eternal Love was a group of sacred psychedelic warriors on a mission to turn on the world.
his first trip, he had a spiritual epiphany. He returned the stolen acid, gave up his gangbanger ways, and became a psychedelic evangelist. Believing that LSD was the ultimate tool for human enlightenment, Griggs – along with his wife Carol, friends Michael Randall, Ricky and Ron Bevans, Chuck Mundell, Travis and a few others – formed a new religion dedicated to peace, love and turning on the world – which Mundell christened “The Brotherhood of Eternal Love.” In October 1966, the Brotherhood incorporated as a nonprofit, rented an old stone house in Modjeska Canyon, and began holding psychedelic ceremonies. The following year they opened a huge psychedelic emporium on South Coast Highway called Mystic Arts World, soon dubbed by locals as “Haight Ashbury South.” With the hordes of hippies moving into the area, they took over a small neighborhood off Laguna Canyon Road, which Griggs nicknamed Dodge City. The area became such an LSD hotspot that by winter 1967, even acid guru Timothy Leary came to live there with them. To achieve their sacred mission of turning on the world, the Brotherhood would need to make a ton of acid – and to do that, they’d need money. The fastest way to fund their psychic revolution, they decided, was by smuggling marijuana and hashish. That’s where Travis came in. “I was the hash guy,” Ashbrook attests with a smile. “That was my thing.”
ORANGE SUNSHINE In spring 1968, Griggs moved their inner circle (including Leary) to a big ranch he bought near Idyllwild. That August, the Brotherhood handed out dosed juice at the Newport Pop Festival and was visited by counterculture celebrities like Ken Kesey and The Moody Blues. But the most consequential connection they made that summer was with chemists Nick Sand and Tim Scully, who enlisted the Brotherhood to become the exclusive distributors of their ultra-potent new LSD, which Griggs named Orange Sunshine. Within a month, they cranked out over 4 million hits, and demand showed no sign of slowing. Practically overnight, Orange Sunshine became a household name … and the Brotherhood’s new trademark.
DION WRIGHT
THE HASH GUY In winter 1967, Travis and Ricky left on an epic two-month hash quest: flying through New York to Luxembourg, hopping a train to Munich, then driving through Austria, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey and Iran, before finally arriving in Afghanistan. There – at a fruit stand in Kandahar – they met the Tokhi brothers, who offered them the deal of a lifetime: four dollars per kilo for the best hash in the world. “We’d come there planning to get 10 kilos, but ended up trading them the car for 50 kilos,” Ashbrook says. “We bought a bunch of antique musical instruments and stuffed them with the hash, then packed it all up with some furs in a big crate and shipped it back to California as unaccompanied baggage.” Once back home, a single pound of the hash sold for four times what they’d paid for the entire 88-pound haul! The deal was so lucrative that Travis started shipping loads back from Kandahar every six months. That went on for years, with loads eventually reaching up to 500 pounds per run.
On August 5, the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs executed “Operation BEL” – the largest drug raid in American history – resulting in 57 arrests and the seizure of around $8 million in drugs. The Hippie Mafia was no more.
Timothy & Rosemary Leary with Brotherhood founder John Griggs, 1968.
Brotherhood and friends at Mystic Arts World reunion, 2015.
The Brotherhood’s wanted poster.
JERRY KRECICKI
1,300 pounds of hash in Portland, OrAshbrook was egon – the largest quantity ever seized inducted into in the U.S. A month later, another 729 To achieve their sacred High Times’ pounds were seized in Vancouver. DECLINE AND FALL Counterculture mission of turning on Then on August 5, the Bureau of NarIn 1969, however, their utopian hippie Hall of Fame cotics and Dangerous Drugs executed dream began to disintegrate. First, the world, the Brotherhood at the 2011 “Operation BEL” – the largest drug raid Travis got busted when Customs agents would need to make a ton of in American history – resulting in 57 Cannabis Cup. discovered 20 pounds of hash inside two acid – and to do that, they’d arrests and the seizure of around $8 hollowed-out surfboards he’d shipped need money. The fastest way to million in drugs. The Hippie Mafia was back from Afghanistan. Then, that no more. summer, Mystic Arts World was mysterifund their psychic revolution, After 11 years on the lam, the law ously burned to the ground. After that, they decided, was by smuggling finally caught up with Travis on October Ricky’s underage girlfriend accidentally marijuana and hashish. 16, 1980, when he was arrested at drowned while tripping – causing Leary to Houston International Airport on a flight be arrested for child endangerment and to the Cayman Islands carrying $270,000 in cash. He was charged the ranch to be raided. Worst of all, though, on August 3, under the RICO “Kingpin” law for 36 counts from Operation BEL Griggs suddenly died of an accidental overdose of synthetic – carrying a penalty of life without parole and confiscation of all psilocybin, calling the future of the Brotherhood into quesproperties. After cutting a deal, he received just 18 years, of which tion. Five months later, Leary was sentenced to 20 years on he served 11 before being released in 1991. pot possession charges. (The following year, the Brotherhood enlisted the help of leftist radicals the Weathermen to bust EPILOGUE him out of prison). Travis and the surviving Brothers are all free and fine now. In November 2011, they With their two spiritual leaders gone, and a prison term flew to Amsterdam where they were inducted into High Times’ Counterculture Hall of pending, Ashbrook and a few other Brothers skipped town Fame at the Cannabis Cup. A book about their exploits entitled “Orange Sunshine” was and migrated to Maui, where he continued smuggling – sailpublished in 2010, followed by a documentary of the same name in 2018. A dramatic ing 5,000 pounds of weed in from Guadalajara on a schooseries about the Brotherhood by the same director (William Kirkley) is also currently in ner called the Aafje (pronounced “Affie,” like Afghanistan). It the works. Despite all of the trials and tribulations, Ashbrook remains proud of his past. was from this load of primo Mexi weed, crossed with seeds “We wanted to turn the world on, we were dedicated to our cause, and we knew time from an Afghani load, that the legendary Maui Wowie strain would prove us right,” he affirms. “We were true outlaws, and we made our mark.” was later bred. Travis had a second load planned, but was again forced to flee when he learned he’d lost the appeal on his surfboard conviction. For more on the Brotherhood, listen to Episode #7 of our podcast at worldofCannabis.museum/podcast. In 1972, the last of the Brotherhood’s entheogenic empire Story and photos originally published on worldofcannabis.museum and reprinted with permission. came crashing down. In January, the Feds busted a load of
STORY & PHOTO ILLUSTRATION by BOBBY BLACK @CANNTHROPOLOGY for LEAF NATION
stoney baloney
by Mike Ricker
THE BODIES EXHIBIT
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ou want to know if I did it. Of course not, are you out of your fucking mind? I understand that the title may have revved your imagination, but no person of sound mind would, or should ever, attempt such a psychotic journey into the darkest recesses of one’s essential nature for any reason. The mental stability of a thrill-seeking individual bent on this ultimate experiment would have to be seriously questioned, save for maybe that deranged whack job from “The Human Centipede.” I mean, if you have some morbid desire to screw yourself up with self-inflicted behavior modifications that are way beyond normal rationale – so that for the rest of your life when you look at a sandwich what you really see is a bummed-out prisoner’s dissected cerebellum between two slices of bread – be my guest. But this is something not even recommended for sickos like Marylin Manson. Throughout history, people have purposefully endeavored ridiculous feats – like Evel Knievel attempting to jump the Snake River Canyon on a rocket cycle, Hunter S. Thompson infiltrating a District Attorney’s convention on a full dropper of liquid LSD, and the insurgent QAnon guy in the horned fur cap charging the Capitol to steal the vote back for the Donald. But thankfully, instinct has provided a built-in dipshit button that prevents most of us from doing irreparable damage to mind, body and soul. So, understand that in the attempt at heightening your misadventures by way of dual integration, realize that there are some things that will never mix: whiskey and ice cream, Jeffrey Lebowski in Malibu, and The Bodies Exhibit on mushrooms. A sneaky, succulent vape toke of Green Crack before a rip through Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride? You already know.
mar. 2021
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