Strain review: Strawpicanna can hit you hard with a ton of tropical THC

Appearance: I’ve come to believe that pre-rolls are a great invention and lend themselves to convenience and practicality. The only drawback is that you can’t gaze upon the beauty of a mature, well-trimmed bud in all its glory. Some photos I’ve seen of Tropicana buds show a fine example of a tight, closely trimmed cluster with colors ranging from green to yellow and on to orange pistils – how you’d expect a tropical fruit to look.

Aroma/Taste: These half-gram joints had a bright smell right out of the tube. The freshness translated into a newly-mowed grass scent but without the heavy green of fields in summer, but with a slight skunky tone. A hit before it’s lit revealed the same bright freshness but also brought out lemon and sweet minty aromas with other fruity scents.

Once ignited, the initial taste turned to conifer resin with the volatile flavor of hashish. From then on, each hit became deep, dark and greasy – which should have been a warning of its potency.

Effects: This is where the topic of tolerance enters the picture. At 21.8% THC, I wasn’t expecting the extreme consequences that came from burning through two-thirds of a half-gram joint. With a bit of embarrassment but for the sake of full disclosure I’ll attempt to recount the experience.

This review was initially planned to be a Zoom collaborative effort bringing fellow humans together with common intention. Things got off to a good start comparing tastes and aromas.

Once we lit up my exuberance got the better of me, and before I knew it two-thirds of the joint had disappeared and it became disappointingly evident that this team effort was melting away.

My screen partner took it easy on the dosage and was lucidly talking about all kinds of things while I soon realized that none of what he was saying made sense and it became harder to look at the screen. It was becoming difficult to speak due to extreme cottonmouth but I didn’t feel like I could get up. This craziness seemed to stretch on an incalculable time until I had to sign off, get a drink, and deal with nausea and sweats taking over.

Surprisingly I could get up and walk out the door thinking that cool evening air might bring me around. One of the advantages of having your nearest neighbor over a quarter-mile away is that you don’t have to worry about being seen in an altered state. I walked around the property but couldn’t shake the nausea and accompanying fluctuations in body temperature and heart rate. Higher than heck? For sure! Enjoyable? Not at all.

These effects would be what could send a less experienced user to the ER but I knew that it would wear off. It’s a fact that you can’t overdose on marijuana which I understand to mean your breathing won’t stop. But from this experience and only two others in the last half-century I believe you can reach toxic levels of THC and experience unpleasant side-effects that would likely freak out the uninitiated. I’m sure that there are heavy users that could smoke a whole Strawpicana pre-roll before breakfast and carry on with their routine, but I’m not one.

After the nausea and vomiting subsided and vital signs stabilized, more pleasurable feelings took over, moving to total couchlock and out-of-body experiences. As quickly as the ill effects came, a more positive experience took me in and out of consciousness and remained for several hours until there was a seamless transition to sleep with no lingering effects the next morning.

As a final note, I returned to Royals and asked the budtender who sold it if anyone had similar effects from Strawpicana or other No Mids flower. She said some customers have mentioned that a few products surprised them with high-potency effects. She also said THC numbers aren’t always easily translated into real potency as there can be varying degrees of quality. I had never heard this before and could not confirm the claim.

If you find yourself in a similar situation where it’s so good that it was bad, here are a few suggestions to come down and hopefully minimize any unpleasant feelings:

• If the nausea isn’t too intense, eat something.

• Drink lots of water.

• If you have straight CBD product (0 THC), take that.

• Ibuprofen has also been known to mitigate severe symptoms of excessive THC.

So take it easy and remember that consuming cannabis is meant to be a pleasurable experience.