Thoughts from the void: Personal Use

Showing posts with label Personal Use. Show all posts

Sunday, 15 January 2023

Personal Ganja Consumption Review 2022

In 2022, I relied almost entirely on the plant B2021A, aka Resilience, which started giving me leaves around February-March, and some flowers from May. The plant appeared to be of a better smoking quality than the previous varieties - B2020B (Mother) and B2020B1 (Child) - and of about the same quality as my first plant - B2020A (Pioneer). This makes me think that Pioneer (B2020A) and Resilience (B2021A) are closer to the ganja variety, whereas Mother (B2020B) and Child (B2020B1) are closer to the bhang variety. There was enough material for about two smokes a day with cannabis and tobacco in the ratio of 1:4. This steady supply of just about enough cannabis kept me going till nearly September.

In terms of other sources of cannabis, they were practically non-existent. I was almost entirely self-reliant through the year. Only on a couple of occasions did I have the chance to come across the divine herb from others. I had the good fortune to smoke a bit of nice Kerala mountain herb around the middle of the year. I also had the chance to smoke a bit of hash at the end of the year. On both these occasions, there was only enough for a couple of smokes, which I am however grateful to my friends for sharing with me. This goes to further reinforce the principle that once one becomes sufficiently self reliant, one can take care of one's own needs. With time and increased produce, one can then also start thinking about how to meet the needs of others who are less able to grow their own herb, and particularly those who cannot afford the herb due to its high prices or those who find it near impossible to access the herb. All these situations arise entirely due to the completely insane prohibition of the ganja plant in this world.

Beedi smoking increased to about 7-8 beedis a day once Resilience had been smoked to its roots. Alcohol drinking appears to have reduced marginally from 2021, following a similar pattern, with beer drinking around 7-8 times in the year. The consumption of hard liquor came down from the previous year. Most drinking was social drinking, with the occasions when I bought alcohol for home consumption having reduced noticeably from the previous year.

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Cannabis Home Growing Study 2022

I have provided an explanation for the plant nomenclature in my first article on this subject, i.e. Cannabis Home Growing Study 2020. I further decided to give names to the four plants in 2022, besides their labels, so as to reflect their attributes a little better, and to make them more intelligible. The names I have given the four plants are as follows:

B2020A: Pioneer - as it was the first plant that I ever grew. I hope that it will be a path breaker, enabling me to travel down this road more often.
B2020B: Mother - as it subsequently spawned another plant in the same year from its seed.
B2020B1: Child - born out of the seed of B2020B.
B2021A: Resilience - as this plant went through at least five periods of nearly withering, before it went on to live the longest of the four plants

2022 began with one plant surviving from the previous year, and that was B2021A (Resilience). This plant had sprouted around August - September in 2021. The plant continued to grow at a slow pace but showed a much better foliage pattern than those of the previous plants. The plant showed signs of flowering resembling the ganja plant by March 2022. It retained this flowering pattern for about 3 or so months, before it went back to a leaf only state. The leaves started drying up, almost overnight, around August, leaving me with sufficient smoking material to last till about mid September. All in all, the plant provided me with leaves and some flowers for almost an entire year. The quality of smokes appeared better than that the previous two varieties - Mother (B2020B) and Child (B2020B1). This makes me think that Pioneer (B2020A) and Resilience (B2021A) are closer to the ganja variety, whereas Mother (B2020B) and Child (B2020B1) are closer to the bhang variety.

The plants that grew from 2020, four in all, provided me with comfort during the difficult times of the ridiculous fake pandemic Covid. Almost as if the plants had decided to part company with me as people started shaking off the Covid hoax, there were no more new plants for me in 2022. I did plant a number of seeds, experimenting at different times throughout the year, but as before most failed to take off, possibly to do with timing, quality of soil and intermittent watering. A handful of seedlings did sprout, but they all died away from the same stated reasons. I made the foolish attempt to transplant two-three of the seedlings when they were very young, resulting in their demise. It appears to me that the fact that I was away from home more in 2022, and a sense of complacency from the success of the previous two years, also contributed significantly to my failure to grow any new plants in 2022. The quality of the plants definitely have scope for improvement, if I were to seriously use compost filled with nutrients such as kitchen waste, instead of relying on the current bare minimum of dry leaves.

The home growing experiments highlight why it is important to have cannabis cultivation as an agricultural crop grown by full time farmers. They provide the time, dedication and care needed to ensure that a crop goes through the full cycle and reaches the consumer. With home growing, one may not be able to provide the necessary dedication in terms of time and care that is necessary to ensure that the plants go through their full growth cycle. Having said this, I must also reiterate that home growing is the first and foremost form of cannabis legalization that must be put in place, since it is only with the ability to home grow can a person become truly self reliant when it comes to ganja. Once one is self-reliant then one can start taking care of the needs of others.

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Monday, 24 January 2022

Personal Ganja Consumption Review 2021

2021 was a reasonably good year from a cannabis and sustainability perspective. B2020B1, the offspring of B2020B, the hemp like variety of the plant, sprouted in Dec 2020, It provided me with a small, but steady supply of herb through the year, ensuring that I had enough dry leaf to smoke 2-3 small joints, almost every day through the year. Even though the plant did not go on to produce the classical flowering at the end of the lifecycle for a harvest, it flowered almost constantly from the 4th month or so and continued to do so throughout the year.

There was no other source of cannabis through the year, as has been the case for a couple of years now, at least till the last week of December, when I was lucky to access some hash. The hash was sufficient for a couple of smokes a day for about 10 days.

Beedi smoking remains at a constant, averaging 4-5 beedis a day. Alcohol consumption also remained at about a beer a fortnight, barring the handful of instances of social drinking when a few beers, or shots of rum or whisky were consumed. There were also about half a dozen instances of wine drinking, at about half a bottle at each instance.

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Cannabis Home Growing Study 2021

B2020B1, of the same variety as B2020B, and hence the similarity in nomenclature, sprouted at the end of December 2020. It sprouted in a grow bag with nutrients and soil of a different composition than the parent plant. The amount of soil was of a higher percentage. Additional nutrients such as coco peat were added to the grow mix. It quickly shot up to about 3 feet in the space of two months. The leaves sprouted mainly from the stem, starting in a 3 leaf formation, and then subsequently becoming 5-leaved and then 7-leaved. The leaves and stem appeared much bigger and healthier than the parent plant, possibly due to the additional nutrients supplied.

Leaf compost was added to it after two months and daily watering was done, sometimes twice a day to handle the summer heat. In the third week of April, the plant stood at 3 feet. The primary leaves that sprouted initially have remained on the plant for nearly four months and only now started to dry up. Tertiary stalks sprouted from the lower parts of the plant, quite evenly and densely, giving the plant a candle stand appearance which seems to be characteristic of it.

From the new stalks, foliage of only 3-leaved pattern now cover the plant. The leaves that have sprouted since I moved the plant to the terrace and added the leaf compost resemble more the leaves of the earlier B2020B. They are slimmer with less finely defined groves on them. The plant started flowering in the middle of the 3rd month with tiny green flowers resembling teak flowers but of a light green color. The plant has been flowering for a month now, shedding these tiny flowers daily, around 15-20 each day. This suffices for my daily smoking needs giving a mild pleasant buzz that lasts for an hour or two. The flowers have a beautiful fragrance, mild but very pleasant. As I write this, the flowering phase appears to be ending. There are fewer flowers each day with the flowers turning more white than pale green.

Attempts to grow new plants from the seed bank have failed so far. I have been diligently planting 20-30 seeds every fortnight from almost the beginning of the year. A single plant sprouted in the end of Jan and about eight seeds sprouted in the first week of March. However, due to the heat or insufficient watering all 9 seedlings lasted no more than 4-5 days. I attribute the general lack of seed sprouting during this period to the weather as well as the possibility that the seeds I am currently planting are very old and have lost their potency. Some of the seeds in my seed bank are possibly ten years old and were stored away from sunlight resulting in their becoming unusable now.

Log date 19 April 2021

At the end of the year, B2020B1 had attained a height of about 5 feet. It flowered more or less constantly through the year, given the steady rainfall that happened in 2021. The flowers continued to be the hemp flowers, though the plant showed occasional signs of starting to yield the familiar cluster of cannabis flowers. The cluster formation of flowers, however, did not fully take off. I attribute this partly to the plant variety, partly to periods of insufficient watering and periods of excess rainfall.

The plant finally dried up at the end of December, mainly due to my absence for a couple of weeks. My thinking is that without these interruptions, the plant may have still been healthy in 2021, giving new insight to my ideas about the typical lifespan of the cannabis plant.Of the numerous seeds I planted in 2021, amounting to more than 200, as per my estimate, about a dozen sprouted, but only one survived. The surviving plant I labeled B2021A. The plant, however, went through a number of phases of under watering, resulting in a plant that currently stands just a foot tall, with sparse foliage, almost like a bonzai plant. It has shown little signs of growth in the last 3-4 months and appears to be frozen in its growth cycle.

The seeds I planted in Kerala on a couple of occasions in the year also failed to take off, owing to the low potency of the seeds due to age, and also owing to the possible bad timing of the sowing at times of low rainfall.

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Personal ganja consumption review 2021

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Sunday, 10 January 2021

Personal Ganja Consumption Review 2020

2020 began with a carry over of herb from the previous year that lasted me for about 3 weeks. By the last week of Jan I was out of smokes. Then came Covid and I was out of not just smokes, but also alcohol and beedis. March to June I smoked a bundle of beedis every alternate week and cigarettes if I was unable to procure beedis. I was lucky to come across a bottle of beer once a fortnight.

This situation led me to think about becoming more sustainable in terms of my recreational needs. I decided that now was the time to start the activity that I had planned for some time, the home growing of the cannabis plant. I had seeds that I had collected over the years and I decided that now was a good time to plant at least some of them before they became unusable. Being at one place for months helped me to pursue this activity. I planted some seeds in April and I have described the journey in my study.

From the third week of June, i was getting enough dry bhang leaves to smoke about two joints a day in the ratio of bhang to tobacco of 1:2. These smokes gave a pleasant experience, though not with the full power of ganja, but a bit milder. On a few rare occasions I was able to get enough leaves for 3 joints.

With tobacco supply easing up, i started smoking beedies at about an average of 4 beedies a day. I almost completely avoided smoking cigarettes from June till December. Alcohol drinking from around July increased slightly with the opening of retail liquor outlets. I would pick up a few pints of different beers and some rum around once a month. I drank either a pint of beer or a large of rum on Saturdays and Sundays. This has continued till the end of 2020. The maximum intake of alcohol on a single occasion was about 3 larges of rum and that was only once.

Looking back at 2020, to me it was one of the best years of my life, especially because I took the most important step in my relationship with cannabis. I grew my own herb and the herb lasted me through the year meeting my needs more than sufficiently. This move towards sustainability, cutting off the commercial angle to the herb and also taking active steps to nurture and propagate the plant through my own, albeit limited, actions was highly satisfactory.

I hope to proceed along this current trajectory for as long as I am able to since it approaches an ideal state in the recreational aspects of my life.

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Friday, 8 January 2021

Cannabis Home Growing First Study 2020

I decided to grow cannabis plants at home for multiple reasons including:

getting to know the plant and its growth cycle better
trying to use the seeds that I had collected over the years to do my bit to revive and sustain as many cannabis varieties as I could
reaching sustainability in terms of my relationship with the plant by growing my own organic plants and cutting out the commercial angle.

The year 2020 offered the ideal circumstances since I was able to spend long periods of time in one place and so provide dedicated attention to the process of growing the plant. I have tried to describe the journey below.

Log date 07 June 2020
Seeds were sown in three containers, two plastic and one clay pot containing soil taken from Kerala and Bengaluru mixed with leaf compost in a mixture of approximately 2:1.

Out of around 120 seeds sown through the third week of March till mid April, two seeds sprouted around the first week of April in the clay pot. They grew to saplings of about 6 inches in height before they were transplanted a month later to two separate grow bags in the first week of May. I have called them B2020A and B2020B. The nomenclature is what I have decided to follow for plants that I grow. The first 'B' stands for the location where I am growing the plant which in this case is Bengaluru. '2020' is the year of planting. The alphabet after the year is to distinguish one plant from another. So B2020A is a plant that sprouted in Bengalure in 2020 and the first one for which the letter A has been assigned. The grow bags were also filled with soil and compost in the same ratio as in the nursery pots i.e. 2:1.

In the first week of June, the plants are looking healthy after transplant and have grown to a height of approx one and a half feet each. B2020A appears to be growing slightly faster than B2020B though the difference is a few millimeters. B2020A also appears to be a different variety from B2020B. I am drawn to this conclusion by the fact that B2020A is showing a different growth pattern to B2020B. B2020A, after the initial two leaves sprouting for the first few weeks, started branching out in a three branch pattern while B2020B, after the initial two leaf sprouting, is branching out in a two branch pattern currently. B2020A showed the five leaf pattern earlier while B2020B initially showed a three leaf pattern but eventually started showing the five leaf pattern after growing a bit.

Watering throughout, till date, was sprinkling half a mug water i.e. about 300ml, for each of the plants in the morning and sprinkling about 150ml of water each in the evening. This was done daily from the time of sprouting till date i.e. first week of June when the monsoon rains have started.

Log date 24th June 2020
Around the 17th of June to 19th of June, I missed the daily watering of the plants for about two and a half days. This period was in the middle of a 10 day spell of no rain. When I checked the plants on 19th June evening, B2020A was partially drooping while B2020B was almost completely drooping. I watered both the plants with about half a mug each about three times and followed this pattern for the next couple of days, doing this twice a day i.e. in the morning and evening. There were three spells of rain, on 21st and 22nd, when it rained for about half an hour each as medium showers and then light rain on 24th early morning for about two hours. These spells of rain along with the increased watering revived both the plants. B2020A has regained near full strength whereas B2020B has nearly straightened out fully, albeit with a number of dry leaves. Both plants shed a few leaves, with B2020B shedding the majority. I gathered these leaves and dried them. I smoked a little bit of the leaves on 24th morning and they immediately had a soothing, analgesic and clearing of the head effect. As I write now nearly two hours later the feeling of calmness and euphoria persist. With the watering interruption, B2020A is now taller by about 3-4 centimeters compared to B2020B. Both have surely lost some of their growth momentum due to this. B2020A now stands almost at wall height. They still look like they have a few more months to go to flower.

Log Date Aug 3rd, 2020
In the month after the last log, rain and watering of the plants have been regular with no serious interruptions as in the case of the previous month. B2020A has grown to about five feet from the ground. B2020B seems to have recovered from its drying up and now stands just a few centimeters short of B2020A. Due to the watering interruption, both plants now exhibit different foliage patterns. B2020A stands tall and slender with a wider foliage mid-canopy. B2020B sprouted new shoots after it had stooped over in June. It now has more foliage closer to the base and grows slender above a certain height. Both plants appear to have more slender leaflets as they grow taller. It appears that the broader leaves are an earlier part of the growth cycle to help capture more sunlight and as the plants grow taller more slender leaves sprout will the broader leaves eventually dry up and fall away. More and more slender leaves appear to sprout closer to the stem in both plants. B2020A appears to have a nest of some kind where an insect seems to have taken residence. I initially thought that it was starting to flower but later realized that it must be an insect nest. B2020A bends in the strong winds of the monsoon season while B2020B appears to be more sturdy, possibly given its denser foliage closer to the base. I applied some compost of dry leaves and flowers mainly around July 17th. Other than that it is the spells of rain and controlled watering that seems to be nurturing the plant besides the sun and soil. The long spells of light rain seem to especially benefit growth as both plants seem to have growth spurts following the same. Occasionally I spot spiders, ants and wasps resting on the plants which makes me think that they are feeding on the smaller insects. Sometimes the long durations of stillness that these larger insects display makes me think that they are also enjoying the plants itself. I continue to pick up the occasional leaves that dry up and fall and smoke them. This gives me mild, pleasant returns and enhances the joy of watching these plants grow.

Log Date Aug 10th, 2020
I saw the first flower today. Interestingly it is on B2020B, the plant that was fully drooping in the third week of June. Buds have started appearing in the past week at the top of the stem, growing close to it. They are tiny pale green and about the same size as the seeds. The flower is tiny with numerous petals and of a light greenish color. There are signs of smaller and smaller leaves and bunching together of these tiny leaves and filaments on the tops of the branches on both plants. B2020A remains 4-5 centimeters taller than B2020B. There is a set of leaves turning yellow at the height at which the plant B2020B had drooped earlier.

Log Date Sep 15th, 2020
B2020A has become taller than me by a few centimeters. B2020B is almost at my height now. That's about 5ft 8 1/2 inches. I am of the impression at the moment that B2020A is a male plant and B2020B is a female based on appearances. B2020A looks slender and light with narrower leaves and a foliage that begins about half way and tapers to the top. It has not flowered yet. B2020B appears heavier and now seems to resemble a candle stand with one main stem growing upright and about a handful of branches rising from close to the bottom of the stem. The stem shows most flowering for about a height of a foot and a half while the branches have flowering tips varying in length from a couple of inches to eight inches. The mother leaves appear broader and fewer in number than B2020A. The tips of the branches of both plants appear reddish in color. Leaves have been drying and falling out in more numbers since the last week of September. Many of these leaves were from areas of the plants that had dried up in June. Watering has reduced considerably following the rains through August end and in the first weeks of September. The leaves that I have been smoking since the last month appear to hold more punch than the ones I was smoking earlier. This could be because of the increase in cannabinoid compounds as the plants have grown and also because there is more cannabis leaf in the mixture I smoke these days.

Log Date 16th November, 2020
B2020A stands at about 6 ft height and B2020B at about 5 and a 1/2 feet height. My earlier speculation that B2020A was male and B2020B female has now changed. B2020A has a number of primary leaves, but the number of secondary leaves, called sugar leaves are growing more in number. There are no signs of flowering as far as I can see. B2020B now contains mainly the secondary leaves or sugar leaves, with flowers and seeds. Quite a number of seeds have appeared, especially at the base of the lower stalks. Flowering is present at the tops of stalks, with a number of buds, but these still don"t appear extensive. I get the impression that B2020B still has some more weeks to go to reach full maturity. When i try to pluck what appears to be dry sugar leaves, they show resistance, much more than the dried primary leaves of B2020A.

Some flowers on B2020B do appear to have dried but this is only on some parts of the stalk and not entirely. The large portion of the secondary leaves are green. At the part of the plant, where it had drooped in the dry days, there appear to be a number of what looks like tiny aphids to me that are living on the plant. I have seen large ants appearing to feed on these aphids whose numbers seem to reduce when the weather is dry and sunny. I found a green caterpillar feeding on B2020B a couple of days back. Today I saw a small praying mantis at the top of B2020A. All these sights are nice to see, as the plant providing nutrition for a number of insects is a pleasant thought.

I have been watering the plants during dry spells of no rain, mostly on alternate days, about a mug of water at the base of each and sprinkling water on the leaves. The rains have been abundant this year with the North East rains picking up where the South West monsoons left off in October. This has reduced the need for me to water the plants myself over the last 4-5 months.

Overall, both plants shed or surrender sufficient dry leaves everyday for me to smoke one joint in the morning and one in the evening. This has been the case since mid-June, meaning that for about 5 months now I am getting a steady supply of pleasant cannabis leaves to smoke. And to think that before, there were times when i used to discard these leaves thinking that they were not useful. I am thinking now that to let the plant grow for as long as possible is beneficial to all. My plan is to harvest them only when I am really certain that the time is right. The leaves provide a nice pleasant effect which appears even more pronounced after a break of a day or two.

Log date 07 Jan 2021
By the second week of December, B2020B had shed most of its leaves and only a few leaves and seeds remained. It appeared to me that it had gone through its life cycle and was drying up. Looking at its entire lifecycle, the plant seems to me to be definitely of the seed bearing type whose leaves can be used as bhang. Its flowers are distinct from the other plant i.e B2020B has small pale green flowers with about 6 or so small petals and is of a size similar to teak flowers. B2020A on the other hand has flowering tops which resemble the pictures I have seen of cannabis plants with clumps of smaller leaves and flowering bunches at the top of each stalk with fine hair like stamens I think.

I removed the dried up B2020B plant and collected its seeds and few remaining dried leaves that provided me with smoking material for about a week. I was traveling from the end of the second week of December for two weeks. I believe this is the hemp variety of the plant but I am not sure if the same plant will grow differently under different circumstances i.e. become the small flower and seed bearing variety or bhang in some cases and the flowering bud variety or ganja in other cases. This is something that remains to be seen from further study of this variety.

At this point, B2020A looked like it was reaching its final flowering stages. The stamen hair was white in color. I had read that they need to be amber in colour when it was time to harvest the plant. I took one flowering stalk, the biggest one actually (he he) so that it would provide me the needed smoking material when I was out of station. It served the purpose and met my needs in the two weeks I was away. The smaller leaves were still green so I tried to dry it out while smoking the already dry mother leaves. I smoked the entire flowering bud in small quantities which were sufficient to give me a good feel. It especially helped me to recover from physical work related fatigue at the end of each day and kept me energized for the day's work each morning. I smoked three mini joints each day, one in the morning, one at around 11 am and the last one around 5.30pm after my day's work.

When I got back to B2020A after two weeks at the end of December, the white fine hair like stamens had turned the amber color that I was looking for. The plant had spent about two weeks without watering so I would not call this the ideal growing conditions. I would have preferred to water it right up to the end but circumstances did not permit that. I separated all the stalks from the plant and left them out to dry. I let them dry in the open both day and night for about a week . Of course, each day I helped myself to a little bit and found it very pleasant. After a week, the flowering tops appeared sufficiently dried and even had a characteristic tangy smell to it which made me quite glad. When I smoked this, the plant seemed to say in my head. 'I am ganja'. The final yield from B2020A I must say is not more than 20-30 grams from the entire plant. I believe that this may have been due to the minimalist approach I took to growing the plant, letting it grow in the natural sunshine and rain, without adding any additional nutrients, etc. other than the composted leaves and flowers that I collected from a copper pod tree that was within access.

As of now, I am quite pleased with my first experience with growing the plants and watching their entire cycle. I am especially pleased that I seem to have grown what appears to be both hemp and marijuana, male and female or bhang and ganja plants as classified in different places. Through this process, I am glad that I have brought alive in my garden two varieties of the plant that I hope to sustain in the future. B2020A had a life span of 9 months and B2020B of about 8 months.

Friday, 31 January 2020

Personal Ganja Consumption Review 2019

The herb drought that began in May 2018 continued into the year 2019. Beedis and occasional cigarettes filled the phase. Beedis were usually 2-3 a day on average. Cigarettes were generally procured while going out to meet friends for social drinking and were usually consumed in the number of 3-4 at each outing.

The herb drought finally ended in the last couple of days of April. This meant that my estrangement from the herb lasted an entire year. I cannot recall the last time I had such a long break since the days when I started smoking ganja around the age of 18 which makes it currently 27 years. This was not a break taken with the intent of abstaining from the herb but it was because I did not have access to it over the period. The greens that came my way finally made it worth the wait, as is always the case, no matter how long or short the break. Two-three different varieties of herb with great flavor amounting to about 15-20 grams lasted me through May and into the first week of June with my micro-dosing and thrifty consumption. During this period I smoked around 2-3 joints a day with ganja and tobacco approximately in the ratio of 30:70 in spliff form.

This was followed by a break of around 3 months from the first week of June till the end of August when I once again got access to the herb. Ganja was more or less continuously available to me from that point till the end of the year i.e. a period of four months. I had access to about 4-5 varieties of herb albeit in small quantities, each variety lasting a period of about 2-3 weeks and often overlapping with each other, so that I had the option of smoking a couple of different varieties each day. Joints numbered 2-3 per day again in similar ratios and form as that which I had smoked earlier in the year. Towards the end of the year I came across some hash lasting for about three weeks which served to be the cream topping off a decent year of cannabis smoking.

I smoked spliffs almost entirely with only one occasion of chillum smoking. Vaping was zero in the year as I am not a big fan of it. Quite often in the year, the smokes were shared by divine souls without me having to pay for it. On the occasions when I did spend money, the rates seemed to be around Rs 2000 to Rs 3000 per 100 grams. I would say that I may have smoked roughly 75 grams in the year and spent about Rs 2000 on smokes in the year. The 75 grams were smoked over roughly a period of 5 months making it around 15 grams a month or half a gram a day split into 2-3 joints.

This may not seem much but after a gap of a year, the 5 months of smoking even though in tightly controlled amounts, served to make the year quite sublime in the ganja smoking sense.

Beedis continued to be consumed through the year at an average rate of around 2 beedis daily through the entire year with hardly any breaks. About 3 cases of Cuban mini cigars too were consumed primarily during the periods of ganja absence.

Alcohol drinking was restricted to not more than 2 liters of beer in each sitting, for about a couple of dozen sittings in the year. Hard liquor was consumed on possibly half a dozen occasions but not exceeding more than three larges each time. The occasional single large of rum, whisky, absinthe happened about a dozen times. Wine drinking seemed to have increased marginally with possibly a total of 5-6 bottles of wine having been consumed in the year.

Overall looking back at 2019, in terms of ganja consumption, it was definitely better than 2018 and similar to the preceding years i.e. 2017 and 2016.

I seem to be getting into a nice balanced zone in terms of my ongoing relationship with the herb. Its been gliding decently last year and so far overall. What 2020, the year of perfect clarity, has in store remains to be seen.

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Personal ganja consumption review 2020
https://ravingkoshy.blogspot.com/2021/01/personal-ganja-consumption-review-2020.html

Monday, 14 January 2019

Personal Ganja Consumption Review 2018

Continuing the review of personal annual ganja consumption which I have undertaken for the year 2017, here is the review for 2018.

2018 in terms of ganja consumption for me has been one of the lowest in recent times, possibly the lowest in the last 12 years. In the context of rising global legalization and consumption, my personal case has been ironically the opposite.

I had access to about 30 grams of bud and leaf around early January 2018. This was good quality, organic herb harvested at the beginning of the year which is the best time for the plant in south India. It was a variety grown locally possibly in Karnataka and had great aroma and flavor. I relished it but rationed it to try and prolong the experience. It lasted for about 40 days till about mid February. I smoke approx 2-3 joints of 1/3rd the normal potency a day, which may have amounted to roughly 3/4th of a gram per day. I smoked the ganja mixed with some imported loose tobacco which some good friends had been kind enough to share with me. The joints were roughly in the proportion of 1/3rd ganja and 2/3rd tobacco rolled into a spliff using some slow burning cigarette paper which is my preferred mode of consumption. The smoking experience was great and I loved the natural high and sense of well being that the smokes gave me.

The next time I got access to some ganja was in the end of March after nearly a month and a half of not consuming the herb. This time it was in the form of some nice hash resin. I got approx 10g of the resin which seemed to be of sufficiently good quality to make me think that it must be from the Himachal region. This also I rationed and smoked for approximately 40 days in the same fashion, ratio and frequency as I had the buds and leaves earlier i.e. 2-3 joints a day of 1/3rd the normal potency of a single joint. The hash was of good enough plasticity to mix with the tobacco and smoke. It was also of sufficiently good quality that a small amount of resin roughly the size of the head of a match stick rolled with tobacco gave a sublime experience so that I was able to stretch my supply for approx. 40 days till the first week of May.

Going by the above two experiences, if I thought that 2018 was going to be a good year, I was quite disappointed because for pretty much the rest of the year I had no further access to the herb. On a couple of occasions towards the end of the year some noble friends did share a smoke with me but there was not enough to stock up or keep aside, just enough for the get together.

The situation still continues into 2019 so I have been without access to ganja for roughly 8 months now. When I ran out of the herb, I started rolling a cigarette with the loose tobacco and smoking approximately a cigarette a day for the subsequent 8 months. When I ran out of the loose tobacco, I bought the occasional bundle of beedis or, on a couple of rare occasions, a packet of cigarettes keeping the consumption to roughly a cigarette a day or a couple of beedis a day.

Alcohol consumption through the year has been similar to previous years. I have confined myself to mainly social drinking and kept the frequency of alcohol consumption to approx 2-3 drinks once a fortnight.

What I hear from people I talk to, and material I read, is that the consumption of ganja is at an all time high both in the city I live in as well as more or less everywhere else. Yet people I talk to repeatedly speak about the difficulty of accessing the herb, low quality of herb, the high levels of police crackdown on cultivators and dealers as well as the increasing cost of the herb. This seems to indicate the formation of well organized illegal groups of larger operators that possibly crowd out the smaller producers and sellers. Also the buyers who have established steady long term relationships are likely to have more regular access as it must be in the case of middle age and older adult buyers. The youth are still able to network and source from sellers that operate for short periods of time before moving on or running into law enforcement.

So, in summary, 2018 was a year that reinforced my convictions that ganja needs to be legalized and made more accessible, especially for middle age and older adults in Bengaluru. It also appears that in 2018 the illegal networks are ramping up their operations in anticipation of the inevitable legalization, making a quick buck and in the process building the necessary knowledge, supply, distribution and consumption networks that will surely stand in good stead when legalization becomes a reality in Bengaluru.

For me though, for the time being, it is watch, wait and speak mode.

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https://ravingkoshy.blogspot.com/2020/03/draft-cannabis-policy-for-india-2019.html

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Sunday, 7 January 2018

Personal Ganja Consumption 2017 Review

Personal ganja consumption for the year 2017 was at more or less similar levels as the previous two years. The primary and preferred mode of intake was ganja in smoked form rolled into spliffs with a few rare (and pleasurable) occasions of vaping, chilluming, herbal tea, fruit punch and cake infused with the herb. The intake of ganja as hashish was a very rare and limited treat last year as against a relatively better availability of the same in the previous two years.

The smoked herb was as a mixture with tobacco, the ratio of the two ranging from 60:40 when there is abundant availability of ganja to as less as 20:80 when the availability of ganja was scarce.

Ganja was smoked over a period of about 5 months in the year at the average rate of a single joint a day and average mixture ratio of 50:50 in terms of ganja and tobacco. The smoking months were primarily Jan-Apr followed by intermittent phases of around 2-3 weeks spread out through the rest of the year.

The total quantity smoked was in the range of 100-150 grams (definitely not exceeding 150 grams) of what I would call good quality organic herb. The total money spent on procurement did not exceed Rs 5000 in the year.

Looking at the patterns of consumption of the big three i.e. ganja, tobacco and alcohol, I saw a decreased urge to drink alcohol and preferred it only on social occasions in spite of having access to good quality alcohol. Given a choice between ganja and alcohol, I saw a preference in myself for ganja over alcohol. I see this as a behavioral change that will likely last for the future. Maybe the availability of good toddy once again might tilt the balance a little more towards alcohol but am not optimistic that toddy will make a comeback again given the powerful Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) lobby and our society's penchant for pseudo sophistication. The usage of tobacco was more or less similar to the last few years. For me this is a matter of concern as my aim is to reduce this to a minimum, so this is an area to focus on. Smoking beedis and handmade cigarettes with good quality tobacco is a strategy to minimize damage from tobacco. Increased availability of ganja and focus on physical fitness will also hopefully help to manage tobacco better. Maybe the shamanic route of ingesting tobacco juice might need to be invoked at some point.

Looking back at the year 2017, I would say it was a fairly contented year in terms of relationship with ganja. The herb served to explore and process repressed thoughts and feelings and to help me come to better terms with them. The sublime states of mind and body achieved through the herb were almost always periods of sat-chit-anandam i.e. being-consciousness-bliss and deeper meditative/contemplative states in harmony with nature, barring the few occasional feelings of self-consciousness and rebelliousness that I attribute to the prohibitive climate against the herb that still exists in this country and society today. With the removal of these biased and prejudiced external barriers to free thinking and with a more conducive socio-cultural environment, am sure much more beautiful states of physio-psychological well being, spread over longer periods, is possible.

Retrospection on the previous year's personal consumption patterns got me into contemplation about some what if scenarios. What would be the change in my consumption patterns if the herb was legalized and freely available through various outlets? I foresee the following possible changes in my consumption patterns:

increase in ganja smoking to an average of 2 joints a day and a maximum of 3 joints on average
an increase in the ganja content of the ganja-tobacco mixture to 70:30 on average as the intent is always to reduce tobacco intake and keep it to a minimum and to move towards the personal ideal of maximum ganja minimum tobacco
an increase in the smoking months of the year to around 7-8 months of the year interspersed with periods of abstinence to keep the relationship with the herb fresh
an increase in the quantity consumed to 300-500 grams a year with a maximum of 500 grams from the current 100-150 grams
with a maximum cap of 500 grams in the year at a hopefully average pricing of not more than Rs 3000 for 100 grams of good quality herb, I aim to have a ceiling of Rs 15000 on ganja related annual expenses. Of course with legalization and healthy competition among the producers and sellers I am hopeful that the free market price will become much lesser than the above stated price
certain special occasions may warrant binge smoking i.e. more than 7-8 joints in the day. This however I do not see happening too often as the potency of the cannabis high plateaus out after the first 2-3 joints. Then smoking any more is just trying to get too much out of a good thing hence resulting potentially in a subsequent distaste for the said good thing
consumption of the herb in forms other than smoking as ganja i.e.as hashish, beverages, confectionery and food, of course, would be an added bonus when available

Let's see what the year 2018 has in store for the lover of the herb. Does the herb become more or less accessible or will the current status quo be maintained?

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