Join Puff columnist Dan and friends at the PUFF happy hour this Sunday at the Stud!
PUFF You wake up after a fun night out with friends. You had a few drinks and everyone brought their weed to pass around and share. Nothing is better than OPP (Other People’s Pot). You always get higher than on your own.
You are lying there in your warm bed cuddling up remembering the highlights of the night, and then you sit up. That’s when you notice it. The empty bags—candy, cookies, dry cereal, chips, dips, jerky. The crumbs. You got the munchies.
The munchies are one of the side effects of taking cannabis. For those who are ill and have lost their appetite, it can save the day and create that urge to eat and nourish the body. For us recreational users, it’s usually a shame ritual.I have learned that if I buy the yogurt-covered pretzels or ice cream, I will not eat them at an appropriate time for me to work off the calories before bed, but late at night in front of the TV after consuming a lot of pot. The next day will be spent trying to wipe all the yogurt particles off my dark grey sofa. Like Edgar Allen Poe’s Telltale Heart, they just keep coming back to haunt me.
Well, stoners, there is a cure out there, and it comes from the plant itself. It is THCV, or tetrahydrocannabivarin, a compound in cannabis that offers a unique array of effects and medical benefits that sets it apart from other cannabinoids like THC and CBD. As its name suggests, THCV is similar to THC in molecular structure and psychoactive properties, but it provides a variety of pronounced and altogether different effects.
So, THCV is an appetite suppressant. It actually makes you feel full—and it is made of weed! Take that Jenny Craig!
Other benefits include regulating blood sugar levels and reducing insulin resistance to aid those with diabetes, helping with anxiety attacks in PTSD patients, reducing tremors, motor control, and brain lesions caused by Alzheimer’s disease and stimulating bone growth by promoting the growth of new bone cells.
If THCV did one of these things, it would be a miracle drug, but doing all five things plus getting you high puts it up there in Homer Simpson’s bacon category.
Of course there needs to be more testing done to further the acceptability of THCV as a genuine medical breakthrough—and I am sure Big Pharma is excited about that. Since the FDA will only allow cannabis testing in approved labs—with the only such lab being in Mississippi—and Gov. Brown vetoing House Bill 1996 which would have built a lab in California, it won’t happen soon.
That is why I am here to enlighten you with PUFF.
As soon as Gavin Newsom is sworn in as Governor, we need to educate him on cannabis and the positive effects of THC, CBD and THCV and on the need for further examination of this amazing plant that supplies so much more than just the tie-dyed buzz we once associated with it.
Until then, we will have to deal with those munchie demons on our own. Good luck, and remember: Those yogurt pretzels will never let you forget. Thump-thump, thump-thump.
Now it’s time to light up!
