This is Your Brain on Weed
Tags: Science, Marijuana, Health, Cannabis, Research

Illustration by Graham Roumieu

In the back yard of the Wu Wei Tea Temple, a café in Fairfax, California, Brant Hindman, operations director of a new cannabis social club, HerbaBuena, held court with patrons in their 40s and 50s on a Saturday afternoon. He stood behind a table filled with biodynamic, sun-grown cannabis flowers on display under glass bell jars, each with a description written like wine-tasting notes on fancy cards: “amazing balance of THC to CDB,” “pain-easing” and “bright high.”

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Hindman, tall with a shaved head, laughed and half jokingly called himself a “sensimelier” as he advised the club’s members toward the flower “with fruit in the terpenes” or the one with “a more earthly, marigold nose.”

“When your brain is somehow deficient in some kind of cannabinoid, when you smell it or taste it, you’ll get a sense of whether it’s the right cannabinoid for you or not,” he said. “Say, you’re leaning towards ‘Ooh, tangy, this is the right thing for me. It works for my anxiety.’ If your body leans in or leans out, you’ll get a good sense of whether it’s the right strain for you.”

This is a new way of selling pot. Not only is the artisanal texture of HerbaBuena’s spiel familiar to wine aficionados, it’s also sprinkled with claims that certain chemical compounds in the plant — especially cannabidiol, or CBD — are just what your body needs for improving your sleep, your mood and other aspects of your health. Yes, this sounds like what you’ve heard medicinal marijuana advocates touting for decades. But new research is beginning to support the idea that CBD is a key and underappreciated ingredient.

What makes CBD particularly intriguing as a potential health aid is that it doesn’t get you high. That effect primarily comes from THC, or delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol. But while CBD can be distilled from pot, it’s not considered as effective when isolated from the other chemicals in the plant. (This is known as the “entourage effect.”) So growers are developing strains with higher CBD-to-THC ratios — and businesses like HerbaBuena are walking people through these new choices.

Some of HerbaBuena’s products, including pot that is high in CBD. (Courtesy of Alicia Rose)

Wearing a belted sun dress, HerbaBuena founder Alicia Rose brushed her long honey brown hair back before leaning over a display of products inside the tea house, including micro-dosing tinctures, CBD-heavy chocolates and dried fruit edibles. She described the alchemy and effects of her different products to new members of the social club who sat along a counter. One member, Laura Bailey, told Rose that she had problems falling asleep. “Then you’ll want to keep this right by your bed,” Rose said, holding a small medicine jar with a dropper. “Along with organically grown cannabis, it has passionflower, hops, flower and gemstone essences, along with glycerin.”

“I think I also want to take this before yoga class,” Bailey responded. She held up a box of OARA CBD chocolates. The label announced “hand poured, couverture dark chocolate, infused with biodynamic sun-grown cannabis and a daily probiotic.”

“That’s a good choice,” Rose said.

It’s no accident that HerbaBuena’s potions, blends, tinctures, patches, gels and even sprays for pets that suffer from anxiety are beautifully packaged like high-end wine or gourmet food. Rose was raised on a farm in New York by hippie parents who grew their own marijuana, but she spent the last 15 years as a marketing and branding consultant at boutique California wineries. And just as most people don’t buy a high-end Napa Cabernet to get drunk, she’s predicting that many adults want the medical benefits of cannabis without intense highs.