How to Consume Edibles Wisely…Well, Kinda

We partnered with The Apothecarium for this story. With three beautiful locations in San Francisco it’s one of the most incredible experiences you can have buying cannabis in town.

Broke-Ass Stuart readers get 10% off at The Apothecarium for the entire month of April! Just say “Stuart sent me” at the counter or use the code “StuartSentMe” when you order online for pickup or delivery at apothecarium.com. The discount may only be used once and may not be combined with other offers. Valid April 1-30, 2018

Almost all of us have a story that starts out “This one time I ate WAY too much ganja edibles…” For some of us, we have multiple versions of that story. I know I do. In fact, I often describe what happens to me when I eat pot food as “I turn into a puddle of Stuart.” The problem with many of the edibles we’ve all eaten in the past, is that they were homemade and you never really knew how much THC you were actually getting.

With the incredible steps cannabis has made over the past few decades – first through medical and now legal marijuana – we’ve gotten to a point where edibles can be scientifically dosed out. And they’re also become fucking delicious. Unexpectedly powerful mystery brownies that taste like batter and mulch are a thing of the past, which is exactly why I was so excited to visit The Apothecarium and get schooled on all the ways I can now consume weed.

Just look how excited I am! This is from the instagram story I did about getting edibles. You would have seen it if you were following me on Instagram!

The day started out with Alex and I going to The Apothecarium’s Marina location to meet up Eliot and Ynez so they could guide us through the goodies. Walking in I was blown away with how lovely it was; it felt like I had just walked into the lobby of a boutique hotel, not a pot dispensary. Just look at it:

One of their goals is to make the experience appealing to people who may not have been too keen on visiting a dispensary before. “You see that woman over there,” Eliot asked while pointing to a woman in her 50s, “Everything we do, we do with her in mind. We want your mother to be perfectly comfortable coming here and getting the right service.”

While I did see some of the blond soccer moms one would expect in the Marina, I was impressed by the spread of people represented. The Apothecarium’s customers ranged in age from their 20s to their early 70s.

After chatting a bit Eliot and Ynez brought us over to the counter and laid out an Wonka-esque array of edibles.

Amongst the many options were gourmet sweet clusters from Atlas Edibles, jelly squares from Garden Society, and Sensuali-Tea from Kikoko. They looked so yummy it was hard to resist eating all of them. They were screaming “Eat Me!”

But that of course is a bad move and is exactly what we came to get educated about. Luckily Ynez broke down how much is a reasonable dose to take.

Here’s how the conversation went:

Q: “What’s a safe dose to take if you’re a first-timer or if you don’t eat edibles very often?”
A: “2.5-5mg is a safe and cautious amount for a beginner.”

Q: “How long does it take to feel something?”
A: “Anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours to feel effects.”

Q: “How long does it last?”
A: “2.5-5mg is going to last an average of 3 hours”

After resisting the urge to eat everything and learning how much to take I finally settled on these jellies from Garden Society. Don’t they look amazing?

Then it was time to eat the edibles! I had decided at the start of the day to do an Instagram story not just of my experience learning about edibles and buying them, but also my adventure while feeling the effects. The Apothecarium doesn’t have a license that allows consumption on the premises, and since they are very adherent to the laws surrounding cannabis, we had to say goodbye. Alex and I then headed down to Chestnut Street where we each ate one 5mg jelly.

The plan was to start with 5mg, and go exploring. We figured we’d feel it soon enough and then create absolutely hilarious Instagram stories.

Shortly after the above photo was taken I said, “Hey Alex, I don’t feel anything let’s take another 5mg.” Alex tepidly objected to taking the second gummy…for at least 30 seconds (because he listened to our cannabis consultants), and then after resisting peer pressure for…30 seconds, he caved and said, “Fuck it, we want this shoot to be authentic right?” It had been less than a half hour since we took the first one, so yes, we literally did what we just learned we weren’t supposed to. We decided to wander around the Presidio for a bit while waiting for the edibles to take hold and ended up at Lucas Films Studios where we roped Yoda into our adventure.

By that point it still hadn’t happened so I thought I’d be funny about it.

And then of course it happened…

By the time the above photo was taken we were REALLY FUCKING HIGH. Right about the time we are walking out of the Presidio the edibles kicked in and we’d decided that we should find a place to handle our munchies and take a funny photo of me eating so be like “Hey! I’ve got the munchies!” but we were really stoned all of a sudden and unable to make any decisions. We walked the commercial strip of Chestnut twice before we finally stumbled into a restaurant whose name I’ll never know.

Using the pic of R2D2 that I’d taken at Lucas Films Studios was the perfect follow up to the “Look, now I’m stoned” picture. In our heads the narrative went “Stuart got so stoned that R2D2 started talking to him”. We laughed REALLY hard about this one. People following the story on Instagram thought it was really funny too, but probably not as funny as we did. Luckily we were the only ones in the restaurant because Alex and I spent the better part of our meal laughing like this:

The folks who worked there must’ve thought we were really stoned, completely insane, or both.

We wanted to follow up the R2D2 photo with a pic of me responding to him saying something like “You’re right R2, I am trashed!” but by then we were so high we spent an hour trying to get the wording right and eventually gave up. I mean we were so damn high we forgot to even take the photo of me eating! So afterwards I just ended up posting this:

Yeah, we were that kind of stoned. After sheepishly thanking the waitstaff 300 times and being too irie to look them in the eyes, we finally left the restaurant to figure out where we should go next. We got as far as the corner and then stood around giggling for another 30 mins because we couldn’t decide what to do. “Well I guess we just live here now,” Alex said as he gestured at the corner that we couldn’t figure out how to leave.

At one point my girlfriend called me and I was laughing so hard that I was crying while trying to explain to her the ridiculousness of the meal we’d just had and that we were stuck on a corner in the Marina. Shortly after that a UPS guy came up and bummed a light off Alex and I tried to mumblingly explain the storyline of the movie Arthur to the guy. I’m pretty sure I weirded him out.

Our adventure was at a standstill. I’d become too self-conscious to post any more updates or really be out in public, so Alex and I went to our respective homes. I spent the rest of the evening in bed watching Netflix and ate everything in my house. Hours later Alex and I texted:

So the moral of the story is this:

When eating edibles definitely start with 5 mg (or even 2) DO NOT DO 10 mg!! Unless you want to be really high for several hours. And make sure to wait at least an hour before they kick in to take anymore. A rough ratio is 5mg = 3 hours of being stoned. We took 10mg and were incredibly high for 6+ hours.

I woke up the next day and posted this for all the folks who had been following my Instagram story and were wondering why I stopped posting:

Disclaimer: Keep out of reach of children. For use by adults 21 years of age or older. CA Licenses: M10-17-0000103-TEMP A10-18-0000122-TEMP M10-17-0000111-TEMP A10-18-0000137-TEMP M10-17-0000062-TEMP A10-18-0000132-TEMP