Did you know that there’s a cable channel that shows Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry and The Flintstones (and The Smurfs, but fuck that weird blue sausage-fest of a show) after 11 p.m.? I do now, thanks to a wacky sleep schedule that had me up until 4 a.m. one night. Few experiences are worse than trying to fall asleep knowing that you can’t, so I eventually gave up and went to my stash box. It had been a week or so since I’d last indulged, but that didn’t make my memory any stronger: I actually wasn’t sure what was inside. Waiting to save me was an eighth of Liberty Haze that I’d bought earlier in the week at Medicine Man’s Aurora shop for $35 after tax.
Medicine Man might be better known outside of Colorado than it is within state lines, thanks to a long list of documentaries and news shows on which its founders, Andy and Pete Williams, have appeared. I don’t hold it against anyone who puts his name out there, especially in a business as opaque as this one. But I did care about whether Medicine Man’s nugs were on par with its notoriety — and if they would help me sleep. Sadly, strains with the word “haze” in their name probably aren’t going to aid sleeping. In fact, they usually do just the opposite. And with genetics from Chemdawg and G13, Liberty Haze is known for a cerebral high without the drowsy comedown — so it looked like I was going to have some deep thoughts about the parallels between Bedrock and modern society.
The plastic bag that my eighth was packaged in smelled dull and generic, but pinching a bud released fresh, almost minty smells of pine and soil. Just holding one up to my nose and sniffing wasn’t very eye-opening, though. My nugs were a healthy mixture of big and small, dense and loose. Each was a vibrant lime green with tan pistils, which always screams “sativa” in my brain, whether it is or not. Despite the buds’ pretty colors, their trichomes were small, even under a microscope, and the looser buds needed a few extra cuts from a trimmer. (Next time, Medicine Man, spend less time on publicity and more on curing.)
Three quick bowls didn’t make me any more tired, but they did make me stop giving a shit. Bland, grassy notes were basically all I tasted during the sesh, and a small Volcano bowl provided much of the same. My mind began moving faster than the TV screen (though not to the point of paranoia), but my body was in a soothing state of relaxation for at least two hours before I finally fell asleep.
The mind-racing high of Liberty Haze definitely makes the sativa-leaning hybrid one for productivity, but it could easily serve as an after-work pick-me-up, too.
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