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| Kareem Shaker |
The first thing we noticed was the smell, rising from the stuff in fumes that seemed almost visible.
"Smells like someone scraped all the fish scales off a mackerel and rolled up a joint," said Bobby Jenkins, a Miami resident who refused to partake in the experiment. "I'm not smoking anything that smells like it came out of a fish store."
Everyone who smokes knows it's not just about the high -- the smell, taste, and even the texture of the leaf as it rolls against your lips while you wrap a fatty all draw the average marijuana connoisseur. With Fire, you just want to hurry up and get it over with. But along with being the worst smelling, Fire was also the least expensive, with $9.99 buying you three grams.
Thankfully, it doesn't taste as bad as it smells, but on the first drag the obviously synthetic flavor stings you in the back of your throat. About halfway through a standard half-gram joint you begin to feel the high, which seems to wrap slowly around the back of your neck and culminate with near vibrations at the top of your skull. The high was short-lived, lasting for a little less than a half-hour, but the stench stayed around for hours.
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| Kareem Shaker |
Next came Mr. Nice Guy, which some may remember as the name of the comical drug-dealing trio in the classic stoner film
Half Baked. For $9.99 you get just one gram, so you expect a "higher grade," but you really just get the same thing as Fire with less of a stench. The first breath of smoke to disperse within your lungs tickles the chest, but by the fifth or sixth drag, you are inhaling into a vacuum. At first, the high seems less intense than what you would experience from regular pot. But as you try to wrap your brain around the latest
Family Guy episode while consuming a peanut butter truffle chocolate-chip pancake with whipped cream and vanilla frosting, you realize something -- you are really fucking high. Well, almost.
"It's
almost the same high you get smoking real weed," said fellow experimenter and
New Times staff writer David Minksy. "You can't exactly put your finger on it, but the difference is definitely there."
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| Kareem Shaker |
Last, but definitely not least, comes Jeffrey. This substance smelled a little more pleasant and was a bit greener, but smoked the same. The high, however, was unbearable. All of us experienced nausea, paranoia, and shivering, with varying severity. Stand up, and you want to sit down; sit down, and all of a sudden you jump up out of curious discomfort. Naturally occurring marijuana has been said to seemingly hug the inside layer of your skull like a loving friend. Jeffrey just sits on your temple and whines like a little girl. Despite our experience, some have actually reported feelings of euphoria followed by sudden jolts of deep thinking, very similar to marijuana's effects. But that is absolutely nothing like we felt. Before, we were skeptical about the "bad trips" we'd read about in the media. This made them all seem plausible, for the right person with the right brain chemistry.
So what's our final opinion? Well, officer, of course we don't smoke anything illegal. But if you are going to smoke, smoke the real stuff.
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