April Pride: This podcast discusses cannabis and is intended for audiences 21 and over.

April Pride: Okay. I really hope that I’ve recorded everything.

April Pride: Welcome back to How to Do the Pot. I’m April Pride and I do the pot. This is the audio newsletter. If you’d rather read it, visit dothepot.com to subscribe to the email newsletter. And if you like How to Do the Pot, please share it with someone and rate and review us on Apple podcasts, it helps more people find the show.

April Pride: Pre-pandemic, I gathered in Portland with Meryl Montgomery and Valarie Šakota, the co-founders of Oregon based BARBARI, as well as 25 women who work in weed, to trade strains and talk stash. Guest Lauren Yoshiko, co-host of Broccoli Talk podcast, that we love, dubbed the evening weed church. Amen. Appropriately, at weed church, we reflected on Marilyn and Valerie’s five steps to mindful consumption, which I prefer to think of as practicing the pot. Yes, like meditation, yoga and sports, cannabis is something that gets better with practice. To help you practice, we always share strain reviews with each newsletter. We get so many questions about cannabis strains and we’re excited to share our new weekly series Saturday Strains.

April Pride: In our COVID induced reality, do you find yourself questioning what day it is? As a result of not knowing my place in space and time, I’ve definitely lost some rituals, like appreciating a long and decidedly unproductive, for other people’s purposes, Saturday morning.

April Pride: We at How to Do the Pot are bringing special back to Saturdays with the new series called Saturday Strains. In about five minutes we’ll get into the weeds with one strain and learn how to do the pot. What’s special about Saturday Strains? On every episode, we’ll focus on one strain and for each, we’ll get to the bottom of these five questions. Number one, what does it help with? Does it help with pain, stress, anxiety, sleep? Number two, how high will I get? What are the CBD and THC levels, and what does that mean for my high? Number three? How will it make me feel? What are its effects? Does it make me want to giggle, relax, or does it make me want to, you know? Number four, what will it inspire? Is it ideal to go and hike, to clean your garage, or to do anything but watch yet another movie? Number five? Why do women love it? All we’ve had to go by when it came to choosing the right strain were anecdotal stories.

April Pride: From the brave few who are willing to share their experience. We look forward to sharing lots of great stories from women who we lovingly and respectfully call guides. I’m April Pride, I do the pot and I’ll be your guide on all things Strains every Saturday, this fall.

Meryl Montgomery: I’m Meryl Montgomery CEO and co-founder of BARBARI.

Valarie Šakota: I’m Valarie Šakota, co-founder and chief creative of BARBARI. I mean, for me, I have always smoked a few times a week. Usually kind of every other day or so, and it helps me be more creative or dig into my studies and college. I needed to sort of open my mind a bit and alcohol and coffee didn’t really work for me in that way. So I’ve always smoked weed.

Meryl Montgomery: As we both got into the industry, we were really thrown into, well, a lot of events and there’s always a lot of weed at weed events. Shock. And so, yeah, I found that I was consuming a lot more. And so over the last year or two, I’ve sort of really needed to be more mindful about how much and where, and when I was consuming. I mean, the same way when I first got started in tech and it was like that with alcohol, in every startup had kegs and bottles everywhere, and everyone was going to happy hours, you know. I kind of had to figure out how to drain-

Valarie Šakota: What your line was.

Meryl Montgomery: Yeah, what my line was.

April Pride: For today’s High Five, tips for practicing the pot. Number one, set intention. Take a moment to recognize that you want to consume and determine why. What is the outcome I expect? Is it to help me tune in at a party, make music sound better? Is it to help me get more creative and relax?

Meryl Montgomery: Yeah. Set an intention that really comes down to what is it you’re doing, and where are you. Just taking a moment to really stop and say, “okay, what is it I’m doing, and how do I want cannabis to serve that moment?”

Valarie Šakota: Yeah. Ask yourself, are you tired? Are you wanting to wind down for the evening? Do you want to be social?

April Pride: Number two, check in with yourself.

Valarie Šakota: We like to walk through three steps as we sort of mindfully enter a consumption moment. The first is, check in with yourself. How do you feel? If you can close your eyes without feeling weird, close your eyes and sort of shift your focus to your breath. Just give yourself a pause and then ask yourself how does your body feel? Are you sore? Are you relaxed? Are you tense?

Meryl Montgomery: Where is it? Where are those spots? And really kind of find them.

Valarie Šakota: How do your clothes feel on your skin? And then how do you feel emotionally and mentally? Are you exhausted? Are you drained, depressed-

Meryl Montgomery: Energized-

Valarie Šakota: Anxious-

Meryl Montgomery: Creative? The second one is, where are you? You know, are you somewhere outside? Are you inside? Do you need a jacket. Might you need a jacket later? These are things they want to think about.

Valarie Šakota: Are you comfortable with where you are and who you’re with? And then the last one is what is your vibe? So asking yourself how cannabis is going to participate in the experience you’re trying to sort of, set for yourself. Is it to help you tune in at a party? Is it to help you get more creative and loosen up a little bit, maybe aid a sexy night, make music sound better?

Meryl Montgomery: What are you after?

April Pride: Number three, choose what you want to consume. Match your cannabis selection with what you’re up for. If you want to get into a flow state, consider a nibble of an edible with your coffee or a high CBD tincture in your tea.

Valarie Šakota: I like to start off by taking only half. Whatever the dosage is on, whatever, I always just do half. Sometimes even just a quarter, but usually half until I found my ideal dosage.

April Pride: Does the label also provide average time for onset of effect? 15 minutes to fully kick in or up to an hour? Set a timer.

Meryl Montgomery: And so, yeah, that’s the check-in. It’s kind of figuring out, okay, how do I feel? Giving it the appropriate amount of time and then deciding if you wanted to redose again.

April Pride: Number four, check in with yourself. Again. After you consume and your timer rings, ask yourself, how do I feel now?

Valarie Šakota: That second check-in, in particular, helps you tune in to exactly whether or not you achieved what you were hoping to achieve. And if you feel a little too anxious, or if you feel like you actually were able to organize all of your email, or if you got sidetracked on a bunch of different tasks. So checking in with how your body is feeling physically, how you’re feeling emotionally, and if you’re able to sort of, accomplish the task that you put in front of yourself,

April Pride: Number five, take note. In your phone, take a minute to make a note about how you felt or how you feel. Tune into exactly whether or not you achieved your intention.

Valarie Šakota: You know, this is a really good habit to get yourself in when you are starting to journal, and record your experiences with different strains or different consumption methods.

April Pride: Thanks so much to Meryl and Valarie for helping us practice the pot today. Ever since our conversation about mindful consumption, I’ve turned to one of BARBARI’s effect based herbal blends and, I love these names, they deliver as promised. Airplane Mode, Car Sex, and Muse to dial in my high because this low level collective anxiety is real, and so is the amount to be done very well every day as if my life and the lives of those I love depend on it. So thank you, BARBARI. Each blend is also available in individually dosed, herbal CBD hemp pre-rolls which ship nationwide. In Oregon and Massachusetts legal dispensaries, you’ll find they’re low THC pre-rolls that deliver a mild high. So this is a pre-roll that has cannabis and it’s also been rolled with one of BARBARI’s herbal blends. Technically this is called a spliff and it looks like a pre-roll.

April Pride: Another reason we love BARBARI. This October, BARBARI is launching a subscription box for their herbal blends and CBD hemp pre-rolls. The packaging is entirely sustainable because the brand is working to reduce their overall eco footprint, so this is one less stress. That’s BARBARI, B-A-R-B-A-R-I and their website is barbarishop.com. For our listeners, use promo code dothepot for 20% off. No matter what state you live in, there is a BARBARI product to help you build your buzz. We’ll let them share a bit about how BARBARI came to be.

Meryl Montgomery: When Valerie and I first really came together on this brand, we were chatting and catching up over drinks, and it was right in 2015, so canvas had just become legalized. We saw this opportunity that there was not really a branded experience for productive consumers. We couldn’t really talk about it at work because it would’ve been condemned or judged. We use weed, it helps us with whatever we’re doing, but we’re not really this like stoner persona. It just didn’t really feel right. So Valerie said that she had been developing this product and this brand since college. She would mix together these different herbals, and depending on what herbs she would mix it with, it would affect her high, really. So we could go to class, or study or make art. Weeks later I called her up and was like, I really want to be a part of this and now is really the time, why not.

April Pride: For today’s Strain [inaudible 00:11:04], practice the pot doing some of the things you love. Indulge in a lazy day. Again. Blueberry Essence, it’s a high CBD strain, leaves you calm but not sluggish, and it levels off to induce sleep. Break a sweat with Green Crack, it’s perfect to use in the daylight hours because it keeps you energized and allows you to focus and it’s also really easy to find in most dispensaries, state to state. Enjoy a long walk with Silver Haze, melt stress and mild aches. You have more stamina and creativity after consuming the strain but you also may have dry mouth and dry eyes, so be prepared.

April Pride: And three podcasts that we think you’ll love. I Love the C-word, it’s on Luminary and it’s hosted by Lena Dunham and Alissa Bennett. It’s women’s history of all the women that have been dubbed crazy, and why that may not be the entire story. Ellen likes Happier, hosted by Gretchen Rubin and Elizabeth Craft. It’s advice about happiness and good habits that bring on more happiness. And to do the pot, we recommend Broccoli Talk, hosted by Lauren Yashika and Mennlay Golokeh Aggrey.

April Pride: Episode three, the Audacity of Scent. Terpene talk. Thank you for listening to this audio newsletter. Let us know what you think, find us on Instagram @dothepot, and you can follow me @aprilpride. And for lots more information about cannabis and women, visit dothepot.com. Thanks to my co-founder Ellen Scanlon, Madi Fair, marketing manager, and our producer, Nick Patri. I’m April Pride, and we’ll be back soon with more of How to Do the Pot.