The next time you’re in a dispensary, see if you can just look at the menu of marketing names, and immediately identify how that cultivar will make you feel. Sure, if it’s White Widow, or Jack Herer, or some other legendary plant, you may have some insight. But as you likely have experienced, not every batch offers equivalent effects. And I’ve no doubts that there is a myriad of cultivar names seemingly pulled from the ether. Alaskan Thunder Cookies, or Sweet ‘n Sour Sessions, or Gonzo Power, or whatever. I don’t know if those are real, but perhaps by tomorrow, they will be. (Actually, I hope the latter one becomes reality.) Nevertheless, do you know how you’ll react? Peace, love, and harmony? Or, anxiety and frightened paranoia?
If cannabis biomass is extracted, and lots of terpenes are lost in the process, the final concentrate chemistry no longer resembles the flower, meaning more variation in the overall, physiological effect. And even if you meticulously characterize the precise terpene profile in your harvest, natural variation may perturb attempts at standardization, which means that the terpene profile measured may not always be statistically the same. Alas, some companies, like LucidMood, have sought to deconstruct the cannabis plant, to subsequently reconstruct unique product formulations. Tristan Watkins, Ph.D., provided the skinny on LucidMood’s mission for change.
Watkins is a neuroscientist, who like many in the industry, left a more “traditional” role to bring his expertise to cannabis science and the quest to make the benefits of the plant more accessible to mainstream consumers. “I wanted to help remove the trepidation and confusion that consumers may have when selecting a product,” Watkins added.
Prior to assembling their formulations, the methodology at LucidMood begins with understanding the singular ingredients. “We survey the scientific literature to help us make educated guesses on how the results from animal studies will relate to humans,” Watkins explained. “Then, we set out to create a product for a specific end goal.”
LucidMood’s product portfolio spans the spectrum from THC-free products to those that contain THC distillate and CBD isolate. While their products are not necessarily full-spectrum, they’re also not just single cannabinoids. “The main thing for us is to work with what’s readily available and has a stable supply chain,” Watkins discussed. LucidMood isn’t interested in what the marketing names are for the plants, so they don’t produce “cultivar-specific oils”. Since they deconstruct the plant anyway, at the end of the day, it’s all phytochemicals. “We start with THC distillate, which is usually around 85% THC,” Watkins added. “We add a precise amount of CBD isolate and typically 2-6 terpenes.”
Product consistency is something many cannabis consumers desire. Not everyone wants to roll the dice, and experience what happens through trial-and-error experimentation. Because LucidMood custom builds their formulations from scratch, they can better ensure predictable physiological effects. So, all of that aforementioned harvest-to-harvest natural variation doesn’t faze them.
One interesting formulation Watkins has developed is a sublingual taffy, which allows the ingestion of cannabinoids and terpenes without needing to first traverse through the digestive tract, which diminishes the amount of cannabinoids that reach the bloodstream. And of course, LucidMood has generated vape pens.
Currently, cannabis consumers can experience six LucidMood vape pens, including three recreationally-themed, lifestyle blends, and three medicinally-themed, wellness blends. The former product assortment includes Party, containing limonene and beta-caryophyllene, which can be found in cinnamon extract, and cannabigerol (CBG) to augment sociability and energy; the Chill blend, which utilizes linalool, found in lavender extract; Energy, which contains botanical extracts from citrus, and thus, limonene.
The Wellness product line includes Sleep, which is high in terpinolene, a delightful extract from apple blossoms, and Calm, which includes geraniol, prominent in white rose extract. “Sleep is designed to help you fall asleep, but not stay asleep as though you’ve been knocked out,” Watkins added. “You won’t have that grogginess from ingesting too much THC that can linger into the following morning. And often, when people take things to help them relax, they feel lethargic. Calm was designed to help them mentally relax, without bogging them down physically.”
Other Wellness products include: Relief, comprising the extract from camphorweed (and thus, obviously the terpene camphor).
So, really, when you are shopping for cannabis products, your question shouldn’t be “How is this going to make me feel”. Rather, the question you should pose is “How Do I Want to Feel”, and then be able to seek out that distinctive mood, or target your specific ailment.
Are you interested in tacking back some control over your cannabis experience? While LucidMood is proud to call Colorado the home of their headquarters, their products can also be found in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Nevada, and California.
