By Brett Konen
SPOILER ALERT: Yes. Yes you can.
Wait, what?
Okay, we’re not technically talking about lube here; the product in question is actually considered a “sensual oil” designed to heighten female sexual pleasure, but it’s the same idea. While unlikely to get you high when used in its intended manner (i.e., topically), recent publicity surrounding these types of products has led a number of imaginative individuals to ponder the question: “…but will I get high if I eat it?”
Who would try such a thing? Well, anyone who appreciates the active ingredient’s psychotropic effects might consider splashing several doses’ worth of THC on your lady parts a waste of cannabis. (Of course, after conducting a cannabis lube review of our own, we have to respectfully disagree.) But there’s also a good many of us who are just plain curious about these sorts of important questions.
After all, most cannabis sensual oils on the market at present are made up solely of coconut oil and THC. Coconut oil is already a hot culinary commodity on its own, and if you take the sexy marketing out of the picture, a bottle of pre-infused coconut oil sounds like an über-handy baking supply. Of course, you can always make your own cannabutter, but it takes some time, and for those of us dealing with important work projects like bong water experiments and picking out canna-crushes, who can go around dropping those extra hours? We thought that canna-lube should do the same trick.
So we set out to put our high-pothesis to the test. We chose a bottle of BOND Sensual Oil for its organic coconut oil base (organic always seems like a good idea). Each one-ounce bottle of BOND contains 150 milligrams of THC, or about 15 moderate doses. Ingredients: coconut oil, cannabis oil, and nothing else. Let’s do this.
As it was a few days before Valentine’s Day (an ideal holiday for lube experiments), I was already planning to bake a batch of festive pink cookies to send to my grandma, so I decided to buy enough ingredients for a second batch and sub the BOND for a portion of the butter. (Note: I kept the batches entirely separate – we do not recommend accidentally sending a batch of cannabis lube cookies to your grandmother, or to any unsuspecting recipient.)
Though the BOND coconut oil base is in liquid form, the dough that used BOND in place of one of the three sticks of butter came together just as well as the non-lubricated cookie dough did. Though the oil had a slightly greenish tinge on its own, when mixed with the remaining ingredients it did nothing to throw off the color of the cookies. The aroma and flavor were similar to that of cannabutter – a definite aroma of cannabis, and not something you’d want to consume on its own, though not an offensive flavor by any means.
I rolled out the cookies to as uniform a thickness as possible, and used a single cookie cutter shape to ensure that the cookies’ cannabis content was roughly equal across the board. I laid my cookies out on parchment paper on a cookie sheet and counted them. 150 milligrams of THC used, divided by 40 cookies (plus about five cookies’ worth of dough lost in mixing, scraps at the edges of the cookie cutters, and a few taste tests), should equal a THC content of approximately three milligrams per cookie. Most edibles contain more, but best to start slow when using something whose effects you’re unsure of (also I forgot to check the recipe yield ahead of time).
I baked the cookies as normal and they came out perfectly golden. I whipped up a batch of frosting (non-infused) and put the finishing touches on the cooled cookies. Then I packed them up and brought them into the office in the name of research. We passed the cookies around the office late on a Friday afternoon. Different “research subjects” selected varying numbers of cookies to get a sense of the range of their effects; most of us sampled one, two or three cookies, with one brave researcher trying five (after all, the cookies were pretty tasty regardless of their effects).
The results? Yes – cannabis lube cookies will get you high. Most reported a mellow body high, with relaxed muscles and a subtle euphoric effect comparable to most edibles sold in stores. One researcher noted that the amount of these particular cookies required to get a seasoned consumer properly high could just as easily cause a stomach ache, so if I did this experiment again, I would use the same amount of infused oil to make a half-batch of the same cookies.
Is baking with cannabis lube cost-effective? Probably not. For instance, California-based MariButter, a pre-infused cannabis butter, sells a 16-ounce container of their product for $40, and each ounce contains 25 milligrams of THC (so 400 milligrams for $40). A recreational outlet in Bellevue, Wash., lists BOND on their menu at $62 for a bottle (so 150 milligrams for $62). There are other factors to consider, including potency (at 150 milligrams in an ounce, BOND is six times as potent as MariButter) and the health benefits frequently associated with coconut oil, but we wouldn’t recommend buying cannabis sensual oil on the reg for your baking projects. However, if you have to have a spare bottle of cannabis-infused oil lying around the house and you’d rather harness the psychoactive effects than the sensual ones, good news – you can!
Want us to review (within reason-ish) something you’re not sure about trying yourself? Email us at tips@nullleafly.com!
To continue reading this story, visit our friend’s website (opens in a new window):: Can You Bake With Cannabis Lube? We Tried It and Found Out…