Medical Marijuana review: Madrina

My adventures with Madrina were numerous, as you’re about to find out, and all of them made better by this strain. The first time I DynaVaped a capful of it, I immediately headed out on a walk, as cooler temperatures are mercifully allowing for that activity once again. Madrina went straight to my head, and as I trotted out into the world, stoned in the very best possible way, with Dolly’s “Here You Come Again,” one of the catchiest recordings ever made, blaring over my headphones. The tune was co-written by the prolific Cynthia Weil, who died earlier this year. Along with (and sometimes separate from) her writing partner and husband Barry Mann, she’s responsible for penning countless songs you’ve been listening to your entire life. Just take a look.

Heading towards the post office to mail a birthday package to a friend – a vinyl copy of Barry Manilow’s “2:00 AM Paradise Café” – was the impetus for this cannabis fueled journey. (If you’ve never heard this album, your low opinion of Manilow is at best uninformed.) I should have known things would go awry when I saw this in the street:

Why I stopped to take a picture of it, only you can decide, but it turned out to be a portent of the decline of America. Only a few streets ahead was the post office, which I strode into, looking forward to spending the rest of my walk sans LP in cardboard packaging. Imagine my surprise and shock when, at about 2:06, I saw this:

Stoned on something strong, the brain goes to the places the sober mind doesn’t always have time for. I couldn’t think of a time ever in my life where I’d seen such a sign in the post office. I was gobsmacked and flabbergasted. The post office was now on the same schedule as some kiosk in the mall. Surely a small indication of how dire things have gotten: the post office only has one employee at a time staffing an entire federal building.

So, I had an hour to waste, carrying the record under my arm everywhere I went. Target was my first stop, and the worst thing about shopping at Target is a bunch of stuff is unpriced, especially records and Blu-rays. If you want to find the price of things you must find a scanner, which are placed periodically around the store. The two closest to the area I was in – one in either direction – were broken. I wasn’t about to trek further through the store, and of course, no employees were staffing the electronics counter. If nobody is around to deliver any kind of customer service and there are no price tags on anything, I leave.

After more than an hour, I was still feeling some of the effects of the Madrina, and found myself peckish. I stopped off at a burger restaurant, where normally someone greets me the moment I walk in. This time, I waited for at least two minutes before being served, and then it was by a man who had almost no teeth – which, I’m sorry to say, is unappetizing to say the least. He was nice enough and good at his job, but this is a restaurant, and I found myself actively getting angry at the burger chain for not providing this man some kind of dental care. It all just felt like more of the world around me crumbling into disarray.

By the time I was done with the burger, it was time to head back to the post office. Upon entering, there was a line of ten people deep, and as suspected, just one man behind a counter with four or five potential stations. I ended up getting into a lovely, lengthy conversation with an 85-year-old Korean war vet. We were both cynical about the state of the government. It was a completely apolitical conversation, by the way. You don’t have to be on one “side” or the other to feel that our government has in recent years let us down; that our country has not lived up to its promise and potential and that it’s entirely possible America’s best days, if indeed such days ever really existed (for many people, they did not), are firmly in the rearview mirror.

I don’t want to end this on a down note. America may be in a dire state, but at the very least, cannabis is legally available to huge swaths of the country, which a decade ago was not the case. This is most certainly progress of a type, and something I could not have envisioned twenty years ago. Madrina was quite the savior on this most peculiar of afternoons. No matter how frustrating my experiences were, this strain kept me elevated, happy and focused. I did notice a bit of a heavy come down from it, feeling quite tired after a couple hours, but your mileage may vary. I suspect it was nothing that another bowl or DynaVaped capful of Madrina wouldn’t fix.

Madrina is a Hybrid TCHA strain with a total THC content of 21.2%.