In a recent appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live (see below), Canadian actress and Hollywood starlet Rachel McAdams spoke about her experience with her cool "stoner" grocer in the bohemian enclave of Toronto called Harbord Village.
"I said I was having a really hard time sleeping," she explained. "And he said, 'Well, I've got something for you.' And I was like, 'Oh, OK!' So he takes me to the back and he pulls out this little bottle with no label and it's full with this dark green substance. He says, 'Take a whiff of that.' And it's, like, well, it's marijuana! Yeah. And I was like, 'Oh, oh, no no no no no no. I wanna sleep - I don't wanna get high."
After further assurances that it would just put her to sleep, she tried out "the tiniest teaspoon" of the home-made concoction - obviously some form of cannabis tincture or infusion, and then apparently scored a rather high number on the dissociative experience scale.
"I was pretty desperate at the time," she continued to Kimmel. "By the time I'm getting into bed, I'm like, my brain - what's happening? I was not thinking normal human thoughts. I was hallucinating! I was totally hallucinating and I'm just laying there like, cursing him. I can't believe this is happening. And then I started to hear opera. For like five hours I heard opera, this guy singing in my head. I was going crazy!"
More than one of the news reports of the incident got the story wrong and claimed she "smoked" the cannabis instead of taking it as an infusion.
The writer at Huffington Post also speculated that it was cannabis from a sativa plant that kept her awake, and what she should have used was cannabis from an indica plant. Had McAdams gone to a cannabis dispensary instead of a grocer, she might've found something more effective. The latest word on the subject is that "B-Myrcene" - the volatile oil, or "terpene," responsible for the "kushy smell" in many indica or Kush strains of cannabis, has sedating effects.
Again, had she visited a dispensary, McAdams could've scored some buds to smoke instead of a tincture, which would have allowed her to control her dose more easily as well as what type of high she was looking for.
According to Dr. Donald Abrams, "Oral ingestion of THC or cannabis has quite different pharmacokinetics than inhalation. The onset of action is delayed and titration of dosing is more difficult..."
Note to Rachel McAdams: Never buy med-pot from your grocer, especially when you're a Hollywood star. Just get your doctor to prescribe it for insomnia and take advantage of the wide varieties of strains and modes of administration your local dispensary has to offer.
