It’s been a long, gnarly year, hasn’t it? At some point we’re going to look back at 2020 and laugh … maybe … but right now, most of us are looking back at the last year and wincing in pain. That’s to be expected after living through a global pandemic.
Not everything in 2020 was awful, though. Over the past year, we’ve tried out hundreds of indicas, sativas, and everything in between. We’ve smoked ourselves silly on strains named after adhesive products and truck stops, all in the name of science. We wanted to give you a distraction from the mundane, the ugly, and the harrowing (and maybe even prompt you into trying something new from the dispensary).
We don’t want to dwell on the negative with our 2020 wrap-up issue, which is why we’ve decided to do a more fun wrap up instead. Rather than giving you a run through the gnarly headlines from the last year, we’ve decided to talk about weed instead. Or, the best weed strains we’ve tried in the last 365 days, to be more specific.
The strains below are some of our very favorites from the last year, and if you haven’t tried them yet, you might want to get on that. They’ll help keep your mind out of the muck that’s lurking below us by putting your heads in the clouds. Ain’t nothing wrong with that, right?
Without further ado, here are our favorite cannabis strains of the ones we reviewed during 2020. If these strains prevailed during this dark, depressing timeline, you know they’re something extra special. Cheers to the end of 2020 — and hopefully a happier, more prosperous 2021 on the horizon.
Truck Stop #7 from The Green House DurangoBest for: Seasoned smokers who want to be very, very, high — like, really super highThe best way to describe Truck Stop #7, an indica-dominant hybrid, is an immediate shock to the head. When we smoked this strain, it felt like our brains were full of helium instead of that grey matter that dictates what we say and do. We choked, and choked, and then choked some more, and when we could finally breathe, our heads felt like hot air balloons.
One bowl in and we could not function. Like, we couldn’t even work Hulu.
Nothing would cooperate — not our arms, our brains, our thoughts, and certainly not the remote. It got so bad that we switched over to Netflix, content to deal with the couch-lock we knew would be coming. But at that point, we were too far gone to actually function, and just ended up accidentally turning on “Unsolved Mysteries” in freaking French instead.
We couldn’t fix it either. The wires in our brains were so, uh, high, that we couldn’t do anything to get the stupid show out of French and into English, the language in which we know more than four words total. So, we just sat around confused instead.
This strain is extremely strong and extremely intimidating. We loved it, but it is probably best if you are a seasoned smoker before taking this on. Start with something a little more easygoing and then work your way in. By that time, you should have a good appreciation for being really high — and more likely to handle a strain with 34% THC. If we’d started with this strain, we’d probably still be sitting on our couches and staring blankly at the remote. Real talk.
Her Highness from Prohibition HerbBest for: People who love a body high, half-mast eyelids, and the munchies (yes, we’re out there!)If you smoke Her Highness, be prepared with some snacks and a solid Netflix lineup. We freaking adore this strain, but it is not for the faint of heart (or productivity). Two hits in and the body high was getting real for us.
We’re not exactly sure how this strain hit us as hard as it did, but it was a big ol’ whomp to the senses. Our bodies felt tingly, our arms were pool noodles, and our brains found everything amusing. What we really found funny, though, was how quickly our eyelids went from open and normal to tiny little eyeball blinds that we couldn’t lift. They were definitely half-mast. Just catching a glimpse of our dumb eyelids in the mirror set off a case of the giggles.
And, once we’d laughed hysterically, the starvation kicked in. The only problem was that we couldn’t figure out what we wanted to eat. We were also so high that we caught ourselves standing in the pantry (more than once) and staring at nothing and everything simultaneously. We ultimately ended up eating a crap ton of chips, but it took a while to get there.
What was interesting about this strain is that we didn’t have that drop-off or noticeable tapering-off of effects that can happen with other high-THC strains. We stayed high for a very long time… like very long. Long enough to watch the entire “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” movie alongside our royal weed queen.
We must have fallen asleep at some point, but we truly don’t know when — we definitely went to bed high that night. But that’s OK! We like passing out while stoned. It’s the best kind of sleep. And, we woke up the next morning well-rested and relaxed.
So, in short, we choose Her Highness as part of our cannabis royal family. This strain deserves a crown, and we would even play stupid court jester if it meant we could hang out with Her Highness every day.
Pamelina from The Green House DurangoBest for: A weird, surreal daydreaming session (and smokers who like a crap ton of THC)Have you ever smoked a strain that made the floor look like lava while you’re tripping out over the idea that people live in regions where Siberian tigers just roam free in the wild? If the answer to that question is no, then you clearly need to get yourself some Pamelina, cause this stuff will do it to you. You will daydream about Siberian tigers. And you will do so while shoveling approximately 83 mini-cookies into your mouth right out of the oven.
Just a few hits of this strain — which contains 34% THC — and our faces started to feel wobbly, like they were made of water and not skin. And, shortly after the face-wobbling happened, our limbs started to feel like heavy sandbags instead of flesh. A short while later, we were super freaking high.
A short time after, it wasn’t just our faces that were wobbling. The floor was wobbling, too. We were trying to read whatever nonsense we’d googled on the phone, but kept getting distracted by the floor, which looked like it was boiling lava and not wood. It was such a trip, and nothing we did would stop it. We ended up having to put the phone down in defeat.
From there, a serious case of the munchies set in. If you’re on a diet, do not eff with Pamelina, friends. We ate at least three packages of those Tollhouse mini cookies from the refrigerated aisle of the grocery store. Somehow our stoned bodies were functional enough to make it across the lava floor, sandbag limbs and all, to bake them.
Shortly after, not a single one was left on the pan. We also ate all of the leftover Indian food in the fridge and approximately 18 pounds of fruit.
Oddly enough, though, we never passed out from Pamelina or from the expected food coma — which we were sure would happen, given the fact that it felt like our bodies were full of lead marbles and pears. We just sat around full of cookies and thinking instead.
So, if you’re looking for a strain that can unleash the weird creative side of you, or just make the floor look like it’s made of molten hot viscous material, Pamelina is your jam.
Sangiovese from Prohibition HerbBest for: Buying weird stuff on the Internet to surprise yourself laterIf you haven’t tried Sangiovese from Prohibition Herb, well, shame on you. This strain is an indica with fat buds, 29% THC, and a boatload of awesome.
After we smoked it, lots of weird and amazing stuff occurred. We not only wound up very high, but we also ordered some tadpoles that surprised us when they arrived at our door a few weeks later.
Sangiovese may not have as much THC as some of the other strains on this list, but it only took a couple of bong hits with this fancily-named strain and we were down for the count.
We’re not exaggerating, either. We literally took — at most — four bong hits of Sangiovese, but shortly after, we couldn’t feel our faces very well at all. The effects of this strain were almost immediate.
Once our faces were numb, we really started to feel what Sangiovese had to offer. This strain is wicked. Our arms started to feel like they were wobbling — not shaking, but kind of like the skin was rolling in waves or something — and we became overly amused with the fact that our thumbs looked tiny while typing on our phones. By overly amused we mean we were literally laughing out loud like someone who’d inhaled way too much nitrous at the dentist.
Our thumbs aren’t even small, for the record, but we clearly thought they were based on our notes, which say stuff like “I have the shortest thumbs. They’re like cartoon baby thumbs.”
Another interesting note we dug up was this one: “Oh no. My brain feels like it’s flopping forward off my scalp.” We vaguely remember feeling this, but shortly thereafter we remember nothing. Like at all.
The only clue I have as to what happened after was the tadpole sitting on our counter and mocking our stupidity. We hate that thing — and apparently ordered it while stoned out of our brains due to Sangiovese.
This strain killed any common sense we had left in our bodies and then went right for the jugular. That’s a real win in our books considering that we live in the darkest of timelines, so we aren’t knocking it. Now, if someone wants to adopt a tadpole that refuses to go through metamorphosis and become a frog, we know where you can find one.
Flo Limone from The Green House DurangoBest for: A quick jolt of productivity with no anxiety (you’ll do so many activities!)You may have guessed from the productivity hint above that Flo Limone is a sativa — and you’re right. This strain was created by crossing that old beloved and bright strain Flo with Nina Limone, and what resulted was a beast that’s a real kick in the pants when you smoke it.
All it took was a bowl to turn us into productivity machines.
We did laundry, cleaned out the closet, and mopped, all while managing to take in the majority of the documentary we were watching. Once that was done, we wrote a bunch of stuff we’d been putting off for weeks.
We then decided to make barbacoa, which is normally a pain because it has to be slow-cooked for hours on end. Flo Limone made us goddang geniuses on top productivity machines, though, and we decided to pressure cook that massive slab of beef instead. <insert chef’s kiss here>
We even started projects I had no intention of messing with. Best of all? We had zero – and we are talking ZERO – anxiety from this strain. We’d dealt with anxiety from other racy sativas, but this wasn’t one of them. It was oddly mellow, even though it kicked us in the pants in the productivity department.
This strain is our Saturday morning go-to. Watch out for us at the farmer’s market next summer as we whiz by with our microgreens and fancy goat cheese.
Melonade from Prohibition HerbBest for: Impressing your friends with giant nugs of weed and getting stoned into oblivionHave you ever seen an eighth of weed with nugs so fat and full that only FOUR of them fit in the container? We’re going to go out on a limb here and say you haven’t. That’s precisely what happened when we tried out Melonade for the first time, though. We opened the canister and this strain exposed its giant freaking balls.
These things were so massive that we felt the need to send photos of them to at least five people with a crass tagline or two thrown in the mix. The texts we got back were just responses like, “Those things are huge,” or “Why does the worst person on earth have the best job.” Jealousy is an ugly beast.
Jealousy is understandable in this case, though, because Melonade was awesome. It’s a real kick in the stoned nuts in terms of potency. One bowl and we were down for the count, eyes at half-mast and mouths full of invisible sand.
We also ate every damn thing in sight after we finally felt our way to the kitchen via the walls. We would have used our eyes, but at that point, they were refusing to cooperate and wanted to close instead. We don’t know what their problem was. /shrug
Once we’d shoved every carb in the pantry down our gullets our eyelids sank even further into oblivion and we were done for. Slept like a freaking baby, if a baby could find its way to a bong, eat a ton of food, open and drink Topo Chico, and then pass out in their clothes on top of the covers.
MAC from Prohibition HerbBest for: Laugh therapy and major body highsListen. We love MAC, a hybrid strain created by crossing Alien Cookies x Colombian x Starfighter. This batch we smoked tested at 28.84% THC, which is probably why our brains fell down a huge rabbit hole and started contemplating the superiority of major cities in Tejas after the bowl was cashed.
Just one bowl of MAC was quite enough to knock us into another dimension.
The high started mellow enough, but then quickly descended into “so far into my own head we’re borderline losing it” territory. To be clear, that was losing it in a good way. We kept thinking about everything — our thoughts were all over the place, and we were definitely borderline talking to ourselves in our own heads at one point. We were so deep into the cavernous spaces of our brains that we were amused by everything — especially the idea of ranking Texas’ cities from best to worst. Go figure.
We also had a raging body and head high, which was evident by the fact that we thought at one point that we were wearing shoes on the couch. We weren’t because that’s gross, but our brains were playing tricks on us to the point that we felt like our feet were secured in sturdy shoes, all wrapped up and comfy. We were actually just in socks — why wear shoes when you literally can’t go anywhere ever — but if we’d had to guess, we would have SWORN there were shoes on our feet.
We also felt like there were waves of energy flowing out of our brains and into our bodies. We could feel literal waves of “energy” flowing like we were some Marvel character with the dumbest superpower ever. “Let me just stop this villain with my super powerful energy waves of nonsense!” To say it was a body high is to really undercut what was happening.
The housemate that we smoked with, on the other hand, was convinced that she could feel waves of heat flowing up from her chest into her throat. This strain was a mind eff if we’ve ever seen one.
It was also extremely fun. We laughed and laughed at nothing for what felt like hours. Oddly enough, we didn’t crash hard afterward like we would with other strains that lead to body highs. The effects of MAC came on hard and fast but had a slow descent from super stoned to mostly sober and super hungry. So rather than sleep, we ate a bunch o
food and watched “Dumb and Dumber” until we decided it was time to go to bed.
This strain is a great ride if you can find it, which is why it’s on this list. Dig some up and we’ll light up a socially distant bowl of MAC with you any day.
Strawberry Cough from The Green House DurangoBest for: Parents who are stuck homeschooling during the pandemicStrawberry Cough is a widely loved sativa strain known for its uplifting, cerebral highs, so you may be familiar with it. You may have even smoked it! Some people have equated the smell of this strain to something like sweet strawberries, but to be honest with you, we just smell skunky weed.
The nugs are dense and compact, like little green popcorn balls, and it was great for getting us out of our own brains for a while. We lit up a bowl of Strawberry Cough expecting, given the name, that we would scare the hell out of my neighbors, who were bound to think we had the virus. Oddly enough, though, we didn’t cough much while smoking the bowl by ourselves in self-isolation, despite what the name may lead you to believe. We actually found it very pleasant to smoke. We also found the effects very pleasant, too, which is why we included it on this list. We went from scanning news headlines on our phones to watching videos of people falling down unexpectedly. It was a nice change of pace.
What was also a nice change of pace was the high from the Strawberry Cough. We expected to be pretty freaking high after smoking a bowl, but it was a nice daytime high, one that lured us in with a siren’s call and removed the static that seems permanently embedded in our brains. It was the perfect escape.
We also didn’t notice any anxiety with it, even though it’s a sativa, and most of them have been giving us anxiety as of late. There was no panic in our chests after a bowl of this strain, though. It just helped us get out of our own way for a minute while still allowing us to be functional enough to go about our day.
If you’re a parent stuck inside with kids who have cabin fever, this strain could be a great one to grab for daytime use. It’ll keep your head clear enough to deal with making sandwiches or re-learning Algebra, but it’ll also give you some sweet relief from the frustration that can come with it.
Just be aware before you buy it that this strain does smell like weed, so the strawberry smell won’t mask it from your kids. Just smoke it in your closet or something. Whatever gets the job done.
GMO from Prohibition HerbBest for: Turning that perma-frown upside down (don’t act like we’re the only ones dealing with the COVID blues)Everyone we’ve smoked GMO with has had the same reaction. They (and we) think this strain is something truly special.
We got to try this strain out last week before it hit the shelves, and holy mother of god were we stoned after just one bowl. That was our first clue that we were onto something pretty good with GMO.
The second hint was the smell. This strain smells heavily of spice, gasoline, and skunk — you could smell it THROUGH the container — and is a hybrid of Chemdawg and GSC. It tests in at 33.88% THC, which is undoubtedly why we got so high. ‘Tis a lot of THC indeed.
It was a great high, though — the kind that instantly hits and pulls you out of a funk almost immediately. We went from a grumpy sober person to someone who was so high they were mumbling to themselves about why Archer’s face is a different tone than his shirtless body.
We needed that escape, too — all of the news about political infighting and the rising numbers of people with coronavirus can be a lot, even for proper cynics like us, who expect such dire circumstances to occur.
Oh, and we also had the most epic case of munchies we have ever. freaking. had. We remember eating an apple, some donuts, whatever leftovers I could find, and a bunch of candy we had stashed away for that exact purpose. If you’re trying to watch those calories or you were one of the last to the grocery store this week, you may want to order takeout or find something healthy to snack on beforehand. Cause uh, you will be hungry. No doubt.
But you’ll also be happy — at least while you’re stoned — which counts for a lot in the current political climate. And as a bonus, once you aren’t stoned anymore, you’ll probably be asleep, which is precisely what happened to us after we laid around muttering to ourselves while shoving all of the food we had in the kitchen in our mouths. Once we were full of carbs, we passed the hell out and slept like babies. Thanks, GMO!
Sundae Driver from Prohibition HerbBest for: Clearing the static from your brainSundae Driver is a strain with a wild personality, one that took us on a brain ride to Nerdsville, party of one. That may be because this strain, while gorgeous, is also a perfect split between an indica and a sativa, making her ideal for someone who wants the best of both worlds. And we do. We really do.
The first thing we noticed after lighting up a bowl of Sundae Driver was that this strain has a sweet, slightly herbal taste. The second thing we noticed was the effects. Our brains didn’t get foggy; they got WILD, y’all. We were thinking up a storm, taking notes left and right while trying to maneuver our fingers over the keyboard.
We felt extremely smart after smoking Sundae Driver, like we could answer all of the questions we’ve ever had, and you’ve ever had, and they’ve ever had. We kept feeling like we had these crazy epiphanies that were not epiphanies but just normal thoughts that FELT really smart instead.
In other words, this strain is great for unleashing the creative juices you have locked inside your soul. Even the most boring, mathematically-driven brain would be a wealth of ideas after this strain.
Just a warning, though. While you may love this strain, you may also convince yourself you are psychic after smoking it. How do we know? Because we wrote this in our notes: “It’s like I’m psychic cause I know what’s going to happen.”
Do I know what that means? Nope. All I know is that it was completely due to the Sundae Driver we smoked. So if you want a strain that will make you feel like you’ve hacked your brain and are now the smartest person alive, you should get your hands on this beauty. We felt awake, alive, and like our brains were more than just static for once. And that, friends, is a feat all in itself.
