Cannabis has an innate ability to interact with the endocannabinoid system to modulate many different functions of how we process sensory information. When THC molecules bind to cannabinoid receptors, it causes a shift in the way your brain processes sensory information by literally removing filters that restrict our normal perception.
Changing The Way We Listen To Music
Music becomes beautifully transformed when you are high. Many listeners have reported hearing distinct instrumental layers that were previously unnoticed. Bass lines are further enhanced, missing harmonies which provided a fuller complex background are distinctly heard, and the emotional impact of the music reaches a new heightened state. This improved capacity to process auditory information allows the cannabis user to receive music with greater dimensionality and depth.
Art Watching Is A New Experience
Looking at art becomes transformative, especially as our ability to see patterns is enhanced. Colors appear brigher and more saturated. Compositional elements may reveal threads of connection, new dimensions, and meanings when either emphasized in your perception and consciousness or previously hidden. Many users report feeling a greater ability to connect emotionally with art. During this heightened capacity for the user, subjects temporarily experience in visceral rather than visual terms. This felt experience of art is at the heart of why museums and galleries felt more immersive while high.
Flavor Is Explosive
Cannabis significantly amplifies the eating experience through several anticipated processes:
- The user is more sensitive to flavor compounds, which makes eating feel extraordinary
- Improved sense of smell (which is almost 80% of taste)
- Heightened sensitivity to texture
- Time dials back to extend the experience of eating
For example, “the munchies” is in part a result of THC stimulating hunger-regulating neurons, but just as important, the qualitative intensifying of flavor compounds makes the experience of eating profound.
Time Is Distorted
A common thread connecting these enhanced observables is their relationship with time. Music phrases physically appear to elongate in time, the brush strokes appear to have been wielded with infinite precision and patience, and flavors develop parentally in slow motion. The distortion of time helps us to extend our senses where antecedent or post experiences are seemingly too brief for our conscious experience.
Not Just The Recreational Use
Aside from sharing the capacity for pleasure and enjoyment, there are many artists and chefs using cannabis intentionally to help break patterns with customary use and express or explore new possibilities for creation. The capacity to experience existing sensory inputs in new ways helps develop creativity and new ways of seeing in other forms of creative practice.