I love mornings. I didn’t used to love them but these days my day doesn’t so much “start” as spark to life. My morning routine feels a lot like the lights suddenly going on inside a factory.

That’s the caffeine in the coffee of course but even more than that? It’s the cannabis.

I hope there are heads nodding as they read this — those who know whereof I speak. As those same people also know it can be damned hard to explain to people with no experience of cannabis what cannabis does for us.

Here’s the tricky part. No one knows how anyone else feels. That’s a fact. Unless you can crawl inside someone else’s skin and see the world literally through their eyes, you cannot really know what they’re seeing, hearing or feeling. By the same token, no one can walk a mile in your shoes either.

The best any of us can do — if we care to — is pretend to know what others feel. Cannabis has the same problem. No one else can ever actually know how cannabis effects each of us. No one else can actually know how cannabis makes us feel. It’s especially tricky to to explain to those who’ve never tried cannabis that the cannabis experience is nothing like the bullshit mythology that was built around it for racist purposes.

I can predict with Swiss clock precision the head tilt, furrowed brow and genuinely taken aback “Really?” when I tell people I use cannabis (Durban Poison specifically) to play tennis. I actually do. DP’s a sativa. It delivers a smooth, soft focus to everything I do (writing, driving — yes, driving — tennis). On the tennis court the DP slows me down (my bi-polar brain is very hypomanic) so that I can stop thinking about everything else and focus just on tennis — on the court — on the point I’m playing — on the ball — on its spin — on where I want to put the ball on the other side of the net — on attacking the ball aggressively and following through.

I process every bit of that distinctly (but much faster of course) when Durban Poison is in my brain. The improvement to my game — to my consistency and focus — is distinct. I don’t see it as gaining an advantage over my tennis partner, I see it as losing the disadvantage of unfocused inconsistency. My tennis partner gets a better game out of me. Better games equal way more fun. I don’t know if cannabis’ effect on my brain lifts it to the level of PED, but I’ve never heard my tennis partner complain that she has less fun on the court after I stop to smoke a bowl.

Cannabis improves my mornings, my morning routine and the whole rest of the day that follows. Cannabis’ focus — even its mild euphoria — marries well with a caffeine buzz. I like to start my day (my mornings begin around 5 a.m.) with a hybrid. GG4 has always been a favorite. Dutch Treat, too (though it’s way, way harder to find regularly). The caffeine delivers its familiar jolt of energy. The cannabis however feels like warm syrup pouring slowly from the crown of my head downward. The syrup feels lovely all by itself — its warm, enveloping. But there’s more to the syrup than just its euphoria. There’s the focus. And there’s cannabis’ version of mental energy — it’s distinctly different from caffeine’s.

Caffeine’s jitters are familiar to lots of people. Decaf coffee solves that problem but you don’t get the jolt. Cannabis strains like Moby Dick, Super Lemon Haze, Jack The Ripper open your eyes but they don’t suddenly turn you into Gene Krupa — tap-tap-tapping away on the drum kit furiously. It’s more a feeling of being imbued with knowledge. You find it as much as it finds you. It’s like your mind has simply become more open — more cognizant and aware of details that, without the cannabis in your brain — you would probably have missed (as usual).

Is it a coincidence, I wonder, that all these great CHEMICALS all with the letter “C”? Coffee… cannabis… chai… chocolate.

They all match up well with cannabis. At the very least, one always knows the coffee (or chai or chocolate) will taste amazing with cannabis inside of you. It’s the same effect. THC lets your brain process more information (that’s why it makes some people paranoid). There’s a lot to love though in all that additional info.

How does one explain to a non-user of cannabis how amazing even a simple cup of coffee can taste?