I Had No Idea My "Weed" Was Actually Delta 8

Like every American child, my “say no to drugs” education began well before I was old enough to even fully understand what drugs were. Retired cops would come to health classes or assemblies and rattle off stories of brain damage or addiction or overdose. And my wonderful mother, ever up to date on the news, would warn me all about the dangerous substances she was certain my fellow kids were abusing. Chapstick on the eyelids. Doing shots of nutmeg. And, of course, synthetic weed. 

I remember her warnings about “spice,” the unregulated synthetic cannabis found at gas stations and convenience stores around the country. I remember the horror stories of oregano laced with gasoline and fentanyl. I thought, Surely I will never buy synthetic marijuana products at a gas station. Surely they are dangerous and would kill me. 

I came of age in Chicago, right around the time of legalization in 2020. Before that, my only brush with illicit hemp products was a puff of a vape in a freshman dorm room. But suddenly, dispensaries and weed cafes were popping up across the city. The first dozen times I took Delta 8, I had no idea it was any different than garden-variety weed. I wasn’t taking random unlabeled gas station edibles; I was ordering a hemp drink from a barista. When I was a baby weed user, all I knew was that you could get legal weed all over the place, and I trusted it must be enough if a human cashier was charging my card and handing it to me. 

Delta-8 Tetrahydrocannabinol is a psychoactive substance found in trace amounts within the cannabis plant. Since it’s just about impossible to grow, it’s typically manufactured in a lab the same way vitamins are. And, much like vitamins, Delta 8 is unregulated and can contain all sorts of mystery solvents and chemicals. Last year, scientists even found heavy metals in some Delta 8 vape cartridges. Which is not the same as oregano laced with fentanyl, but it still isn’t great. 

I did, however, have some great trips on Delta 8.

I wish I had known Delta 8 can cause hallucinations; it is quite stressful to start hallucinating without knowing why.

The best trip of all occurred while violating the rules of Pitchfork Music Festival. I have a beautiful memory of popping a Delta 8 gummy bear on my way to the train. It kicked in just as I arrived at the music festival. I wandered around, dizzy and happy and disoriented but not particularly concerned about it. The music all felt so much more vibrant, the food tasted twice as good as it should’ve, and I couldn't care less if I was wandering around and grinning like a high idiot. My trip lasted the entire day. I lost about six of those hours laying on the dirt under a giant beautiful tree, convinced that it loved me. I sobered up at the end of the night, ready once again to navigate the trains. 

You might be thinking: an edible? Really? Doesn’t that sound more like psychedelics? 

I did not know it when I was a 21-year-old baby weed user, but Delta 8 can cause “hallucinations, vomiting, tremor, anxiety, dizziness, confusion, and loss of consciousness.” 

I wish I had known Delta 8 can cause hallucinations before I hallucinated on it. As you can imagine, it is quite stressful to start hallucinating without knowing why. My previous trips, like at the music festival, sometimes came with vaguely psychedelic feelings. But the first time I had a full-blown hallucination on Delta 8, I was terrified.

The story here is as old as time: I didn’t read the label of the liquid hemp I was mixing into my tea, and I may have drunk several hundred milligrams. I went out with friends. By the end of the night, we wound up at a pizza place, and I realized to my horror that I couldn’t read the menu. I went outside and fell to the ground, panicking over the fear that maybe I’d permanently forgotten how to read. On the walk home I kept asking my friends if they could see the bright flashes of light all around us. Of course they couldn’t. The next day, I was so freaked out I didn’t even tell my therapist.

Eventually, I pieced together that my night of hallucinations and forgetting how to read was drug-related, not just a sudden bout of mental illness. Eventually, my prefrontal cortex finished developing and gently reminded me that I should read the labels of the products I consume and maybe even look up words I didn’t recognize. 

I wound up on the Reddit forums reading all about Delta 8, bonking myself in the head for being such a fool. Of course it was more psychedelic than garden-grown weed. Of course I should’ve read the label and not consumed enough of it to tranquilize a horse. Of course I was normal. 

I wish that I had not just put random psychoactive substances in my mouth with full faith that they must be fine because they’re legal. I wish that there was some regulatory body ensuring safety and consistency. I wish that the kind baristas who made my hemp drinks had told me more about the effects of the ingredients. I wish the unregulated dispensaries I visited as a young person had more clearly posted information about the products they sold. 

Even so, I am a Delta 8 fan to this day. There’s no substance I’d rather be using to lay under a tree at a music festival. For the price of a coffee, you can lose a whole day to fuzzy psychedelic connectedness and heightened senses and laughter. Or you can take too much and forget how to read. Either way, read the labels and don’t be afraid to ask questions about any substance you’re consuming. It might not be what you’re expecting.