Its well worth the read.
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Terpenes play a large role in the different effects felt by various strains , also I very much agree that indica and sativa is not enough to cover the variety of cannabis landraces we have.
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While the various strains are genetically the same, much like humans there are variations in how the genetics are expressed. So perhaps the plant structure which we see as “sativa” or “indica” are expressing terpenes and cannbanoids in ways that lend themselves to different highs?
Smoke wise, I’m the same as Vernal. Its just various degrees of how high I feel, there’s no energy or couchlock highs for me. But I wonder if that has more to do with our own physiology than the strains. I personally know of people who smoke buds not knowing at all if its “indica” or “sativa” and they have the effects associated with them.
Would be nice to see more research done in those areas.
edit: Wasn’t there a group that recently went to several dispensaries and bought various strains, tested them and they where all genetically the same? Vaguely recall them saying it was all the same just different expressions or “phenos” as we like to call them.
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Maybe you just have a different relationship with your canabinoid system idk man 
, I also agree that a lot of effects are subjective, it would be interesting to see what happens in a blind test. My consumption level is such that I don’t get the nuances anymore really either but I can definitely tell the difference between racy and couch lock and the muddy but not necessarily negative hybrids. Chemotypes may in fact be a better way to classify the broad leaf/narrow leaf varieties. Varieties is all they are really. That said Indica/sativa is mostly morphological I agree.
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A lot of my buddies are super craft beer dorks. Couple years ago, he scored a 4 pack of uber exclusive, limited release beer from one of the top brewers (think, the Bohdi of beer)
We did the double blind tests. His wife helped. She poured 4 beers into different cups, labeled only A B C D, while we were outside.
We sampled all, and tried to guess which beer was which (we all know the other 3 quite well, and thought we would identify them immediately), writing our answers on cards.
All 4 of us got it wrong. No one guessed the “super rare, beer to end all beer” as the right one. And we even misidentified all the others at least 75% wrong.
I agree with Vernal. It’s human nature. We believe things, because we want to believe them. But mostly we have no idea.
Now, another similar story I remember from the 80’s when I used to be a bike racer. Cyclist nerds used to argue about steel. Columbus SL vs SLX. Everyone swore one was better, and they could tell the difference.
A pro team in Italy built identical replicas of each team members bike. One built with SL steel, the other SLX. The bikes were indistinguishable from one another.
The manager would occasionally swap out the racers bikes and ask them what they thought.
At the end of the season, they learned that most riders could detect a difference when they were on a different bike, but they almost always guessed wrong. “This is the SLX one, it feels stiffer.
This one is more supple, so it’s the SL frame.
Nope. Wrong almost every time.
Same for weed, wine, beer, bikes, cars, coffee, etc.
We humans can detect very subtle differences in things, but cant accurately say what the difference is. So we guess, based on preconceived ideas and are sure we’re right… because we’re so clever. 
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I see the guys crack that joke ^^^ all the time. But I don’t think it’s very funny. However most don’t pay attention to it.
Those guys love the way that plants grows. They love the fact that it throws 1,000’s of phenos. I think sometime the fool themselves and forget that it’s the same plant. But I bet they remember it once they breed it. That 1:1000 always bring them back to reality so the cloning begins.
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yes, that means that you couldnt identify it . and couldnt identify it in the first session. Often when you judge things, its much harder to judge it “the first time”.
Further Cannabis is extreemly diverse, and imho, i wouldnt say this from Beer versus Wine versus Vodka. but im no Alkohol drinker, so.
Of corse, im absolutely shure people would identify a pure Sativa. Its so mega obvious. As i started to smoke weed, i dint know there must bedifferences, but i sensed it… and imagined it.
Most weed even back then was quiet similar… But i experienced Afghani and Thai . and each had extreemly distinct qualitites, no doubt. Do i need to explain you the body numbing afghani … versus the uplifting Thai.
But i need to explain this: i get a fatleaved Thai, and i categorize the effect still under “psychedelic” . I dont see visuals , but i get a psychedelic vibe…
Afhgani i categorize as the feel of riding a rollercoaster, that feel in your guts. Probably a thinleaved Afghani would give me this rollercoaster feel aswel? And aswell would not have this “psychedelic” properties .
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This is almost accurate.
There is 3 scientific subspecies of drug type cannabis.
Sativa var sativa = equatorial, long flowering narrow leaf drug type
Sativa var Indica = originating from India and southeast Asia, narrow leaf drug type
Sativa var Afghanica = originating from middle east, short flowering wide leaf drug type
The modern nomenclature is to use “indica” to actually mean “afghanica”.
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To get more to the point of the post, effects are specifically what I’m after and each strain and even plant is different from the next. It took a long time to get there though and idk what changed to discern it. When I first started partaking it was like @vernal said, herb is herb. But after partaking every day for over a decade, being forced to quit for some years, came back and now I can totally tell a difference. All the nuances.
I think of it like the smell. As a casual smoker I could never smell any of these scents breeders describe in their flower. It all just smelled like “weed” or “skunk”. Now that I’ve been growing and partaking more often, I don’t smell that “weed” or “skunk” smell anymore. Completely nose-blind to it. All I smell now are the individual terpenes and the scents they create. Berries, fruits, chemicals, cleaners, veggies, I mean you name it, but never “skunk” or “weed”. Not unless I’m in a clean area and just get a whiff from a distance I might smell that for a second but if I stick my face in the jar it’s gone and I just smell the terpenes. Maybe that’s why(ironically) no one’s finding RKS anymore. The serious growers that would shell out for it, cant smell it anyways 
So after all that, idk if that means if you can’t tell them you need more, or more often, or what. But that’s all I got on it
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Yeah, that’s an interesting point. I definitely became more aware of the differences in effect about 10 years ago when I moved to the east coast to an illegal state for a year. I went from being able to get tons of different strains and regularly smoking many different cultivars in one day to only being able to get one strain at a time. At some point, a few months into smoking like that, I realized some stuff was getting me high in a way I really liked where other stuff was not. Nowadays I can easily tell different weed effects apart but you’ve helped me remember how at the beginning the differences were very subtle and only by being stuck with strains I didn’t like for many days did I really start to notice the strains effects’ I really did like and what about them I really liked!
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Great response. We do tend to believe what we want to believe. It’s the first rule of the grift.
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Oh man, you make an interesting point there too! I was in illegal states most of my life and there were definitely times where I could only get 1 strain for months or sometimes years at a time. It’s why I don’t ever wanna see blue dream again it was all I could find for almost two years solid. Had another year or so with only green crack. Wonder if that has something to do with it.
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Well there is a genetic difference between any two plants. But I think the point is that there’s not a large enough difference between NLD and BLD to classify them differently.
That said, it is my belief that differences in the high correspond to differences in cannabinoids and not terpenes. It is also my belief that selection for thc crowds out other cannabinoids and is fairly dominant. Most dispensary strains are majority thc, with some cbn and cbg. There is often a wider variety of other cannabinoids in unhybridized landraces, such as CBD, CBC, THCV and CBDV.
As far as I know, there is some interaction with every cannabinoid and cb1/2 receptors as agonist, antagonist or inverse agonist. It would would be surprising if this did not change the high, as that would be in conflict with what we already scientifically know about cannabinoid receptors.
None of this relates to sativa vs indica, except that there are certain cannabinoids – especially THCV – that for one reason or another are rarely found in indicas. Perhaps it has to do with their older common ancestors. But if you’re looking for differences in prototypical dispensary weed, there’s probably not much to be found. There are not significant differences in their cannabinoid content.
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Just was reading today and found this really interesting study that was done that found that terpenes actually do contribute to cannabinoid tetrad behavior in mice. And thus, the study posited, terps did play into the idea of varied highs from different cultivars.
You guys can check it out here Cannabis sativa terpenes are cannabimimetic and selectively enhance cannabinoid activity | Scientific Reports
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I was just about to comment that I had never seen any evidence that terps influence the high… Thanks for sharing!
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Here’s an article I read a while ago that I have based my opinion on
In that nature article I think their key difference is probably dosage
Terpenes were administered at several doses (50–200 mg/kg) i.p. and assessed in the tail flick assay in male and female CD-1 mice. As β-Caryophyllene has been identified as a selective CB2 agonist, and induced CB2-mediated effects at 50 mg/kg13, we administered it at 100 mg/kg as a known CB2 agonist for our behavioral assays
Even 100mg of thc is quite a bit. So for terpenes, you’d normally be consuming FAR less than 100mg/kg of body weight. My guess is that’s 10,000-100,000x the dose you’d get from smoking weed.
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Limonene is known for its energizing and or uplifting effects while other terpenes are sedative, terpenes play a huge role in how the herb makes you feel if you ask me.
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As if science has everything figured out.
There’s as much dogma in science as there is in any religion, perhaps more, not to mention corruption and the falsification of test results in order to maintain funding.
And then there’s the quantum aspect of the consciousness and expectations of the observer influencing the results as well.
I mean… we don’t even know what 90% of human DNA is or what it does…
To me indica/sativa is purely an vague indicator about how it feels, regardless of the way a plant looks. One more calming and sedative, the other more stimulating and energizing.
There’s such a strong difference in effects between so many cultivars, some more subtle than others, I don’t see the point in trying to disprove two general groupings that act as somewhat vague but practical guidelines so that people can make better choices as to what cultivar might work best for them.
Ofcourse a grouping of reports of the same cultivar is more accurate.
And there’s placebo effect going on with absolutely everything in life to a certain extent.
It’s horribly underrated.
You can debunk absolutely everything if you are creative enough.
There’s so much more going on with this plant on a quantum level than we can even begin to measure or observe yet.
And then there’s also cultivation method.
It could be that organic no-till has stronger variations in effect because each handful of soil is an entire galaxy of different microscopic lifeforms.
If you feed all plants the same nutes then it’s likely that the effect will be more similar.
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I always think of DJ Short’s description of Colombian Red, which by all accounts is a “Sativa,” when this topic comes up. From DJ: “ Before subjecting its victim to fits of gorging and deep snoozing, the experience usually included ridiculously long spasms of uncontrollable laughter. The silliest little image could induce hilarity beyond belief. This was the main herb around when the Cheech and Chong movies first came out.”
Sounds like an “Indica” to me. Or at least the “gorging and deep snoozing” part does, anyway. Right? Because “Indicas” make you hungry and sleepy, right???
I think it’s kind of a verifiable fact that Sativa plants and Indica plants have a definitive morphology, like you said, but as far as high-types are concerned, all that shit’s out the window. There’s differences in the way plants smoke, for sure, but I don’t think it has anything to do with how broad or narrow the leaves are or how much or little the plants stretch or whatever. I’ve blazed broad-leaf plants that got me wired and panic-y and blazed narrow-leaved plants that chillllled me the-fuck-out. In fact, most long-flowering, narrow-leaved “Sativa” plants chill me out; that’s why I like them. It’s the shorter-flowering “Indicas” that make me feel rushy and uncomfortable. For the first thirty minutes or so, anyway. But I’ve always just attributed that to my own specific cannabinoid receptors. Everybody’s are different.
But for sure, that whole,”This is a 70/30 Indica/Sativa” thing is total bullshit haha. Based on what? How it makes you feel? The size of the leaves? Gimme a break…
You do realize you’ve opened up a whole can of worms here, right @vernal? People are gonna be posting here for months haha…
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This is so true. Not to mention how much sleep you got, how much exercise you’ve been getting lately etc etc etc. I can wake-and-bake with something one day and I get all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed; wake-and-bake with the same exact strain, same exact number of bong rips the next morning and I’m like,”Bluuggghhhh… I think I’ll just order in and watch tv…” haha.
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What if what people call indica are predominantly but not always rich in more sedative types of terpene while what people call sativa are predominantly but not always richer in uplifting energizing type terpenes with examples of opposites existing within both sides of the spectrums but the majority leaning one way or the other. That combined with different body chemistry and I’m sure we will never reach any consistent agreement about what leads to what.
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