Episode 11: HempStarChrist - Cannabis, Consciousness & Autonomy

This episode on Flipping the Script, I sit down with HempStarChrist — cannabis activist, ALCP member, and someone deeply passionate about education, harm reduction, and human rights.

We explore his journey with cannabis, what he personally uses it for, and the wider conversations society still struggles to have openly.

From medicinal vs recreational use… to morality vs legality… to why some altered states are socially accepted while others are judged — this episode goes far beyond stereotypes and headlines.

We talk about:
• the therapeutic window concept
• terpenes, chemovars, and how cannabis affects people differently
• emotional steering and “set and setting”
• alcohol vs cannabis culturally
• judgement around vices and altered states
• competency, impairment, and personal responsibility
• accessibility to safe, legal medicinal cannabis
• freedom of choice, acceptance, and education

This is a nuanced, honest conversation about the human experience, comfort, consciousness, and questioning the narratives we’ve inherited.

Whether you agree with it all or not — it definitely flips a few scripts.

Intro & outro music: Flip the Script VIP by Ashez (used with permission, and gratitude).

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello everybody. I am sitting here with Christ.

SPEAKER_04 0:06

Hello, everybody.

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Hello. And um yeah, he's joined me for a chat today with flipping the script with Jim because he has lots of interesting sh stories, I'm sure. So would you like to tell the people a bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_04 0:22

Hi, everybody. Uh my name is uh Christopher Maniah. I go by Christ. Uh that name was gifted to me a while ago. Um quick backstory on when I got the name Christ. Um went into the Dactory. Um anybody knows about the Dactory? It was New Zealand's first social cannabis smoking consumption lounge under normal National Organization for Reform Marijuana Laws. There was a gentleman called uh Dactor Green, and he started up a wonderful place to park his he was the bus driver. Um we had a bus called Mary Jane, and this giant warehouse uh was the home of Dr. Green and Mary Jane, and so he turned that into a speakeasy where people could come and pay five dollars a visit or twenty dollars a week um to come and participate in cannabis culture. So I went along one day on my first attempt to enter into said uh private club, and the doorman asked me what my name was. Uh I just told him my name was Chris. So Chris was written down on my card. I got given my Dactor card, I went upstairs and got introduced to other people, Dactor Green, Dactor Rambo, Dactor Fashion, Dactor Assassin, Dactor Blaze. And then I realized everybody had pseudonyms. So I thought to myself, well, I can't obviously be Dactor Chris. That seems a bit weird. So I quickly grabbed the pen and put a T on the end of my name and took the name that my now name was Dr. Christ. So in the circle of my cannabis consumption friends, it was either Christ or Jesus or JC. Um and that name was I have had that name for yeah, two decades. My you long fall name is Christopher in Greek and Latin, but Christopher is the bearer of Christ. So yeah, it seems weird for some religious people to not want to call me Christopher or Christ. Um but yeah, that's what I go by and it's what I call myself. Um I'm the Artieroa Legalized Cannabis Party representative for Auckland Central current standing in this current coming election. Um I've stood in three elections, two down in Todonga and one up in Auckland. And it is a fun time being a representative for a political party with uh no hidden agendas, no uh secret handshakes. We've got one policy, uh single policy party of legalizing uh the recreational, spiritual, medicinal, and industrial uses of cannabis. So we're four, uh almost four uh for one, and we're just trying to get uh spiritual and recreational across the line. Obviously, you can use your medicinal cannabis spiritually if you choose to. I choose to use that uh in uh alter use and medicinal use of cannabis being prescribed by my doctor. I'm a frequent user or as they used to say, a habitual drug user. Um now I'm just keeping ahead of my pain, being a chronic pain patient of two decades, having a herniated disc, I just stay ahead of the sciatic nerve pain that goes down my left leg and the annoying, sometimes uh quite painful back area. So consuming the amount of cannabis that I consume enables me to get into my therapeutical window. Um so yeah, we discussed a little bit earlier what a therapeutical window is and whereabouts it is and why you have one. So some people wake up baseline, already lucky enough, gift of God, good luck, um, inside their therapeutical window where they feel comfortable to socialize, they are well rested, they're not overstressed or understressed, and so your therapeutical window is where your human body experience feels most comfortable to do all things. Yeah, so to be inside your therapeutic window, if you wake up in the morning, say, Thank God I'm awake and give some prayers and blessings, and you might be able to just jump straight out of bed and get on with your day. Other people might say, Don't talk to me till I've had two cups of coffee. Some people uh wines after eleven. Everybody's therapeutical window is different, and how they reach that pleasurable human experience is different for everybody. So no judgments if you're needing to have coffee, two coffees before we speak to you, or if you need to do your meditation and um or your wine at eleven o'clock. Or your wine at eleven o'clock to yeah, help you out that way. Like no judgments, it's just having an awareness of what a therapeutical window is and how to reach it and how to maintain being inside that therapeutical window. If it is a habitual use of cannabis, which is usually bad being called a you know, a drug user, but if the doctor says you need to take your prescription medicine every three hours, then now it doesn't seem so bad. So medicinal uses of cannabis are now tolerated and accepted. Um the smoking side of it is still a little bit frowned upon, obviously. This country is trying to head towards a smoke-free country, which seems a little bit traditionally weird considering that we're all cave-dwelling. I like to feel that my ancestors lived in caves at some stage and surrounded themselves by smoky fires and fire circles and fire pits. I feel drawn to teepee ceremonies and fires, and I love staring at a fire, and if the smoke blows my way, I'm not one to move myself away from the burning carbon. So f for the poisoning or the you know the bad, I'm not you do you, vaporization is ultimately the best flavoured way to enjoy your cannabis. Um, and the high is higher, I feel, and there's nothing wrong with getting stoned, baked, or wasted, or toasted, or blazed. Um, if you consume cannabis in a cigarette form, no judgment, bongs. I prefer a good bong and a joint. Very tasty ways of uh consuming cannabis is through a joint. Uh, there's studies to prove that when you're consuming a cannabis cigarette, you're actually burning the front end of the cannabis cigarette, uh, vaporizing the inside as the smoke's coming down, and then you're also getting a concentrate hit when you get down to the cornetto or the tasty little roach. Um so smoking that oil build-up on the end of your roach joint is like taking an extract. So there's a three-hit combination with a joint that you don't get from a bong or a spot or a blaze uh on a bucket or a cone. Um if you are choosing to have spots, they just hit different two spots, three spots in a row can have you greened out beside the toilet.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

The good old kiwi way.

SPEAKER_04 7:14

Yeah, um, it's a not so fashionable uh variation of consuming small hits of dosage rates. Uh if you liken it to a volcano or a vaporizer, uh the portable handheld uh vaporizers will take as much in a spot, and you can get three or four or five quite tasty aromatic hits from them. Whereas a traditional kiwi spot will just be put down, hot knives will sear most of the um aromatics away on the uh first tap of the touch, no matter how delicately you touch an extraordinarily hot knife onto a flower, um, all of those aromatics and trichomes will be melted in that first instant, and then what you are ripping is then obviously just the combustible carbon plant material, as well as the lack of oxygen as you inhale over a hot knife. But there is some cannabinoids obviously left in the experience, um, but yeah, you don't really get the uh full aromatic uh profiles of some of the new, newly introduct introduced uh aromatic flavour compounds to the general public. Um being a traditional legacy cannabis operator, um my first chemo vire of cannabis that I had was What was what juicy fruit. So the very first cannabis flavour or plant that I cultivated was a strain by the name of Juicy Fruit. And it literally brought the flavour of yellow Wrigley's juicy fruit chewing gum to your mouth. Um so my introduction to flavoured cannabis was quite early on in my discovery. So cannabis that is given to us now in medicinal circles are some lucky enough on top end, if you're lucky enough to get some New Zealand cultivated, New Zealand handcrafted cannabis. If you're getting some imported paralleled, as we call booth weed or cannabis that's cultivated in another country where they can't sell it to anybody else, uh, New Zealand buys it. Medicinal companies in this country have uh license to trade in medicinal cannabis. Um they cultivate cannabis, but unfortunately the regulations here on our uh six-star cleanliness for mould spore, nobody's currently cultivating clean enough cannabis to not be made uh into non-T form. So yeah, without irradiating it. So the government makes us uh you know, hard hats, hibers, and steel cat boots on a construction site and no mould in our cannabis, even though traditionally um if you got Barry's weed from last year, it was probably buried and it's probably got a little bit of mould on it, and we're still alright. So shout out to Barry and his uh Barry and his buds. But yeah, we're not into Barry's buried buds anymore, and we are getting some aromatic compounds in our flour, and so speaking to that, um cannabis is an aromatical journey, so yeah, it's it's a fun time. I love sniffing cannabis, I love consuming cannabis, I love all things about cannabis.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

Yeah, nice. And how did you get into being in the political party? Is that the right word?

SPEAKER_04 10:32

Uh yeah, we're a party, yeah, the political party that is our Troa Legalised Cannabis Party, ALCP. Um I personally got invited um as a member through my association with the Dactory. So my longtime friend and fang-eyed mother Maki Herbert is the co-leader of Arteroa Legalised Cannabis Party. And when we had the referendum, I was living in Torong at the time, and she asked me what I was doing and whether I'd be interested in standing up and representing us in Toronga. I of course said, I would love to do that. Um what how do we become political members of this party? She said, I'll uh vote you in, back you up, and you'll get second, thirded, and then you'll be in the party. So I said, Oh, sounds easy enough, let's go. And so yeah, I stood in the by-election and the referendum, and sadly we lost out by a couple of hundred people, um, a couple of thousand people, sorry. Um so yeah, but I feel my entrance into uh pop politics as somebody who doesn't actually want to be a politician, but I do want to represent uh my people. Um, so that's where I am obviously wanting to become a politician, but it's that I feel comfortable standing out loud, brazen, wearing a cannabis suit, um speaking firmly on my own ideals and understandings of what Mother Gunja is in representation to me and alongside a lot of like-minded people. Um, so my representation for myself is for my people, and for um as the hidden society or the secret society of cannabis cultivation comes out of the shadows. Um, we do need a lot of work still. There's been a lot of um, like, you know, cross-party politics. Um, we've all got the same ideals that humanity should be run under goodness, right? So we don't, you know, democratically oppose other people's ideals, but sometimes somebody has to be the boss and somebody has to make a rule, and so the rulings currently are cannabis is illegal, which makes no sense to me, where we can buy and consume tobacco products or alcohol products and yet still not tobacco products in the same shop as cannabis products. So any herb that some farmer wants to be able to cultivate and sell should be in a shop or at a market or anywhere where you want to pick up or sell things. So I politically stand for our human rights of commerce between one human to another human with little to no red tape. Like uh thankfully, recently the Act Party have cut the red tape on the hemp lead legislation, which is wonderful. I became a hemp farmer in 2019 for a small season, and I enjoyed cultivating cannabis as a plant. It's a beautiful plant, it smells delicious, it's called weed by some people, it grows pretty well like a weed, if you know, just let it grow.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

Sorry, bad habits.

SPEAKER_04 13:51

So, yeah, it's uh it's a wonderful plant, and I feel that there should be no legislation on it. If somebody's allowed a lick a cabinet with alcohol, you know, accessible to their five-year-old children under no lock and key, then I should be allowed to have cannabis cultivated outside in my garden right next to the rose bush that's covered in thorns. Like my child knows, be careful near the rose bush, and he's only three and a half. Um, you know, it's got thorns on it. He knows be careful by the cannabis plant, because it's behind the electric fence at the medicinal cannabis facility, so he can't obviously get past the electric fence, and lots of us can't afford to purchase a medicinal cannabis facility, so it's kind of hard for the children to get a good understanding why cannabis is locked up or under secure key and camera where the things like alcohol is readily available at shops called the land of liquor. Um, seems weird where no advertisements around a controlled substance known as cannabis is allowed under the referendum. We weren't going to be allowed to have a place called cannabis land. So, yeah, the double standards of our rights of freedom of expression is our human rights of association or freedom of speech. It's not that we're saying little kids come to our shop and buy cannabis, we're saying here is cannabis world right next to liquor land. Um, so you know, uh just equality, I think I'm coming from on acceptance, um, inclusion, education, making sure that everybody knows that cannabis side by side and relative to alcohol, there's no comparison on safety or um societal uh you know, who's causing more harm out in society on a weekend bender? Um we can all we all know the numbers, so yeah. So my me standing in a political party uh with no hidden agendas, we only have one we just want legalized cannabis in a framework that's going to work for all people, including homegrown cultivation, education around how to use cannabis correctly, how to cultivate cannabis correctly, how to consume cannabis correctly, spiritually, recreationally, socially. Like people are frowning towards the recreational use of cannabis. Um the some people are claiming that most of us medical patients are only uh recreationally getting our medical license to just become drug users, which should be no judgment, fine, um, if people are remaining inside their therapeutical windows and maintaining their life on a balance of able to wake up in the morning, put on their shoes, brush their teeth, pack their lunch if they take packed lunch, and return home safely after a day day's work, like we all need a function inside our therapeutical windows. Now, I've worked in the construction industry for over two decades, and the comparisons of the weekend vendors working with a co-worker or a colleague or any other construction worker in the industry after they've consumed alcohol. I know that I feel at risk, and I know that they also probably feel at risk for myself using cannabis daily, habitually, recreationally, spiritually, and for pain relief every day under the judgment that I'm a stoner because I get stoned before I go to work. The judgment is actually I'm getting inside my therapeutical window and I can still do my job equally as well, if not better, with far better accuracy and attention to detail than most of my other work colleagues, not because I'm high on cannabis, but because cannabis is an amplifier, and if I'm in my zone with what I need to do, I'm a five-star general at suspended ceiling installation, walking around on my stilts all day, eight to ten hours a day, doing my job fine. People ask me, can I do that high? I tell them I'm high right now and I'm working perfectly fine. I will pass your drug test, and by I mean I will pass any test you give me while on my drugs. Like I'm not trying to. Yeah, there should be a competency level. So, in speaking to that, the competency level now restricting all cannabis users from driving their automobiles.

SPEAKER_02 18:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 18:16

Like, how do we all feel about that? A little bit of paranoia when we get behind our cars, the paranoia kick back in. I know in the circle of friends that I have, even with our medicinal cannabis prescriptions, some of us are now feeling the old school paranoia we used to feel when people used to know we were drug takers. Um, and now they know, and we're proud that we're medicinal cannabis patients, but the paranoia is kicking back in because now the government, this current standing government, is suggesting that their roadside impairment or roadside is it going to be on your saliva test, um, is going to restrict us from either driving our cars or taking our prescription cannabis. And so those aren't really two human rights that need to be taken away from us by any government. We should always still have the right of freedom of travel and always have the right of medicinal access and the medicines of our choice. And so clashing on road safety or clashing on our ability to drive while intoxicated to a level of intoxication, not judged by the fact that cannabis is all my saliva, but by the fact that I can do a roadside impairment test with a police officer that knows how to take a roadside impairment test if I'm articulating my word and I can touch my nose and rub my belly or walk backwards or I don't know, say the alphabet in Korean. What a what kind of impairment test do they want us to settle into? Like for myself as a medical cannabis patient and somebody from our zero legalised cannabis party, um, we're attempting to uh implement what they're doing in a case study over in Australia where there is only one state in Australia currently, Tasmania, that you are legally allowed to still have cannabis and drive your automobile in your system, yeah, or be like impaired.

SPEAKER_01 20:00

Is it to like a level like you know, like alcohol with drink driving? Like we're allowed to have, you know, a certain level. What's the sit judge?

SPEAKER_04 20:09

The legislational tolerance in Tasmania, I believe it is, there's no number to my recollection. I haven't looked it up for a while, but I just know that it is a legal defence that of course you have cannabis in your system because you're a cannabis patient, and of course you're driving your car because you need to get from A to B. Whereas all other states are saying, well, you're now choosing to take the medication of your choice, which is cannabis, but we're going to retr your right to freedom of travel by restricting you to either catch an Uber, a bus, a train, a plane, or a cart. So, you know or a horse. Or a horse, yes, if you're lucky enough to live in Ruatoria, shout out to the Tidafidi region. Um so freely riding your horse to and from your workplace under the intoxication. Oh, it's not only gangster, it's just a traditional mode of method. It is. It's an OG. Uh so the funniest thing, shout out to the Tirafati region, the funniest thing that I ever saw was a beautiful horse. There was two horses standing right next to the electrical power charge station for electric vehicles, both just eating the grass that God had grown for them while the uh owners jumped into the dairy to get some milk and bread. Um, yeah, traditional sight to see, just horses eating grass, um, because you know, we don't actually need to fetch oil out of the ground and start wars for this kind of thing. Grass feeds horses, and horses are still a traditional method of travel in some places, and you still can travel on your horse anywhere in Altairoa, legally with the right of way, uh, with more power than horses, uh with more power than cars. Cars have to be restricted to slow right down when they pass a horse on New Zealand Roads. So shout out to all the horse owners still enjoying their right of freedom of travel.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

Wow, there you go. I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_04 21:53

That's a little into bonus test. Yeah, so you don't have to get your intoxication test or roadside impairment test. If your horse is travelling. So it was an old argument that when uh cars were being invented, and obviously the workers, the traditional workers, would like to drink some alcohol and jump onto their horse, and the the bartender could unlasse their horse and just whip them on the tail, and the horse obviously knew where it lived, so it would just take the drunkard worker home. Um now we have cars, and obviously we can't let the barman just let us drive home. So traditionally the acceptance of somebody needing to get into an altered state of consciousness was a community experience where we all went to the bartender and the bartender would get us lick it up and would go home. Now it's changing a little bit where the acceptance of altered states of consciousness, we've all been put down one pathway of alcohol consumption, and most other altered states of consciousness is uh hidden or demonized and not acknowledged as what they were traditionally elixirs of life, elixir elixirs of experience. Like, yeah, it's not my choice to get habitually smashed on alcohol weekly, but if that's your ritual and you're still enjoying it and you're still functioning and it's not affecting your life in any way? And it's not affecting your life or the life of others around you, and who makes those judgments? Like, is your mother still proud of you? Is your father still proud of you? Do you still have your wife? Do your children still love you? Are you still close to most of your friends? We can't make judgment on each human experience. There's people who are needy for companionship, and then there's some people who are needy for privacy. And the private person with no friends who lives in a hill, is he lonely? He might be. If he chooses not to be lonely, he can come out of his hill. But do we go up and see him in his hill? Maybe. Did he invite you? Maybe not. So it's hard to judge all of these things. Some people want, some people don't want, some people lack, some people have too much. And so, with cannabis or my cannabis experience, I just want to have what I had when I was a small child living on an orchard. There was so many apples, like I didn't push apples on people. Apples are a freedom of choice. I didn't push fish and chips on people. It's a freedom of choice. And my understanding of right and wrong, and my introduction to medicinal cannabis, recreational cannabis, and spiritual cannabis at a young age, I stayed away from alcohol and went down the cannabis journey. Being a cannabis pain patient, using cannabis and not using any pharmaceutical drugs that may or may not need more pharmaceutical drugs to combat the damages from the pharmaceutical drugs, I felt that a more traditional herbal experience of pain relief and anti-inflammation for my backaches and my back pains, my shoulder aches and my shoulder pains for being a construction worker, the judgment of other workers thinking I'm a stoner, even though I'm productive, um I feel competent. Competent competent enough to remember the word competent. I walk around on my stilts all day without having accidents. Um and but the judgment of being a stoner where I'm just a functioning pothead, I think it was used.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

Um someone said that to you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:27

And well, those of us who are still there's stoners, and they'll probably always be stoners, and it's not because they smoke cannabis that makes them stoners, they're just lazy or not wanting to achieve, they don't have any motivation towards anything that they want. There's no desires, there's no passion, there's no creation, there's just being a stoner in a sense of you're stoned. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

So it's that stereotype that you're talking about. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:57

So I'm flipping the switch on the stereotype because my representation is the kind of businessman who is trying to activate people's awareness that cannabis is just another capitalist thing that business people can get on board with that is a product of everybody's good health, everybody's well-being. It's a well-being product. And so if we can just look at this lovely well-being product for a spiritual use and introduce the recreational use of cannabis into a side-by-side comparison with liquor outlets, alcohol, social environments where people are just consuming elixirs to you know get inside their therapeutical windows of social comfortability. You know, some people just need a little bit of a lubricant, and whether that lubricant is a little bit of cannabis, a little bit of alcohol, there's a number of other lubricants that are availably tested. Know your stuff. Thank you, New Zealand, thank you, governmentally approved uh testing facilities. And on that note, just a quick transition. I also have uh medical cannabis uh testing equipment. Uh so I test the strength of uh medical cannabis with my HPLC high performance liquid chromatography machine. Um so a small sample of uh just under half a gram of cannabis run through my machine for 20 minutes. We'll come back with a very precise, uh detailed 19 different cannabinoids for your CBG, CBD, THC, THCV. Um yeah, those people don't know what THCV is. Tetrahydrocannabinolic virin, I believe. Um, and that is actually known as the Jenny Craig uh cannabinoid. Um it gives you the anti-munchies.

SPEAKER_01 27:48

Really?

SPEAKER_04 27:49

Really true.

SPEAKER_01 27:50

I did not know that.

SPEAKER_04 27:51

And not many people do.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

Where do you find that?

SPEAKER_04 27:54

Um yeah, so what strain is the highest in THCV? Um that is, yeah, some of the so interesting. So everybody knows or everybody should know that cannabis is an appetite stimulant. You get what's called the munchies.

SPEAKER_00 28:08

Yes, you do.

SPEAKER_04 28:09

You do.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

So And it doesn't matter how long you've been doing it, you still get it.

SPEAKER_04 28:13

There you go. So some particular chemovars or cultiv some strains of cannabis, uh, chemovar is a chemical variety. So each different strain can be cultivated in a different region or have different inputs, and that will change its chemical variety, and that's why you say chemovar. Um the chemical analysis of my cannabis strains that come through, I can tell a farmer who's got 12 seeds thrown them in the ground which ones are higher and which ones are lower in any of the 19 cannabinoids, and whether or whether or not it's got THCV in it. Um, sometimes people myself have had this happened. I've cooked a lovely chai, gone to the shed to have a smoke, come back to eat my chai, and I've failed to be hungry anymore. And I've I had often wondered maybe I will just have another smoke and then obviously I'll be more hungry, but now I've probably realized that that strain that I had probably had THCV in it, and the anti-munchies was making me uh feel not so hungry. So I feel currently the understanding of the strength of cannabis, um, it's a numbers game when you're purchasing medicinal cannabis, but with cannabis it is more for the experience. So the number of THC is important. Uh the psychoactive property of cannabis is in the THC, but it's not necessarily the strongest, uh, highest THC number that's going to give you the experience you want.

SPEAKER_02 29:52

Oh.

SPEAKER_04 29:53

Whether it's a sedative experience or an uplifting experience, the C THC psychoactive property is the enhancer, or I would I've likened it to the accelerator pedal. Um THC is the accelerator pedal, CBD is the brake pedal, more commonly known as the medicinal uh anti-inflammatory, anti-anxiety properties, less non absolutely non-psychoactive. Let me just reframe CBD, absolutely non-psychoactive, but the psychoactive property of CBD would be in the awareness of the anti-inflammatory properties. So if your body's holding stress, your shoulders are tight, your hips are tight, your body's aching, once you've consumed CBD medicine, the anti-inflammatory properties are gonna de-stress your body and probably give you some form of euphoric psychoactive feeling of, oh wow, actually I'm feeling real good. And it's not actually you're feeling real good, you're just a whole lot more relaxed due to the CBD. Um, the emotional steering is the terpenes. So the other active, major active compound in cannabis is terpenes. There's also esters, thiols, and alcohols, which are also many impart in the cannabis on the what's known as the entourage effect. So you can't just have a THC tincture and feel that that's going to be good to sedate you. You might be much better to be sedated under a cannabis strain that's good for ADHD, uh not ADHD, sorry, for PTSD, which is probably keeping you up at night. Like Blue Dream is a great cannabis strain for putting you to sleep at night without having your brain running at 100 miles an hour thinking, was that gunshots outside and are we back in the Vietnam War? So having trials with cannabis chemovars in other countries that we can rely on and know that these certain ke chemical varietals of cannabis are accessible to others gives me the hope that without the gatekeeping medicinal cannabis companies who are currently doing research and the pharmacies and the clinics who are doing their own research, as somebody who uh more open source information, I am a knowledge of wealth and I like to read books and knowledge is always changing, and nobody should be the gatekeeper on which varietal of cannabis helps you with your cancer. So I'm sure everybody's heard that cannabis helps with cancer, right? So miraculously, in a petri dish, certain types of cancer will be killed by certain chemovars of cannabis. But this is only in petri dishes in Jerusalem where they have got the largest amount of information stored on record about which chemovar will kill which type of cancer. Unfortunately, it's a hundred billion dollar answer that they're trying to puzzle down so that they can lock it into some form of pharmaceutical profit industry. So, knowing that, that if you were to get white rhino and it has helped your auntie with her breast cancer, please don't give the white rhino to your uncle for his prostate cancer, because it may or may not work. He might actually need to find the chemovar that's going to work, particularly for prostate cancer. So if you're thinking about how it works in a petri dish and humans are just large petri dishes, having different chemo vars for different cancers or knowing that that is actually how cannabis works gives people more hope that, oh, I tried cannabis and it didn't work. Well, you have tried a cannabis, and yes, acknowledging the cannabis that you tried did not work. There are thousands, and I mean thousands of cannabis, and one of those cannabis will put you inside your therapeutical window so well that you could potentially, I will say it, live forever. No, no, probably not live forever, but spiritually you may be able to live forever. Let's just not joke on that.

SPEAKER_01 34:03

But that's interesting, because that so that would tie into like, you know, you have people that tell you um their first experience and only experience of trying cannabis has been horrendous, you know. So maybe if they had tried a different type or whatever, they wouldn't have the same experience.

SPEAKER_04 34:25

Exactly. So mother ganja or cannabis is an amplifier. THC is a psychoactive. So being a psychoactive, it comes to set and setting. So if you're in a nice, comfortable space and you feel comfortable, your body is going to enjoy that comfortable experience of cannabis. If you're already put into a fear of you're meeting a dodgy drug dealer in a back alleyway, he's already 20 minutes late. He could be an undercover police officer. You got work tomorrow, you don't really need a drug conviction going on right now. Why is this guy 20 minutes late? Man, this is taking too long. Shall I text him? Nah, I'm just gonna go, shall I stay? Oh my god, is that a car pulling up? Oh, what's going on? Oh man, I'm sketchy, this is dark. Oh man, I'm pleased I've got a knife. Why have I got a knife? He's gonna stab me with my own knife. What's going on? So, whoa, that amplified really quick, right? Because Mother Gunge is an amplifier. So set and setting in the responsibility of consuming your cannabis in the right frame of mind, or the wrong frame of mind if you want to delve deep into the darkest depths of your sadness and traumas, you can, but make sure you got somebody to sit alongside you as a guide and a helper or somebody to fetch you water or a blanket. Because yeah, she she can make you cry, she can make you laugh, but she won't do to you what your body won't want her to do to you, and that's where she comes in on being an amplifier. And so the paranoia level of are you paranoid, are you scared, are you safe? You know, you shouldn't be taking cannabis if you don't feel safe. You shouldn't be taking cannabis if you're about to operate heavy machinery. Unless, of course, you've got your license under the influence of cannabis, you've been productively using your heavy machinery for the last two decades without any kinds of accidents, you should be allowed to do the back to the reference of Australia, do a simulated driving under the influence of some licensing scheme, and then do the actual on high drugs, right in front of the officer who's sitting beside you with his helmet on and his high-based vest and his clipboard going, Yes, you drove the heavy machinery competently while under the influence of your legally prescribed medicinal drug of choice, because that's your human right. So yeah, I think we need to set in place some form of licensing scheme of competency, as referencing back to earlier statements of me walking around on plasterer stilts, suspended ceiling installer stilts all day for a 10-hour day, while what they would say being intoxicated on cannabis, I would say inside my therapeutical window, on a competency level of I could pass a competency test if there was such a test available for me so that I could feel like I was a normal person. We don't just give guns to everybody, we give guns to people who can prove they're competent. We don't give cars to everybody, we give car licenses to people who are competent. We should also give car licenses and gun licenses to people who can prove competency under the influence of cannabis. It doesn't make any sense sense not to be allowed my human rights or my human experience to be restrained because of my choice of drugs.

SPEAKER_01 37:31

So does the terpenes have something to do with the back to like the different emo what do you say emotional The emotional steering of the experience. So would that have some impact on your experience too, depending on the terpenes?

SPEAKER_04 37:50

So if you've ever done aromatherapy, you get into a little bit of that. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 37:55

Most people have had experiences with we're talking about like lavender and we're talking about essential oils.

SPEAKER_04 38:02

So aromatherapy and essential oils, they are made of what's known as terpenes. So your essential oil is basically the juices, the elixir of the flower, right? So if you squeeze a lavender, you squeeze a rosemary, you know, there's aromatic compounds. Those aromatic compounds are called terpenes. And so each different uh chakra, you can take it to chakras, you can take it to rainbow, do remifa solati do. Yep, so here we go. We've got some bass notes that are down here. These are beta-caryophylline, mersine, we've got some pretty heavy-hitting sedative bass notes way down here in your base chakra. They're gonna really hit you, sedate you. Then on your way up, you've got some more socializing cannabinoids, some terpinolines, um, uh let me just guess what's ours. The humolenes. Um, we're just here in the middle, we're socializing, we're functioning, we're all really good.

SPEAKER_03 38:55

And then we've got some lemonines, and we've got some eucalyptal and some linololes, and they're way up here in the high chakra, and we're having a real high time, and it's real good, because those high terpen notes, they're really a vibing high.

SPEAKER_04 39:07

And so we can all understand the vibrational feeling of whether we're sedated, the vibrational feeling of if we're comfortably socializing, or if we're ecstatically just like, whoa, that person's about to burst. What's happened to that person? They're just bubbling. Yeah. And so that is captured inside the terpenes. So we've got base notes, midnes, and high notes. And so those aromatic compounds are what are putting you on your emotional journey.

SPEAKER_01 39:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 39:35

You're either gonna have an uplifting high or you're gonna have a sedative wasted.

SPEAKER_01 39:40

And okay, gotcha. So is that also based on like the whole indica and sativa thing, or not so much?

SPEAKER_04 39:48

So classing, so traditionally the two words indica and sativa, so cannabis sativa means cannabis to cultivate. The Latin botanical word sativa means to cultivate. So just like there's a rye sativa, a wheat sativa, a corn sativa. Um, they were all in the barrels of the explorers when they travelled around the world. We would put a barrel of hemp seed, cannabis sativa, and we would explore the new world. We would then plant this cannabis sativa in the ground for food, fibre, and fabric. Um, so here we are making uh ropes, textiles. The word canvas comes from the word cannabis because it was made from cannabis. You don't tear a pair of Levi jeans that are made from cotton because they would rip in half. Uh the Levi jeans that you see in the horse tearing in half there. Cannabis, canvas, Levi's jeans were obviously made from old sailing ships, because when you've got a couple of saline ships with a couple too many holes in them, you'd cut them up, stitch them into Levi jeans. Um so cannabis is, sativa is to cultivate. Indica was the more aromatic, uh shorter, stockier, highland uh medicinal cannabis. So that was where some of us believe in the Nepalese mountains and the high Himalayans, probably some alien dropped off some cannabis plants to some humans and said, hey, go forth and and enjoy, go forth and procreate with your newly found mother. Um, and so she has or the cannabinoids, sativa or hemp cannabis. So one's tall, skinny, and grown for fibre and seed, one's short and stocky and grown for hashishia, or the chemical compounds known as trichomes, uh, where the chemical factory of the cannabis plant makes all its wild terpenes, cannabinoids, and the amazing ability to either enlighten you or sedate you or give you a shoulder rub. Oh wow, it really just feels like I had a shoulder rub. That's amazing. So cannabis sativa and cannabis indica have now, with science, um, have been fractioned off into small pockets. So we've got narrow leaf or broadleaf fibre or narrow leaf or broadleaf narcotic. So there's the two realms we've got the fibre plant or the narcotic plant. I say narcotics because we're making medicines off the trichomes. Um having the two differentials now science-based and then blocked into so they can genealogically, if that is a true word, um, look back at your ancestral line of cannabis. So this seed made from these parents, this parents made from these parents, and you can look back to clusters of cannabis chemovars and where they sit in their aromatic profiling. So there's clusters of high notes, clusters of mid-notes, and clusters of low notes. And I have been working with hemp farmers to try to find aromatic varietals of hemp because just like there are people who traditionally like to socialise drinking alcohol um but want to actually now stay away from the intoxication side of alcohol, they can zero percent. They can have zero percents, which are readily available at West Auckland, uh West Auckland Charitable Trust making sure that no liquor is sold at a supermarket and only sold in liquor licensed facilities, they do sell liquor that's of a zero percentage in some supermarkets, um, allowing people to drink a glass of wine that still tastes delicious, aromatics, grapes and wines and ciders and beers can taste amazing. And the ones that have got zero alcohol in them, you can drink a little bit more of them. So the night doesn't have to stop because you aren't allowed to hold your glass or you feel or you're driving or whatever. Or you're driving. So Having a cannabis zero or a hemp cigarette, you can still get all of the aromatic compounds from your cannabis experience without the fear or the judgment of consuming a THC intoxicant, which is now restricting your ability to drive safely on the road, hyphens.

SPEAKER_00 44:18

Um that's cool.

SPEAKER_04 44:20

So yeah, I have and I want to and I will. I, I mean we the greater I, I mean I am you and you am I. So if we can all get together to collectively be aware that cannabis, just like alcohol, can be enjoyed or not enjoyed by the poor and the wealthy alike, we just need to make sure that the access point to medicinal cannabis isn't restricted by the fact that now medicinal cannabis can only be purchased through pharmacies. We should be able to purchase what's known as medicinal cannabis through your farmer. See? Because we used to be able to know that food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food, and you would get your food from the farmer. See? So you don't need to go to the pharmacy, you just need to understand the principle that let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food, and you have the right to consume whatever medicines of choice. You also have the human right to, I believe, under Westminster law, do inside the boundaries of your own home what you seem fit, if you're a taxpaying citizen of this island. Now I'm not telling anybody to do illegal activities inside their house, all I'm telling you to do is look up your rights to the safe, legal, affordable access to medicinal cannabis. Because currently, if you are prescribed five grams a day of medicinal cannabis, being five grams a month, uh five ounces a month, um, possibly that's a little bit unaffordable to you on a uh pharmacy cost price. So I would seriously look into writing to your local politician to ask them if they think it is fair and reasonable under the current legislation of us as patients, safe affordable legal access to medicinal cannabis. So I would want everybody to make sure that they have this right to this uh medicinal cannabis being safe, legal and affordable and so possibly it's not currently affordable and possibly people should look into expanding their um broadening their horizons on their abilities to uh stand in there in two feet. Uh freedom. Um I guess it's really hard to encourage other people to do what is known as crime, but there's a thing called morality over legality. So um where you stand on your moral code should be uh far superior than somebody's legislative code because we all know that it used to be totally legal to own slaves, used to also be totally legal to you know do a lot of things that we would now frown upon morally, knowing that they were probably not the right uh laws to all be adhering to. So if you know a law is wrong, then who am I to stop you from using your moral compass to do what you see fit in the safety and the comfort of your own home? So I was previously historically um a legacy operator, which meant I would traditionally cultivate cannabis in my own home for my own personal use, because that was the only way that I could afford to consume the amount of cannabis that I felt that I needed to remain inside my therapeutical window. And so if you cannot function as a human outside your therapeutical window, who should the government, who should anybody be to tell you that you can't do what they'll want in your own home? Like I'm sitting here completely naked right now and it's not offending anybody. I mean, you know, chips and giggles all aside, it's not offensive to be naked, unless of course you're offended by nudity and then just shy away, you know, look me in the eyes. Come on. My eyes are up here, babe, just keep looking me in the eyes. So the comfortability of the human experience shouldn't be legislated. If you know you have a drug problem, you need to seek help. If your friend's got a drug problem, you need to help them seek help if they're not willing to seek help themselves. But you need to discuss with your friend what that problem is. Like, if they're consuming lots of cannabis, that may or may not be a problem. If they're consuming lots of cannabis and can't get to work, or they've crashed their car several times this week, or yeah, just not functioning in life.

SPEAKER_03 49:07

They're no longer banging, they're bang on doping, this brain's doping.

SPEAKER_04 49:12

It's like, bro, your brain goes stupid every time you get on cannabis, you just like turn into a hillbilly. I don't know what happens to you. I'm not a hillbilly, man, I'm stupid. It's like, yeah, we can tell you's stupid, you've got your hillbilly accent on again.

SPEAKER_03 49:24

And so, I'm stupid as stupid does.

SPEAKER_04 49:27

Like, you're only as you know, you're only as strong or as only as brave or you're only as intelligent as your five closest friends. So make sure those five closest friends uh talk to you well, treat you well, and try to guide you how you want them to guide you and don't accept you know in ill-formed guidance or you know, you are your own human experience. I am my own human experience. And if we cross paths, I hope that we have fun because I'm here for a fun human experience. So currently I think that I'm safe and I know that I'm doing right and I still get, you know, judged by others, or I still do wrong because I'm still human and I'm still experiencing my human experience with the will and the lust and the and the drive of all humans. So, you know, I'm here to represent myself as a cannabis consumer. I'm here to represent others who want to be represented by hemp star Christ. Um you can find me on IG. Uh that's right, capital H Hemp, Capital S S Star, Capital C Christ. Um so yeah, I'm out here representing myself and others who are down that journey, others who want to be blazonly out there wearing cannabis suits or driving a political campaign in cannabis car with cannabis leaves down the side, spray painted ear brushed on, shout out. Um loving it. So I'm just trying to bring smiles to people's faces as a third generation entertainer, second generation tradesman, and first generation cannabis farming politician. I feel that my skill set is used to entertain and educate people on any level of intellect that they want to play on. I mean, I've got enough books or yeah, knowledge to to sing to you all evening about my passion towards cannabis. Like yeah, there's nothing more I feel passionate about than the freedom of Mother Gunja and her acceptance and tolerance back into where she deserves to be placed on every altar and every home as a habitual spiritual sacrament. So yeah, just as um people have got a salt and pepper shaker. I've also got a hemp seed shaker, so that's another thing that I want to see. I want to see salt and pepper added with H, because H goes on everything. You can just grab your hemp seeds in your shaker and grind them over salads, steaks, chicken, turkey, beef, lamb, hemp seeds go on everything. Just like salt and pepper goes on anything and everything, so does hemp flakes. Grab yourself some hemp seed hemp hearts from one of the now running New Zealand hemp uh companies. And grab yourself a grinder. Throw them hemp seeds in that grinder, put it right next to your salt and pepper. I want to see salt and pepper and hemp on tables around this country. It's uh omega-3, omega-6, omega-9 enrichment and hemp seeds. So hemp seeds are there for us to eat. Unfortunately, they're not there for uh chickens to eat. I got my hemp license to have healthy hempy hens, but the Ministry of Primary Industries said it was okay for human consumption and not okay for vets to give to dogs or cats or chickens or sheep or horses. So there's still a small bit of problems we've got going on with the current red tape around who can and who can't consume or who can or who can't cultivate or where and when. So I guess we'll uh leave that until next time. We're gonna have to come up with another a strategy, I think. Let's just sit at home and think about how we collectively can compassionately move cannabis into its higher state of awareness and its higher position. Like, she she doesn't even deserve to be like, sorry, back to the comparison of tobacco and well sacramental tobacco, shout out to all of the tobaccoans who take nicotine or tobacco as a sacrament. And the alcoholics as well, who sacramentally drink alcohol at church, just a small shot from water to wine. Um, and then the cannabis people who want to consume cannabis spiritually and have the uh ability to raise some form of spiritual awareness or maybe collective consciousness or get your homies together to start using magical marijuana in her mysterious ways, mystically, if you want to round up some potions with your homies and drink your tea together, because it's legally okay to drink cups of cannabis tea. Um, you could all pour your own cups of tea as we had a lemongrass tea this morning and sit down and see where it takes you. So, yeah, I want to see where it takes you. I want you to think about how you can flip the squit flip the switch personally in your home experiences with cannabis, whether it's being more proud about it or doing something publicly or privately where you're moving consciously positively forward for Mother Gunja because she needs more allies. I'm here standing on the shoulders of giants. I work alongside other giants who all stand right here on the front face of cannabis legalization and reform and awareness, and it's hard on the front line. Like I enjoy it. Like you might see me around the streets wearing my hemp star suit. Um, give me a shout out, take a photo. I mean, I love it. I'm don't get me wrong, egotistically, I kind of be like um straight up real. I feel I feel like uh Batman, like or like I'm Bruce Wayne, and then I'm just walking around town just as Bruce Wayne. It's okay. I'm a billionaire, my life's good, but then when I got my Batman costume on, my I'm serving and protecting, and I'm dressed as Hemp Star Christ in my cannabis suit, and I'm walking down getting high fives and the high vibes and the love and oppression, I I only get just smiles, like straight up for real. When I'm walking around as Hemp Star Christ in my cannabis suit, smiles. I as an entertainer, third generation entertainer, I feed me on love and smiles and appreciation. That's where I'm at. So if you can do what I feel that I do to others by just being me, giving other people the chance to be themselves in public however they feel fit to be themselves, come out of their own little shell of insecurities around their uses of cannabis, and be more proud that they're not stoners and losers and cannabis abusers, they're actually medicinal cannabis patients or realm seekers or altered states of consciousness, uh awareness journey as plant medicine practitioners. Uh we all need to unite and not frown at each other and join in our circles and expand our circles with trust and love and honesty and generosity. So with that, I hope I can leave you on a positive note saying if you're not voting for our T Row Legalised Cannabis Party this coming election, please write to your local politician about your views and opinions around the current status of medicinal, recreational, industrial, and spiritual uses of cannabis, because that would be doing me a favour. Sometimes my opinions are fallen on deaf ears on the Blue Party, the Red Party, the yellow team, the black and white team, and the other teams that all have political standings, even the green team, like come on now, no judgment, but come on. If they're all inclusive, we'd also be included and we'd be cultivating cannabis right next to our rosemaries and our rose bushes in our gardens. So if you're not voting me and you're not voting for Mother Gunja, what are you actually voting for?