Before Google Maps, technological advancements and the conception of life being a journey from A to B, humans had to navigate their ways around the landscapes of this planet by using a compass.

These days, barely any of us even own a compass besides the app on our smartphones.

And while the old school way of roaming around by merely following the four cardinal points seems to be long gone, to us, the concept of the compass holds a significant and philosophical metaphor that can help us navigate our lives and our cannabis consumption in a much more applicable and realistic way than “simply” going from A to B.

The Compass as the Sensemillier Logo

As you may have noticed, the logo of Sensemillier these days pictures the needle of a compass under a magnifying glass. But what the heck does that mean?

Well, a lot. Let’s get a bit philosophical here, shall we?

First and foremost, I have to say that with the creation of our cannabis education company, Sensemillier, we had to ask ourselves WHY.

Why Sensemillier? Why run a cannabis education company? Why talk to people about plant-based drugs? Why consume drugs? Why not consume drugs? Why this? Why that? Why, Why?

Because why digs into the roots of who we are and what is going on. You can ask why for all eternity, and if you do, you’ll ultimately end up either utterly confused or with an answer that isn’t definite but rather really important and really individually unique to yourself and your perspective and experience in this existence. That answer that you get from going down the road of eternal why’s will ultimately lead you to an answer that will help you to route your path throughout this absurd existence called being alive right now and reading this text and wondering how we suddenly got so deep into existential thought through a company that is supposed to educate about weed yo?!

Well, why not? Why not be existential and talk about this stuff? I mean, we’re all part of this human experience, and we all will or maybe already have ended up asking ourselves these questions about what’s going on.

Anyway, back to the logo.

So, for us, the magnifying lens symbolizes asking: Why or What?

This Why/What can be asked both ways: Outward and inward.

For example:

• Outward: What is going on in this life?
• Inward: What is going on inside of me?

And as you start asking these questions, you will most definitely find some answers that are uniquely applicable to you. Therefore, you can use these answers to gain some new perspective and ultimately route your life in the way you’d like to go. And then you start going this route and you ultimately fail and you give up and all the inquiry was for nothing because you didn’t immediately make it from A to B but society taught you that anyone can easily go from A to B but you didn’t and now you’re upset and call yourself a loser and give up and that’s it. The End.

But there’s hope because here’s where the compass comes into play!

Instead of getting lost and scared because your phone is out of juice and you can’t use Google Maps anymore, you’ll just take out your dusty old compass and reroute yourself to the approximate direction your destination is supposed to be. And as you navigate with your compass, your journey may take a bit longer, and you might have to reroute a couple of times because you got off track, BUT you’ll ultimately make it to the end of your destination, and you’ll have been so much more aware of your path and most importantly, you didn’t give up and you didn’t fail and you learned that getting of track isn’t failure but an opportunity to reroute onto the right track again.

So, in a sense, mindfully navigating life, cannabis, and addiction is to us like a compass under a magnifying glass. We zoom in and out of where we are and what we want, and then direct our decisions and actions toward where we want to go. We don't go there linearly, but rather non-linearly, with occasional detours and rerouting.

The Cannabis Compass

Why?

No! Not Why again!

Yes! Why?

Why do we consume weed?

I personally like to assume that most of us like to consume cannabis or at least started consuming cannabis because we hoped to or even got some sort of benefit from it. Whether it was a social, mental, spiritual or medical benefit, at some point in our lives, we have consumed cannabis, and it has done something beneficial and magical to us, and we liked that and decided to keep consuming.

Or we had a terrible experience and never touched weed again.

There are literally just these two options and nothing in between, right?

You either love cannabis or you hate it.

It’s either A, like weed is Awesome, or B, like Weed is bad, right?

Well, no. At least, not in my experience.

And that is why cannabis consumption is such a tricky topic, because polarity doesn’t work with cannabis since the plant and its interaction with our body are far too complicated for a one-size-fits-all kind of solution.

I may even say that cannabis is quite absurd because the problem with cannabis is that it is one of the most individualistic drugs in the world, meaning that every individual can have a fundamentally different experience of even the same strain and the same dose and the same everything.

Further, these individualistic experiences can not only differ from person to person but also within the different experiences of that person consuming cannabis in different sets and settings, like in different locations and social settings, but also varying mindsets.

For example, I could never smoke any weed in the morning and still be functional, while I have a lot of friends who can do that and/or become even more functional thanks to their morning tokes. Further, while I enjoyed consuming cannabis a couple of years ago, these days, I tend to rather not consume any cannabis because each time I consumed throughout the past year, I experienced adverse effects to what I intended to experience. For example, I smoked weed to have a better sleep and started to get paranoid and hallucinate as soon as I closed my eyes. Or, I smoked weed to have fun and socialize, and I became utterly unsociable. Or, I smoked weed to relax and unwind, and suddenly, I get overwhelmed by thoughts and ideas. Or, I smoked weed to de-stress and enhance my mood, and I suddenly feel paralyzed and paranoid.

After a while, I started realizing that consuming weed has lately been doing me more disfavours than favours and that the common industry advice of “just try a different strain” or “did you try it in a dry herb vaporizer or lower dose” didn’t work either because I tried all of that and still ended up having a panic attack after literally smoking only a 1:1 strain out of a one-hitter!

Further, I also learned that cannabis-use-disorder is actually a real thing because despite the daily bad experiences and despite wanting to quit smoking weed, I still continued to consume every day as there was a part of me who always thought, “maybe today it will be different,” but it never was and yet I still kept doing it, putting myself into the cycle of constantly having bad cannabis experiences and constantly hoping that today it would help me to relax and take the edge off.

So, long story short, I came to the conclusion that cannabis isn’t for everyone, that we as individuals should make our own informed decisions on whether we choose to consume cannabis or not, and that stopping to consume cannabis after prolonged use can be really challenging.

However, I also realized that legal cannabis is currently lacking applicable information and education in informing users about the highly individualistic impacts of cannabis consumption and relevant guidance on how to navigate the beneficial and adverse effects cannabis can cause.

So, I started working on that guidance and education by creating the Cannabis consumption COMPASS, an acronym that can help you to assess your cannabis consumption behaviour and reroute it to get back on track with the benefits you’d like to reap from consuming cannabis or even staying entirely off it.

I used the word compass for the acronym because I think you have to navigate drug consumption and your own behaviours like you'd be using a compass, not like it’s all or nothing.

Like with a compass, you sometimes may get a bit off track, but that doesn't mean that you entirely stop your journey or suddenly walk in the opposite direction; instead, once you get off course, you simply readjust and continue toward your destination.

This approach to your behaviours also invites a greater sense of compassion and lightness into your journey of navigating your consumption behaviours as I found that we often beat ourselves up when we don’t stick to the behaviours we want to cultivate, thereby creating this all-or-nothing mindset while really, we can always slip off a bit and then still get back on track and getting back on track is really where the actual progress happens.

So, with that in mind, let’s dive into the Cannabis Consumption COMPASS and how to use it to reflect on how you navigate your cannabis consumption.

C: stands for Consumption

With our consumption in mind, we want to reflect and ask ourselves:

• What is my experience with Cannabis Consumption?
• Am I a first-timer, infrequent consumer or an experienced daily consumer?
• How and what do I consume?
• How often and when do I tend to consume?

Asking ourselves these questions helps us think about our consumption behaviours, patterns, and habits, which we’ve built over time.

O: stands for Objectives

The Objectives help us to reflect on why we want to start consuming or why we have started consuming cannabis in the first place. I’d like to assume that most of us started consuming cannabis because we were seeking or experiencing some sort of benefit from it. So, take a moment to reflect on:

• What are the objectives of my cannabis consumption?
• What am I trying to gain from consuming cannabis?

Asking ourselves about the positive intention behind our cannabis consumption and comparing those benefits we’re seeking to our recent consumption experiences allows us to reflect on whether our current cannabis consumption is actually still giving us certain benefits or if it has become habitual or even started getting in the way of the objectives we have these days.

M: stands for Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the awareness of one’s mental states and surroundings. It is a key component of responsible cannabis use as it allows us to step out of our narratives to assess the state of our nervous system, including our thoughts and well-being, before, during, and after cannabis consumption. As a result, mindfulness can help us gain a clear picture of why, when, how, where, what and with whom we consume to help us track our consumption experiences and behaviours, whether positive or negative.

To consume Mindfully, ask yourself:

• How am I generally feeling without cannabis?
• How am I feeling when consuming cannabis? (before, during and after)
  
• What’s my setting usually like? (Where and with whom do I usually consume?)

If you’d like a guided step-by-step approach to assessing your cannabis consumption mindfully, check out our free Sensemillier Grading Platform. The Systems in the Platform will guide you playfully through our entire mindful evaluation process and track your evaluations to allow you to build your own digital cannabis consumption journal.

P: stands for Problems

As we have previously mentioned, cannabis consumption doesn’t only have benefits. It can also cause some adverse reactions and the development of cannabis use disorder, where our habitual cannabis consumption becomes a potential obstacle for us. Therefore, to consume cannabis responsibly and use the plant beneficially, we need to ask ourselves the following:

• Is my cannabis consumption meeting my objectives for consuming?
• Is my cannabis consumption causing me any problems?
• If it’s causing me problems, what are those problems?
• Have I tried taking a break from consuming cannabis, and did the consumption break in- or decrease my problems?
• Am I struggling to say NO and stop consuming cannabis these days?

The goal of responsible cannabis use is to consume mindfully and maximize the benefits while minimizing the adverse effects and potential downsides of cannabis consumption. Bringing open, vulnerable awareness to the problems our cannabis consumption causes us can help us to reflect and redirect our cannabis use to improve our overall well-being, whether it’s by consuming less cannabis or even stopping to consume cannabis.

A: stands for Assessment/Analysis

While it’s already a significant first step to mentally go through all of these questions, we’ve seen that tracking and journaling about these questions and our consumption behaviour helps to provide us with much greater insight into the products we consume and the effects we experience, which empowers us to make much better consumption decisions going forward.

For that reason, there are many print-cannabis journals and journaling advice for cannabis out there. Still, we thought that to really keep track of our consumption and our journal entries and find the silver lining, it’s best to track our cannabis consumption digitally so we can journal about our consumption anywhere on our phone and also to organize all our journal entries digitally so we can search and filter through the products we consumed and the experiences we have had.

This is why we’ve developed the Sensemillier Grading Platform: to empower ourselves to do all of that by supporting us in keeping track of the products we consume and helping to monitor our consumption outcomes to make more informed decisions about what and when to consume.

Further, because our Cannabis Grading Systems are fully guided and illustrated, anyone, no matter if they’re an experienced cannabis consumer or a first-time user, can immediately start using the system and learn about the key factors that influence cannabis quality and our consumption experiences.

By using the Grading Platform, you'll be able to answer the following question with great detail and certainty: 

• What are the sensory qualities of the products I like or don't like to consume?

S: Stands for Self

When considering cannabis consumption, we should know that cannabis is one of the most individualistic drugs in the world, meaning that our experience with a certain cannabis product will always be different from anyone else’s experience with the same product in the same ratio. That is because cannabis primarily influences the endocannabinoid system, which regulates the processes of our nervous system, and our nervous system is by far the most complex system in the entire universe, which varies vastly from person to person and from moment to moment. That being said, here are some more journaling prompts that can help us to reflect on our individuality and our self-responsibility with cannabis use:

• What makes me unique and different from others?
• How do my cannabis experiences differ from my friends?
• Have I ever consumed cannabis out of peer pressure?
• Have I ever consumed cannabis mindlessly or habitually?
• Have I ever had a hard time abstaining from cannabis use?
• What am I doing to ensure I consume responsibly?

When it comes to cannabis, we must know that we’re solely responsible for our use or non-use of the plant and should remember to focus on mindfully supporting ourselves through our cannabis use, rather than mindlessly consuming out of habit or peer pressure.

S: Stands for Satisfaction

Last but not least, the Cannabis Consumption COMPASS ends with the most important factor when it comes to cannabis consumption: satisfaction, the primary objective of mindful consumption and benefit maximization. To ensure we’re satisfied with our cannabis consumption, we should also take some time every once in a while to reflect and check in with ourselves about how satisfied we are with our behaviours and experiences regarding cannabis use these days:

• How satisfied am I in general without consuming cannabis these days?
• How satisfied am I currently with my cannabis experiences?
• How satisfied am I currently with my behaviours regarding responsible cannabis use?
• What could I do to improve my satisfaction in general these days?
  (What stops me from feeling more satisfied right now?)

I think this is the most important and central part of cannabis use and the adjustment of our inner compass in general, to route us in a direction where we’re satisfied with our life and with ourselves, whether we consume cannabis or not.

I hope you found this article insightful, and remember to check in with your own compass every once in a while to ensure you’re still on the right track. Life can get pretty busy and distracting these days, so it’s always a good idea to step out of the haze and take a break every once in a while to reflect on how we’re doing and if we’re still following our inner compass or if we got off track a bit.

Remember to stay on the right track and don’t beat yourself up for your detours, but instead, just reroute and keep going. This journey is solely yours; you’re responsible for where you’re going, and so is everyone else for their own path. We’re all in this together, we all know the end of the road, and all of us can choose what directions we take until we get there.

If you'd like to do your Cannabis Consumption journaling digitally, use the Cannabis Compass form below 👇