Pot was better in the past—or at least that’s what I keep telling myself.
Once I track down that lost cut, I’ll get that exact profile back. We love to complain that today’s weed is low quality and that the stuff from our youth was on another level. It’s wild how memory tricks us. We project the past into the future, clinging to this idea: What if I find that cut from when I was 17—the one that completely blew my mind and changed how I viewed Cannabis forever—and at 60, it hits with that exact same magic?
That might be our biggest trap in the culture today. We’re so busy looking backward that we miss what’s right in front of us.
Plants aren't static museum pieces. They adapt to stress and environment over time through genetic plasticity. Metabolic switches turn off for efficiency—the plant stops wasting energy making stuff it doesn't need. Decades of collecting have taught me one big lesson: the window for something truly incredible is right now. You have to catch it and enjoy it while it's here.
Holding a plant frozen in time just isn't realistic. I used to think tissue culture would be the ultimate magic reset, taking a strain back to what we remember. In truth, TC just scrubs off some baggage and resets the plant to where it was right before it went into the Petri dish. It doesn't resurrect the past, and somaclonal variation from the media brings its own unintended shifts.
The other day someone asked me if the old stuff was really better. I happened to be drying down some seeded herb to crumble it and pull the beans out. I handed them a piece—totally dried out, volatiles stripped, no oils left—and said, "Smell this. Feel it." Then we laughed, because honestly, that’s exactly what weed was like for most people through time before sinsemilla took over. Back then, we were genuinely happy to clean out the seeds and smoke whatever we had.
Then you got hit with your first real connoisseur import. For me, it was a mind-blowing batch of Thai that completely rewired my brain. For years after, I wished I could turn back the clock and get a cut of Thai plant. The truth is 1983 only happens once and there is no returning back.
Working with collections over long spans of time gives you a rare perspective. You watch profiles drift. Old nuances slip away, and new traits appear. The plant is constantly responding to everything: lighting tech, moving from sun to indoor, from indoor to sun, nutrients, and how we handle pest pressure. When we use growth regulators, pesticides, or fungicides, the plant adapts to those artificial controls. If an input fulfills a need for the plant, it turns off its own internal factory—and those metabolic switches don't always flip back on automatically or permanently when you take those inputs away.
Understanding that complexity actually brought me a lot of peace, as I could change my gaze, and my efforts from past to present.
The best thing I can do now is enjoy the flower in front of me today. When I hunt through populations I’ve held, I’m not chasing a ghost or trying to recreate an exact clone of a memory. I'm looking for traits that bring back that same spark of excitement.
Cannabis adapts, and so do we. Change is the only constant—and enjoying what's in your hand right now is the real gift.