Summer days are the longest of the year, and now that we can be kinda “outside” (with masks and vax cards, of course) it can be hard to find a reason to rest at all; there’s just too much to do after a year of doing nothing but fearing for our lives. And for many, the fear hasn’t dissipated as schools reopen and young, unvaccinated children begin to congregate again.
I am childless and managed to circumvent many of the 2020 pandemic’s worst anxieties, but 2021 is proving to be a different beast entirely. I know I’m stressed, and when I’m stressed, I can’t sleep. And I’m not alone.
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As many as 70 million American adults are dealing with sleep disorders, insomnia being the most prominent among them. The pandemic compounded these numbers on a global scale, and the long-term impacts have yet to reveal themselves. One bad night of sleep won’t kill you, but prolonged periods of time without proper, restorative sleep can have onerous outcomes, including higher vulnerability to disease, worsening mental health, and even a shortened lifespan.
So what to do? There’s melatonin and chamomile tea, there are ASMR videos and white noise machines. There’s even the hard stuff prescribed from your doctor, but how long would that take to get? Speaking personally as someone born and raised in California, I discovered cannabis was a powerful sleep agent the first time I ever smoked it, when I fell asleep at the movie I was seeing with my friend, the provider.
‘Cannabis works a little bit different for everybody, so I wanted to make sure that we release products based on indication, and give people several options on how to titrate it, but more broadly to make sure that everybody has something for them.’
Since that night well over a decade ago, the leaders of the medical and recreational cannabis industry have raced each other to provide the market with the best means of catching Zzzs. I have tried many in my day, and have come to find it takes far more than a high dose of THC or CBD to get you into REM sleep. Nowadays brands are coming out with “sleep” products left and right, harnessing terpenes and cannabinoids and adaptogens in tantalizing packaging.
But the question remains, WILL I SLEEP? I find that with cannabis, you have to start with the source, and one of the best to ever do that is Papa & Barkley.
Papa and Barkley have never been one for frills. Just like the wizened Papa figure and loyal family hound on their packaging, their co-founder and Chief Product Officer Guy Rocourt want you to see them as dependable, effective, and rooted in whole plant medicine rather than a sparkling marketing campaign. Their Sleep Releaf line, officially launched August 16, is rooted in data and plant science, if the snores reported by study participants are any indication.
In a multi-week study of over 90 participants, 80% of them reported that using the Sleep Releaf products resulted in longer sleep, and they were quicker to fall into a deep sleep and with minimal morning grogginess.
“It’s an evolution of our company for sure, just being able to offer a suite of products as a coordinated launch,” Rocourt tells TBI. “Cannabis works a little bit different for everybody, so I wanted to make sure that we release products based on indication, and give people several options on how to titrate it, but more broadly to make sure that everybody has something for them.”
The suite, or collection, of products, consists of their sugar-free low-dose gummies in a blackberry elderberry flavor, a pomegranate dark chocolate bar, a classic wood-topped tincture, and soft gel capsules, all in a ration of 2:4:1 CBD:THC: CBN made from solventless rosin, the backbone of full-spectrum formulations that utilize every part of the plant. There’s no melatonin here, nor any of the cannabinoids that have become buzzwords over the last year, including CBG and delta-8 THC, the latter of which Rocourt will never put in a product.
“We barely understand the primary cannabinoids THC and CBD, and how terpenes drive those ships,” he says, “yet these novel cannabinoids continue to come out, adding to, in some cases, misinformation fear-mongering. And so we want to be really careful as we introduce new cannabinoids. CBN on the other hand, we can make a natural case for because it is a natural degradation of THC. I can’t stress enough how rampant misinformation is on the national market.”
The “lab-made” label isn’t necessarily bad, as most regulated cannabis products are made in a lab and all have to be independently tested. But like the rest of the brand’s lineup, this ratio was made using proprietary heating methods to convert THC-rich rosin to CBN-rich rosin without the use of solvents and without losing the other compounds, like phytonutrients and chlorophyll, that work in tandem with the cannabinoids. You may have heard of the entourage effect, where cannabinoids and terpenes are shown to be more effective when used together rather than isolating parts of the plant, but that’s only the tip of the cannabis iceberg, according to Rocourt.
“Many providers who don’t [follow] plant medicine decide to purport themselves as premium brands, and I have to question that. Everything else and as I said everything else in our world is moving to more natural and plant-based. I think most folks who are looking for alternative wellness are looking to step back from pharma, and towards things like mycology, adaptogens, and plant-based medicine, like cannabis. So, the first thing we need to communicate to our industry is there is this version of clean, plant-based medicine.”
And to really drive the point home, P&B and the scientists on their Scientific Advisory Board conducted their own research to determine what formulation would work best. In a multi-week study of over 90 participants, 80% of them reported that using the Sleep Releaf products resulted in longer sleep, and they were quicker to fall into a deep sleep and with minimal morning grogginess. The gummies are also vegan and made with minimal ingredients that could offset the formula’s sedating effects. The tincture and capsules are MCT-oil based, so be mindful of allergies.
Now, it must be said that cannabis cannot fix everything. It is not omnipotent and like anything born on this planet, has its limits. But why not give it a try?
Worst case scenario: You bought some indulgent chocolate. Best case scenario: You’re asleep by the end of this article.
