Intention, awareness and control are crucial with any consumable that alters your perspective.

We’re all trying to make our human experience as positive as possible. Sure, there are a few universal basic needs like food, water, shelter and safety, but beyond that our desires become a little more subjective. At Calexo, we think most people are looking for the same thing: a meaningful existence that is free from anxiety, fear and stress. Turning these values from conceptual ideals into actual lifestyle choices takes practice and attention. Too often, we hear about people who are seeking a positive experience with cannabis, but end up feeling out of control, or ‘too high’.

Without an understanding of what our individual needs are, we run the risk of missing out on a life well-lived. We believe there are healthy and beneficial ways to push boundaries, experience new things and create meaning in our lives. From cannabis to calisthenics, the choices we make to improve our lives should put fewer obstacles on the path to feeling our best, not more.

Modifying reality

Human beings have a history of finding ways to get high and alter their perspective of reality. In our modern world, we make choices that shift our perspective on a daily basis. Life isn’t always comfortable or relaxing, and a drive to improve our experiences is both natural and good. From socially-acceptable behaviors like eating organic food, hot yoga or a glass of wine, to more complex alterations like meditation, using sex toys, listening to music, or taking psychedelics. If it improves your life, and doesn’t harm others, we’re all for it.

To a certain extent, almost every intentional action we take will affect our processing of reality. According to NAMI, even “music acts as a medium for processing emotions, trauma, and grief — but music can also be utilized as a regulating or calming agent for anxiety or for dysregulation.” Sunshine can impact your mood, and meditation and exercise can impact your brain. We’re surrounded by opportunities to modify our perceptions, which in turn, impact our reality.

We all have built-in strategies for improving our lives, whether we’ve created them intentionally or have discovered our preferences via friends. From how we manage anxiety (a glass of wine, smoking a joint, or going to the gym) to the way we get our creative juices flowing (micro-dosing, going to a bookstore/museum/concert, or living room dance parties). I like a cup of coffee and some exercise to start the day; you might need a joint and a glass of wine to face your parents. Ultimately. when we tune into what makes us feel like our truest selves, our experiences soar. At Calexo, we knew that we wanted to be able to enjoy a more moderate cannabis experience in a social setting. This is our happy hour, and we’ll skip the alcohol if we want to.

We believe that cannabis has the power to be a beneficial experience for people who use it thoughtfully. For us, getting high isn’t about numbing yourself to the world (unless that’s what you need, and hey, we are not here to dictate the needs of anyone, especially those dealing with severe pain). We made Calexo for people who want a more uplifting and healthy social drinking experience without the negative physical effects of drinking alcohol. The details of that experience is up to each individual to figure out.


Making Informed Choices

There are a few important factors to take into consideration when we’re seeking different ways to alter our perspective. The combination of our own desires, biology and constraints create a unique set of circumstances for each person. We all want to feel good, but there will always be constraints. How we approach them can turn our short-term feel good strategies into lifestyle choices that affect us positively.

When Brandon, one of our founders, learned that he couldn’t drink alcohol anymore after his fight with cancer, he reevaluated how he could achieve that sense of social lubrication that happens when drinking with friends. With these circumstances in mind, he came up with a new strategy: create a cannabis beverage that wouldn’t seem out of place at happy hour.

We all deal with circumstances that affect the way we want to live our lives. I’ve always enjoyed smoking weed, but when the coronavirus pandemic hit, I knew that it wasn’t worth the risk to my lungs to continue smoking. My updated choice has been to stick with only drinking Calexo in order to achieve a similar type of uplifting high without compromising my lungs (along with the occasional low-dose edible).

For the cannacurious, a positive experience is all about timing and control. The way we reconcile our choices with our constraints will always impact us in the long run. Some people face dietary restrictions, health issues, or legal barriers to feeling the way they want to feel. The question is, how do we work within these parameters in order to feel the best we can, while doing everything we can to change the system to work for us. By using nano-technology to make cannabis more punctual and reliable, we hope to encourage body sovereignty. We hope that each individual can discover what really feels good in their own body, and learn how to fine-tune those experiences. Cannabis, with the right dose, set and setting, often encourages empathy and enhances creativity.

If getting high has felt overwhelming, it might be worth examining how much is being consumed. For a lot of people, enjoying cannabis in moderate amounts can be more beneficial. The old adage stands: sometimes less is more. Taking 40 pills of Advil doesn’t make your headache go away any faster.

Nobody knows your body better than you

We believe sovereignty over your own body is a basic human right. In an ideal world, we have the right to push our own boundaries, and experience the world the way we want to. Yet, the reality of life is that this ideal isn’t available to everybody. From health issues to legal constraints, circumstance affects how we’re able to pursue our best lives. Even when it seems like we have all the privilege in the world, we’re often prescribed one-size-fits-all ideas about our experiences instead of developing a conscious relationship to our bodies and our own needs. We may all have cannabinoid receptors in our bodies, but we don’t all experience weed the same way. Finding the sweet spot means taking on an objective outlook. Starting slow and removing pre-existing ideas from the equation. Asking ourselves honestly: does this feel good?

Consider the notorious pot brownie experience. Early in my relationship to cannabis, I began experimenting with edibles instead of smoking. After eating a portion of a very delicious cannabis chocolate bar, and waited. I waited some more, mentally prepared for my mini-blast off, until: nothing. I didn’t feel anything. I must not have eaten enough, I realized, and broke off another piece of chocolate. Soon enough, the inevitable happened: I was quickly pushed down a mental rabbit hole, way too high, and overwhelmed by mere existence. What I had hoped would be a relaxing and illuminating experience quickly took me from zero to one hundred, and there was no way I could come back anytime soon.

Another time, I was at a wedding where the bride and groom had stuffed a pinata with all sorts of cannabis treats, from plastic eggs filled with flower to tiny, but powerful, cheeba chews. The bride’s blindfolded sister took a swing at the paper mache treasure trove, and the edibles went flying. Shortly after, I was sitting and chatting with some folks when a big, burly man unwrapped his small cheeba chew and ate the whole thing. A few of us immediately informed him that he just ate 100mg of cannabis and that unless he knows what he’s getting himself into, he might want to try and throw up. He brushed us off, saying that he’s tried pot before and he’ll be fine. The next day we ran into him–hidden behind sunglasses, he had scrapes on his forehead from falling down, and said he was still reeling. It was the perfect storm of a lack of awareness, an unwillingness to listen and the kind of edible that will send the unprepared straight to the ER.


Calexo’s Cucumber Citron and Citrus Rose flavors
Dose matters

We all have different tolerances. Understanding what works for your body can be the difference between an evening of giggles or hitting your head on a concrete curb. We created Calexo because we wanted to create an uplifting and socially-acceptable cannabis experience. For us, that means a product that is low-dose and easy to moderate.

Research shows that if your goal is to use cannabis to help you deal with anxiety, a lower dose is often far more effective. Edibles affect the body in a different way than nano-emulsified cannabis does. When we pair awareness of our bodies, and intention (an understanding of how we want to feel) with control (the ability to accurately self-dose), we are less likely to feel overwhelmed by whatever substance we’re consuming. Expanding your mind with psychedelics? Take it easy at first. Discovering whiskey for the first time? Don’t drink the whole bottle. Exploring cannabis in order to feel good? Moderate your experience by starting with a low-dose option. We always say “go slow and start low” to people trying substances for the first time. Get to know your body and listen to it when you introduce yourself to novel experiences.

Recreational cannabis has more to offer than puff-puff-pass or equilibrium-shattering edibles. That’s the whole reason we made Calexo in the first place. Drinking a low-dose cannabis beverage removes many of the factors that can cause an unpleasant high, and is a lovely alternative to alcohol. It makes it possible to enjoy a light lift, without being sent to the moon. When I drink Calexo, I know that I’ll feel it in about 15 minutes and that it will last about an hour or so. I know the dose of a full bottle (10mg THC), and that if I just have a single glass (a quarter of a bottle), it’s only 2.5 mg of THC. It’s this ability to self-dose accurately, and to enjoy a lower-dose over a longer period of time, like in a social setting, that is reframing the way we think about getting high.