After Evanne Hall, the Stranger's office manager, told me that Happy Apple's 100 milligram cannabis-infused apple soda gave her a near-death experience, I knew I had to try it myself.

Evanne drank half of the 12-ounce beverage and did a few bong rips, and she said she became panicky, paranoid, and had to keep one foot on the ground to keep the world from spinning. "We turned off the lights and put on Futurama," she said, "which helped a lot because at least it was familiar." Evanne was fine by morning, but the strength of this drink was confirmed by a budtender in Seattle who told me that he drank a weed soda before a shift and fell asleep at work.

The idea of getting that high might not be appealing to everyone, but I've been on a mission to get scary stoned for years. This mission has largely been a failure. With the exception of a very large blunt smoked on the rooftop of a 28-story building last year, no bong hit, no edible, no Rick Simpson Oil, no dab has come close to making my world spin. I've smoked so much pot that I barely get buzzed anymore, no matter how much I ingest. If anything could get me scary stoned, I hoped this soda was it.

I drank it on a warm Saturday afternoon. The 12-ounce drink—which, according to the label, contained 10 servings—was crisp, refreshing, and not too sweet. It tasted more like apple cider than apple soda, and it went down far easier than the Everclear-based cannabis tincture I make weed drinks with at home. It was also $30, which is exceedingly pricey for a single high. You could always drink some and save the rest for later, but that's the problem with weed sodas: Once you pop the top, they start going flat.

About an hour after draining the bottle, I was murdering blackberry bushes in my backyard and started feel a wave coming on. Convinced that I was about to be on my ass for the rest of the night, I rushed inside to prepare. I gathered snacks, put on soft pants, and picked out a playlist. And then I waited. And waited. And waited.

The wave never came. I might as well have taken $30 and burned it.

Clearly, I am not the typical user, so I got two more sodas and gave them to my colleagues to try. Chase Burns, our digital editor, split a 10 milligram Honeydew Melon Soda by Olala with his boyfriend before going to see a Kara Swisher lecture downtown. "I smoke weed all the time, but I'm sensitive to edibles for some stupid reason. So five milligrams is usually fine for me," he said. "It was more like a strong aspirin. It took away the pain of being in a concert hall surrounded by baby boomers, but it did not make me feel, like, Tommy Chong–high." He recommends it as a melatonin replacement before bed.

Lester Black, a staff writer, drank a 30 milligram Moss Cow Mule Ginger Beer at precisely 4:20 p.m. "By 5:20, I was just starting to feel some effects," he said. "Mostly a lazy-limb body high." He said he was less pissed than usual when his bus was late, but, he added, "I went to the mall and returned a computer cord without embarrassing myself, so I couldn't have been that high." By the time Lester made it home, he said he'd completely forgotten that he'd had any pot.

These sodas can work, I'm sure of it—but not if you have the tolerance of a lesser Marley brother. For us, I'm afraid, the only way to get scary stoned is tolerance breaks.