The "old skunk" had Affie in there and that's what was couch glueing you due to over-ripeness.
Ripeness is subjective. I prefer cannabis at the cloudy trich stage for most strains. C99 and Blueberry have effects I like when just starting to turn cloudy. Deep chuck I like 50% amber.
If you follow the "needs another two years" crowd I believe the effect will be past it's prime. Cannabis effects deteriorate when getting to a certain point of ripeness. I guess some people like it but I find a lack of potency when a plant has gone too long.
For example, the Cinderella line I work with has incredible effects day 50-53. Day 56 the effects turn muddy and less potent. This is not the norm for cannabis but for this strain it is the case. ECSD back in the day was perfect at 11 weeks, 12 weeks made it too lethargic, ruining the amazing floating euphoric effect. The 12 week stuff was just muddy and confusing, not at all desirable compared to the floating like in space effect of the 10-11 week.
Flavors are also at peak during certain harvest windows but that is another convo.
Strains are all different. It is best to begin sampling around week 8 to gauge the perfect harvest window for your tastes.
In the mid-1970s, what we called "skunk" (and it was
the skunk) definitely came from Mexico. Let's just say I happened to be very close to someone who drove U-Haul trucks and took lots of trips... Afghan had nothing to do with it. The only way that could have happened is if someone, in Mexico, was growing Afghan strains in Mexico. I also knew people who regrew some of those old Mexican strains and the house always smelled like a skunk even when the plants weren't flowering. The frickin' leaves smelled like skunk. I knew it well.
All I can say is that most of the very best (and very worst) marijuana in the 1970s was coming from Mexico because it travelled along the roads. OCCASIONALLY, a veteran would return from Vietnam with a remnant or two of some Thai weed. That was a rare treat for blue moon occasions only. I had a friend who was in the Peace Corps in 1975 and had an ingenious way of exporting Thai sticks for awhile.....but I digress.
I'm not saying there weren't Afghan strains that also smelled skunky, but the strain we knew as "skunk", "the skunk" or "skunk weed" in the upper midwest of the 1970s, came from Mexico.
As far as ripeness is subjective. That's for sure. But, I guarantee you, when the skunk was around, no one was growing it or harvesting it with any kind of attention to detail. No one was checking it every few days or weeks to make sure it was in the
just-right harvest window. As I recall, entire plants were ripped out of the ground and bailed up in plastic trash bags and tape -roots, rocks and all. It was very much random back then. But some of the plants just had the thing in them, regardless of how they were grown.
Inevitably, all the "advancements" that growers made back then, was to select for plants that didn't stink or have any flavor. We still suffer the consequence of that to this day.
