This Pre-Workout Has 200mg Caffeine—and 12mg THC. Obviously, I Had to Try It - VICE

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THC is not exactly the first ingredient I associate with lifting heavier.

Caffeine? Obviously. Creatine? Sure. Citrulline? Fine. But 12mg THC before a weight-training class sounds like there’s at least a chance I end up more interested in the gym playlist than finishing my reps. MOOD apparently disagrees.

Its Boost Advanced Pre-Workout packs 12mg THC into each Sour Raspberry powder stick, alongside 200mg caffeine and a whole lineup of familiar pre-workout ingredients: L-citrulline, L-tyrosine, creatine monohydrate, glycerol, betaine, Alpha GPC, electrolytes, and more.

There’s also a Standard version with only 4mg THC if 12mg sounds insane to you.

I go to Equinox about three times a week, including two lunchtime weight-training classes. I tried the Advanced version on one of those days when I was still kind of dragging from the morning and needed something to get me excited to work out.

About 30 minutes later, dragging was no longer the issue. I felt completely locked in. I was focused, energetic, weirdly chatty, and having way more fun than I usually do while somebody tells me to pick up heavier dumbbells. And I’m pretty sure I hit PRs across a bunch of exercises that day.

MOOD Boost Advanced is a powdered pre-workout with 12mg fast-acting THC and 200mg caffeine per stick. The formula also includes 5g L-citrulline, 2.5g L-tyrosine, 2.5g creatine monohydrate, 2g glycerol powder, 2g betaine, 400mg Alpha GPC, electrolytes, niacin, B12, and a few other ingredients.

This is very much a real pre-workout that happens to contain weed.

I used Boost before one of my lunchtime weight-training classes at Equinox. Those midday workouts can go either way for me. Sometimes I’m ready to go, and sometimes my brain is still very much sitting at a desk even though my body has made it to the gym. This was one of the second kind.

I mixed one full Advanced stick into water and drank it before class. That gave me the full 12mg THC + 200mg caffeine serving.

I’d also recommend having something small in your stomach beforehand, even if it’s just a banana or another piece of fruit. Pre-workout on a completely empty stomach can be a rough experience for some people, and adding THC to the situation isn’t where I’d personally experiment with that. Same goes for water. This is the gym. Hydrate.

The interesting part started about 30 minutes later.

I suddenly had a ton of energy and was unusually focused on whatever movement we were doing. I was paying attention to form, pushing myself harder, and actually wanting to increase my weights instead of negotiating with myself about if the lighter dumbbells were probably fine. I went up 10 pounds on some exercises, and I’m pretty sure I hit personal records across several movements that day.

Now, I’m not going to say the THC made me stronger. There is absolutely no way for me to separate the THC from the 200mg caffeine and the pile of other pre-workout ingredients I had also just consumed. But whatever the whole thing was doing, I had a great class.

The strangest part was occasionally forgetting that I was also high. Not because I couldn’t feel the THC. I could. There was definitely a buzz underneath everything else. It just fit surprisingly well with the energy and focus I already had going.

I was also way more social than usual. I was chatting more, having fun, and generally acting like someone who was thrilled to be exercising at lunchtime instead of somebody who had been working an hour earlier. That’s not my normal gym personality.

This is where I’d separate my experience from the science.

Research does not currently support THC as an exercise performance enhancer. Reviews of cannabis and exercise have generally found either no performance benefit or declines in things like maximal work capacity and ability to maintain effort (duh). THC can also raise heart rate, which is obviously worth remembering when you’re simultaneously exercising and taking a stimulant-heavy pre-workout. So I’m not crediting my new dumbbell numbers to weed.

There are much more obvious candidates in the rest of the formula. The 200mg caffeine is probably the least mysterious. An umbrella review of 21 meta-analyses found caffeine can improve several exercise outcomes, including strength, muscular endurance, power, and speed, although the size of the effect varies. A separate meta-analysis focused on resistance training found modest improvements in bench-press endurance and maximal strength.

Then there’s 5g L-citrulline. Research there is more mixed, but a meta-analysis of high-intensity strength and power studies found a small performance benefit, and another analysis found citrulline malate could modestly increase repetitions to failure during resistance training. That’s already a pretty convincing explanation for why I felt ready to work.

The ingredient list also includes 2.5g creatine monohydrate and 2g betaine, but those aren’t ingredients I’d expect to magically give me superpowers from one packet.

Creatine has some of the strongest evidence of basically any sports supplement, but it works by building up muscle creatine stores over time. The International Society of Sports Nutrition generally cites around 3–5g daily for maintaining saturated stores, with higher loading protocols used when someone wants to reach saturation faster. So the 2.5g here can contribute to a regular creatine routine, but it probably isn’t why I suddenly lifted more 30 minutes after drinking it.

Betaine is similar. A recent meta-analysis found improvements in maximal strength with chronic supplementation, particularly for lower-body strength, but those studies involved taking it consistently rather than drinking 2g once before class.

L-tyrosine is interesting too. Its research is stronger for helping preserve cognitive performance under stressful or demanding conditions than for directly making you stronger.

Basically, there are enough things going on in this packet that I don’t need to invent a THC-vitamin “entourage effect” to explain why I had a good workout.

This combination is actually starting to get studied because caffeinated cannabis products are becoming a thing.

A 2025 randomized human trial looked at oral THC with caffeine. Researchers tested cumulative doses of 7.5mg THC and 180mg caffeine, pretty close to Boost’s 12mg THC + 200mg caffeine on the stimulant side, although the study wasn’t testing people during exercise. They found caffeine made minimal changes to THC’s subjective effects, performance impairment, or metabolism.

That doesn’t tell us exactly what happens during a weight-training class, but it does mean there isn’t much evidence yet that caffeine and THC unlock some secret synergistic performance mode. My experience was simpler.

The caffeine felt like caffeine. The THC felt like THC. Together, I felt energetic, focused, buzzed, and extremely down to lift things. I’ll take that.

Let’s discuss the flavor. This Sour Raspberry is sour AF.

The first thing it reminded me of was one of those Emergen-C packets I drink when I convince myself I’m getting sick. It has that same tart, powdery, vaguely medicinal punch. It’s more sour than I’d choose purely for enjoyment, and there’s a bitter edge underneath it too.

But also: who is drinking pre-workout because it tastes incredible? Maybe that aggressive sourness is part of the ritual. My mouth got punched in the face by raspberry acid and suddenly it was time to do squats. Mission accomplished.

I’d just drink it relatively quickly rather than nursing it like a cocktail.

The Advanced version has 12mg THC per stick, which I consider a real edible dose.

If you already use cannabis regularly, that might sound completely manageable. If you’re newer to THC, 12mg before going somewhere full of heavy objects and complicated movements is absolutely not where I’d start.

MOOD makes a Standard Boost with 4mg THC, which makes much more sense for somebody with a lower tolerance.

You could technically use half of an Advanced stick and bring the THC down to about 6mg, but remember that you’re also cutting every other ingredient in half. Now you’ve got 100mg caffeine, 2.5g citrulline, 1.25g creatine, and so on—which I may prefer for next time.

So if your goal is specifically “same idea, less weed,” I’d probably just buy the lower-THC version. And regardless of tolerance, I’d try this during a familiar workout first. I would not take a new 12mg THC pre-workout and decide today is the day to learn Olympic lifting.

Other ingredients: 5g L-citrulline, 2.5g L-tyrosine, 2.5g creatine monohydrate, 2g glycerol powder, 2g betaine, 400mg Alpha GPC, electrolytes, niacin, and B12

The Advanced 12mg THC version costs $49 for 15 sticks or $89 for 30. That works out to about $3.27 per workout with the smaller box or $2.97 per workout with the 30-count.

The lower-dose Standard version, which has 4mg THC per serving, is slightly cheaper at $46 for 15 sticks or $85 for 30.

For a pre-workout that also functions as a full THC serving, I don’t think the pricing is crazy. A single canned energy drink can cost around that much before you even bring cannabis into the equation. And one stick, maybe even half of the Advanced, was all I needed.

MOOD currently ships this to: Arizona, District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, New Mexico. But I would still double check as the laws keep changing state-by-state.

Read our THC state-by-state buying guide to see how your state treats edibles like this.

I went into this mostly wondering why the hell anybody needed THC in a pre-workout. Then I had one of my best weight-training classes in a while.

I had energy, I was focused, I pushed my weights up, and I was having an unusually good time doing it. The 12mg THC was definitely present, but it never became the whole experience.

Would I say weed made me hit PRs? No. There’s too much caffeine, citrulline, tyrosine, and everything else in here for me to make that claim, and the research on THC as a performance enhancer doesn’t support it anyway. But did I enjoy working out on this way more than I expected? Absolutely.

The Advanced version is probably best left to people who already know what 12mg THC feels like. Everyone else has the 4mg Standard option. As for me, I’m bringing another packet to class.