Seems like your opinion on it is based around you not having a good contact back then. For example here in the UK I’ve never seen brick weed, the closest is Jamaican sess and that was very rare too.
Weed isn’t that much stronger, people just have better access to good weed and people know how to grow it better. I was smoking what would be considered top shelf today, almost 20 years ago.
The one thing that has changed a lot is genetic diversity in regards to terpene expressions.
I can agree to a great degree to be honest. Sometimes it’s nice to have a smoke without worrying if my mind is coming back from Mars or not.
I can’t speak too much on the matter though. I just recently harvested some extremely potent weed. However I’ve grown some cultivars with higher amounts of CBD, and have personally noticed less of that THC head-change when there is CBD there.
Maybe consider either a 1:1 THC:CBD strain/cultivar, or if you’re able to: grow your own. There are some varieties with high THC though also including some CBD, as auto flowers which are generally quite good for beginners to advanced growers and low maintenance for the most part.
Edit: another suggestion is to just buy some CBD flower, and mix it into your bowls/joints/blunts for some counter to the negatives of THC.