One of the free weeklies here in Seattle has a column just for stuff they have tried, recommendations and good shops to hit up. It looks terribly confusing.
To be honest, smoking is for old school hippies who have hit the “get off my lawn” stage of life and refuse to change. Vaping is far superior. By not combusting the material, you get far less of a residual smell from use. It tastes far better than the smoke. It is far easier on your lungs and you cut out the carcinogens from combustion. The “high” is a bit different but that’s because you are not taking in the poisons that combustion adds to the equation, so you are getting a more pure THC and CBD effect. If you want to use marijuana by inhalation, vaping is absolutely the way to go.
Edibles, as mentioned, are a bit more tricky but can be very effective. If your edibles taste really bad that is because the compounds were concentrated using a cheap method. Someone who knows what they are doing can make great edibles with very little if any marijuana taste. The most important thing is to understand the dosage levels with edibles. It is easy to over medicate and while it’s not harmful physically, it can make you both nauseous and paranoid. If that happens the best thing to do is to sleep it off. Finally with edible, the effects are delayed due to digestion. NEVER make the rookie mistake of eating a brownie and after 15 minutes of feeling nothing, eat more because it didn’t work. You will regret that decision in approximately 45 minutes to an hour.
Finally you can also take the compound orally, in pill form. A concentrated oil in a pill capsule is a great way to avoid the taste issues and know your exact dosage.
Disclaimer: I am a medicinal marijuana patient with rheumatoid arthritis and until I got approved for medicinal use, I was popping opiates on a daily basis to control pain. I now only use the hard stuff for major flares and the pain is well controlled without daily doses of oxy. I use a very nice handheld vape and my house doesn’t reek of pot smoke. I have tried all of the methods I’ve mentioned and the vape works best for me although I do on occasion use concentrates.
Hmmm, it was like a month ago and not enough that I winced. I think like $20-30 for a big old chocolate bar that was shaped like like a hersheys bar in that it was easily separated into small individual dose squares. I want to say it was 14-16 doses. My wife found a whole square to be too much so she was subdividing further.
I was a hick. We had joe’s pot grown in his closet. Strains weren’t even something I heard of for YEARS.
Vaping is king for sure, both dry herb based or oil/wax based. There is a surprising amount of taste variance you would never get from actually smoking that comes through in vaping.
I think if vaping had been around 20 years ago, marijuana would be legal everywhere. It changes things a great deal for sure.
Another rookie mistake for edibles is that people don’t realize the length of the effect from an edible. You need to clear a chunk of your day for enjoyment of them.
It might not affect everyone else the same, but I’ve kinda grown tired of edibles. Even if I just have something small with 5mg-10mg in it, it makes me so unbelievably groggy the next day, almost like an alcohol hangover. This is even if I take it on the weekend in the early afternoon, giving me hours of lead time.
Smoking / vaping, on the other hand, takes effect much more quickly, and leaves me with practically no “hangover” in the morning where I can get up with full energy just like any ordinary morning.
Only tried it once, didn’t like it much, but then, I don’t drink much, either. Not that I don’t like a warm buzz or the equivalent, but it doesn’t take much to make me feel weird or worse, so I tend to not do much along those lines. But, as a college teacher now for over twenty years, and having grown up and gone to school in a region and era where drinking was so strongly ingrained into the culture that it was inseparable from it, I’m a super strong supporter of legalized marijuana (also for its medical value, as opiates as pain control suck). You can be irresponsible and stupid with any substance, but I truly think we’d all be better off with more weed users and fewer boozers.
I never smoked pot, just wasn’t interested and the idea of inhaling smoke into my lungs just puts me off in general. I did try some edibles, and those were pretty good. Altered mental states just really aren’t my thing (including alcohol). I could take it or leave it.
My girlfriend is a different story. She deals with some chronic pain, and the drives we’ve taken to Colorado have been a godsend for her. On really bad days she’ll still have to go for the prescription meds, but she’s often just able to eat a gummy or two which has really cut down her dependence on them. These are mostly CBD, so she’s not getting a real buzz off them, they just really can help her manage pain and sleep better.
I find it so absurd that our supply runs to Colorado are illegal and could result on some real trouble. On top of that, she’s had to stop using edibles altogether recently because she’s looking to change jobs and needs to be able to pass any drug tests.
Legalizing marijuana makes sense from any angle you want to look at it. Unless you’re a pharmaceutical company, I guess. Jeff Sessions and his ilk can go die in a fire, as far as I’m concerned.
But first we should stuff their pockets full of some tasty dank nuggets and then toss them in the fire. Then we can all sit around the fire getting lit whilst watching our enemies burn!
Man, that sounded way less psychotic in my head.
Perhaps, but the poetry of the idea has some sound merit.
So are there actual prescriptions now for marijuana in pill form so the dosage is set and consistent? So one would go to drug store and get their script filled. Or has that never been allowed?
Well, in pill form, what you are usually getting is a specific compound, like thc. The effects will be slightly different than actual weed, which contains other cannabinoids. But THC is generally regarded as the primary active compound.
Apparently there are other things now:
https://www.leafly.com/news/strains-products/are-time-released-cannabis-pills-the-future-of-medical-marijuana
I’m not sure what’s in them. Could potentially be cannabis oils.
What is most common in pill form is a concentrate commonly known as RSO or Rick Simpson oil. Its a whole plant extract and they can be pretty precise on the content and level of THC and CBD in the extract. Im not sure how its handled in other states, exactly but at this time, in Michigan, RSO and other concentrates are only legally obtainable through a licensed dispensary. Its still kind of the wild west with the dispensaries as the laws are still fairly new and are constantly being changed and updated. You have to do your homework to find a quality dispensary because many are fly by nite operations that are there for sheer profit. They have little to no quality control. That being said, there are also several legitimate and very helpful dispensaries in my area. The good ones source quality medicine from legitimate sources and have their product tested with that information readily available, so you know exactly what you are getting.
Yes, for both THC and more recently CBD. I don’t think either are pure, but rather, measured.
The past few years have seen a ton of work on extracting the major constituents of cannabis, as well as some of the other cannabinoids. The concentration of terpenes is also something being researched for manipulation as well.
As an interesting update to a post I made earlier in this topic, my friend with severe fibromyalgia has been taking CBD pills the last few days (did I mention she totally lives in a legalized state. Yeah, definitely.) and has seen significant improvements.
She’s also unable to sleep very well, so maybe related, but still! First thing aside from methadone that’s really chewed through her pain levels.
The mechanism by which MJ helps pain isn’t totally understood yet, but it seems to operate differently than opiates.
It doesn’t actually block the pain, as much as make you care less about it, and that in itself can help the pain by relieving stress.
It certainly seems to be a nobrainer when the alternatives are opiates which are killing so many people today.
Yep. I pass by two or three opiate PSA billboards just on the way in to work (about a 15-20 minute commute) each morning. Unfortunately, this will likely be one of the very last states to ever legalize marijuana.
This is where THC would help: helping with sleep, helping with appetite, etc.
This a thousand times. I’ve lost a lot of weight, can’t sleep, have anxiety, chronic pain that warps into extreme pain depending on which organ has decided, " I want to escape this dudes body by any means necessary", and tries to leave Alien style.