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Comment by numakerg | Hacker News Reader

> Edible marijuana takes time to absorb and to produce its effects, increasing the risk of unintentional overdose

No citation for this. Do they mean a larger than intended dose or a dose that results in a serious toxic reaction or death?

Better source:

Median lethal THC dose for a 70kg human estimated to be 4g [0], which is slightly over 1300 full joints (at 3mg per joint) [0]. I won't link them here, but a cursory web search showed me stores claiming to sell edibles with up to 1000mg of THC.

Also a good read [1] [2]

0. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/0095299930900161...

1. https://www.nature.com/articles/srep08126

3. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/cannabis-overdose-tox...

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You can't OD as in heroin/cocain OD but you can definitely take doses that will make you sick, trigger paranoias, &c. It's virtually impossible for an adult/teenager to die due to the direct effects of cannabis.

Does suicide count?

> The terrifying timeline of how a Colorado teen ate a pot cookie and then jumped to his death

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/0...

I meant that you can die from the direct physical effects (as in just having it in your system will kill you) of drugs like heroin, cocaine, caffeine, alcohol, &c. but drugs like cannabis can't be consumed fast enough to kill you (or you'd have to do it on purpose by injecting thc extract straight to your veins or something like that). It's the same with lsd actually, the lethal dose is 0.2-1mg/kg, the usual dose is 100-200ug. So a 75kg adult would need to consume 15mg of lsd = 15000ug = 150 normal sized blotters, which would cost you at least 150*5$, no way to accidentally OD on that.

But yeah if you're unstable in the first place, one too many beer or one to many joint and you'll do stupid shit. Anyway, always research, buy from renown sources, test your drugs (kits are available on amazon, ebay, &c.), do it in a safe environment with people you trust, don't use drugs when depressed or suicidal.

Larger than intended I would assume. There are plenty of reports of people consuming an edible, not feeling anything for twenty minutes, consuming more, and then having a bad trip.

Anecdotally, I've heard that story a couple times.

It's a bad trip insofar as it's _absolutely not_ what you expect, if it's your first time having so much edibles; even if you've inhaled heavily in the past, the manner of the experience changes dramatically when you injest, and varies by strain.

It can be more of an intense psychedelic experience, as opposed to the generally pleasant inebriating experience most are accustomed to with marijuana.

They mean a larger than intended dose. It’s not uncommon for inexperienced edible users to take more prematurely because they “don’t feel anything yet.”

> The new study analyzed thousands of cannabis-triggered emergency room visits in the greater Denver area, and found that edibles induced a disproportionate number of pot-related medical crises. Edibles were also more likely than inhaled pot to cause severe intoxication, acute psychiatric symptoms in people with no history of psychiatric illness and cardiovascular problems.

> He also noted that the only deaths in Colorado that have been definitively attributed to cannabis involved edibles, and those deaths were surprisingly violent. In all three incidents, including a murder and a suicide in 2014 and another suicide in 2015, the pot users exhibited extremely erratic behavior after consuming edibles, according to news reports and trial testimony.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/25/well/eat/marijuana-edible...

It's too easy to get uncomfortably high from edibles despite the warnings in my opinion. Call it unintentional overdose or not it can still cause real problems however you label it.

I cooked some edibles when I was a naive user and misunderstood the light effects of the THC absorbed in the mouth when eating the edible as being the real high. Waited 20 minutes, ate another, and drove home.

Luckily for me, I was only driving in apartment parking lot when it actually kicked in. Now I have a funny story to tell people, but what could have happened if this happened to someone with mental illness in public, or to someone driving longer distances? Getting uncomfortably high on edibles is a really common story hearing it online.

Everyone knows (or should know) to be careful with edibles. I smoke a lot but they still scare me and I avoid them.

I don't think overdose necessarily means serious physical reaction or death. If you eat a weed brownie and become way higher than you expected (and freak out as a result), I think it's reasonable to call that an overdose.

All the cookies are gone and the subject is has abandoned the study in favour of learning the ukelele.

Its referring to ingesting more than the desired amount, not "ODing" in the lethal sense.

Is there a listed Median Lethal Dose (LD50) for THC or CBD?

It is possible to overdose on nicotine if it's ingested (50mg ~60mg for a 150lbs adult, according to the CDC's website), but I'm not sure if there is such an amount defined for THC ingestion.

It's a comically large amount of THC to reach the LD50. 192mg/kg.

How do they calculate the LD50 given there are basically no THC caused deaths?

192mg/kg is on the higher end of estimates, which do range widely because they are based on animal studies. However, it's not comically large. Do the math, and it comes to just over 14 grams for a 75 kg (165 lb) adult. That's more than most people would ever consume in a day, but it's far less than the 600 gram lethal dose of alcohol for that same person. Alcohol kills far more people because it takes 100 - 250 grams of alcohol for a 75 kg adult to get drunk, so the lethal dose of alcohol is only about 5X the intoxicating dose vs. 100X the intoxicating dose for THC.

For THC it's somewhere around your own body weight. I suppose you might get the munchies real bad and OD. Don't bake a dozen hash carrot cakes with cream cheese icing all at one time.

I'm not sure there is real harm in baking a dozen hash carrot cakes. Just don't eat them all.

LD50 for cannabis is debatable but many put it at close to a gram of pure THC per kilogram of weight, intravenously. To put it in perspective caffeine and aspirin has an LD50 around 200mg/kg.

There's a reason why so many people say no one has overdosed on cannabis. For someone who weighs 65kg, they'd have to ingest approximately 65 grams of 100% pure THC for a 50% chance of dying from it. 99.95% THC crystals sold in dispensarys go for around $90 a gram, so someone who wanted to try to test this theory would be spending around $6k in weed to try to do in one sitting

It depends on your weight and how much tolerance you have, but a fatal does could be as little as 2 grams (2000mg) of THC, which is about 100X what it takes to get high. Since marijuana is about 20% THC, and you only actually absorb about half of that when you smoke or injest it, the minimum lethal dose is probably about 20 grams, though some people may be able to tolerate a few times that amount. Fatal marijuana overdoses are rare, about 200 per year in the U.S., but they do happen. Claims that you can injest your body weight are based on articles written by advocates who can't do basic math.

There are no known deaths purely from marijuana overdose.

It's at least much more respectful in terms of passive smoking, for other people

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