Strongly agree.
As the THC percentage has increased, so has my anxiety when I smoke it. If I go out of my way to find lower quality weed, I enjoy it much more.
As the THC percentage has increased, so has my anxiety when I smoke it. If I go out of my way to find lower quality weed, I enjoy it much more.
We can buy vape carts, prerolls, candy, drinks, and much more.
Finding the "dose" that works perfectly for you is quite simple and available everywhere.
It's a vast improvement over what was there before.
A small amount of some low THC, high CBD product is pleasant without being intoxicating, and so much easier to come by with everything being tested and labelled.
To me it’s comparable to the single after-work beer I have long enjoyed, vs the high grade stuff being more like… an after-work 5 shots of vodka.
Medical is legal where I live, and I like both (and hybrids) depending on what I'm doing. In the evening, I would stick to Indicas and Indica-dominant hybrids. Since I work, and I never use while working, I use Sativas far less, but I like them for weekends - walks, chores, etc.. It's a bright feeling and more of a head-high, but under the wrong circumstances, that bright feeling turns dark.
Particularly in the evening, Sativas can make you buzzy and unsettled. My gf thought she hated herbs until she tried Indicas. She knows how and when to use now, so she can enjoy Sativas under the right conditions.
Again, this is just my personal experience, but it tracks with my understanding of the strains, and I hope it's helpful to someone.
Can you elaborate? This is very contrary to my experience.
. . . NM I looked it up and see what you're referring to. I'll have to look into it more, because, again, it doesn't sync with my experience.
>Even if it's not most of the strains you buy today are hybrids.
I've never had an ounce of difficulty finding Indicas or Sativas at dispensaries. Maybe there are more hybrids (never took the time to count the options), but if there are quality options available for all three, I don't see how it matters. And, within hybrids, there are Indica-dominant and Sativa-dominant strains.
Finding things they call Indica or Sativa. Afaik given that there's no objective difference between the two you can call it anything you want.
I'm a relatively inexperienced smoker so take the following with grain of salt but this is what I've noticed.
Since it's a plant there's definitely differences seed to seed, soil to soil, season to season, flower to flower, etc.
Weed these days is so potent small differences in flower smoked add up to large differences in THC/CBD/etc consumed. Like you're not carefully weighing out the amount you put in a bowl. It's done by eye and by volume which both have a large margin of error.
Then there's smoking technique. How you hold the lighter, how you inhale, how much water in the bong, and so on all impact how much smoke is produced and consumed.
Then we're talking about perception. How high you are is really how high you perceive you are. And that can be affected by mood, tiredness, what activity you do after smoking, and so on.
In my experience same flower, same technique, same amount, etc can lead to wildly disparate outcomes. Most of the time it's about the same. But every so often I find myself blasted to the moon or not really feeling much.
But all that said, Sommeliers can repeatedly recognize specific vintages where I can mostly just recognize broad categories. Maybe there's weed sommeliers out there that can do the same.
IIUC, they're just saying that they prefer less potency, but have trouble finding it in the current market.
That doesn't necessarily mean they want only weaker weed to be sold.
edit to reply to below: California already has accurate labeling and is being called out as a problem
An industry that can profit off addiction is being observed drastically increasing the level of an addictive substance in their product. You expect consumers to be perfectly informed. I don't. Thus, it is reasonable to discuss whether an at what threshold a product should be labelled as higher-risk. If the behavior of an industry seems malicious enough and its public health impact adverse enough, regulation is necessary.
I'm arguing in the abstract.
Seriously, if you smoke a joint of high-grade then you're doing it wrong.
It's as if the only thing available is vodka, but I'd like a beer. Drinking less vodka doesn't make it a beer. They're completely different things.
> but I can't because the shit around these days is so sticky and potent.
And I call BS on this.
I've met people who prefer smoking joints over other smoking methods. Sometimes I like to have a joint, also. Why are we wrong?
It's probably best if you don't do anything that could be potentially harmful.
The next day, I bought a one-hit dry herb vaporizer, to be heated with a butane torch. I wanted to feel "high," and the joint had not worked. I used the same approach of waiting twenty to thirty minutes between hits with the vaporizer. In most of these hit attempts, the marijuana ended up combusting instead of vaporizing, as I had heated it up too much. For the first three hits, I did not really feel anything. However, the fourth hit was very rough, burning my throat, and sent me into a coughing fit.
Over a period of about fifteen minutes, the effect began to take hold. I decided to take a shower, and I started freaking out about halfway through, calling out to my wife. I thought I was having a stroke and suddenly felt like I did not have control over my body. I went up to bed and lied down for a long time, where my mind was racing with obsessive, intrusive thoughts. It felt like I was not the person controlling my actions or my thoughts. The feeling that I would be stuck like this forever - that I had lost my mind and entered some state of irreversible psychosis - persisted for at least an hour while I desperately tried to relax myself. After some amount of time, I got out of bed and threw up in the sink and the toilet, then went back to lie down. The entire night, I felt unable to express what I was thinking, but it was filled with the greatest worry that I have ever experienced. (I say this as someone who had actually experienced a couple panic attacks over a decade ago.)
The next day, when I woke up, the effects had subsided, but I was still left with a feeling that I was milliseconds behind the present moment. The worry that I would never feel normal again continued even after the high had diminished. It's a very difficult feeling to explain in hindsight, but after a bit of research, I think I experienced what's called "derealization." This continued into the rest of the day and a bit into the next, and it was a really scary situation for me, since I feel like I always need some amount of control over my mind. (Alcohol has never made me feel this way, though.)
Anyway, the derealization effects were gone after two days, and now, I'm afraid to try marijuana again. I would really like to enjoy the pleasant feelings reported with its use, but I'm worried that my personality is such that I just can't lose control over whatever part of my brain is affected by THC. But I also partly blame the salesperson who sold me something with such a high THC concentration, when I specifically requested something with a low concentration.
Unscientifically I would recommend maybe next time smoking with someone else, and getting a lower % thc, try for a hybrid strain, a mix of Sativa and Indica. If you go on the website of the dispensary it will list the details. Don't over complicate it, just choose something in the 15% range if available. Then just sit down and watch a comedy or something. Have some snacks available. Only take a couple hits and call it a day. The next week try 3 etc. Its cumulative and can sneak up on you.
Either way good luck :)
It just seems like a surprisingly tricky thing for me to figure out. Another recurring thought I had during the experience is that most people don't feel this way after smoking and that there must be something wrong with me. Maybe that's true, I don't know.
20-30 mins between hits is too much, if you don't feel anything after 5, max 10 minutes it won't come. You describe it like that, so it contradicts 25 years of my experience though...
It may be true that weed won't be the best for you, depends. I had this experience with few people, it was all just in their head, too much anxiety and fear but that's enough to ruin any trip, anytime. But I would give it another (different) chance before you give up on it completely.
If you have friend who is doing it and you feel comfortable around them, try it with him/her. They can 'guide' you and calm you down if required. Remember, sugar will take trip down if needed (plus it tastes amazing when high). Or most junk food like hamburgers, pizza etc., also an experience above any Michelin * restaurant when sober.
Yeah, I know thirty minutes is too long between hits, but I was trying to be as conservative as possible about it. That's why I'm kind of upset that, even being as careful as I was, I still ended up freaking out.
I can't think of anyone I'd feel comfortable smoking with. My wife was sober the entire time, thankfully, and helped a lot. She tried to guide me out of the negativity, but I ended up just feeling like I was too afraid to tell her she wasn't really helping. I did read about the sugar thing beforehand, but in the moment, eating was the last thing I was thinking about. A glass of juice might have helped, in hindsight.
Prototypical bad trip.
Unless you are a mutant or were not inhaling at all you were certainly ingesting high amounts of THC and were getting higher while not subjectively realizing it. By the 4th hit you were far gone.
Would be like being annoyed that the world was spinning after you drink a 5th of vodka...
Personally, I prefer the efficiency of the stomach and digestion system myself. It seems much more reliable.
Most likely right about that.
I know its a very individual experience for people so it seems like you have a higher threshold for "feeling high" and you blew right past it before you noticed. Vaping plant matter is typically a more concentrated way to ingest. If anything I'd try combusting small amounts and gauging your reaction that way. However I know people that get anxious or have panicked previously are more inclined to do so again, you get scared of having a similar experience and prime yourself to do just that.