That micro-dosing method is the only way I ever smoke. I call it “one metered lungful”. I use a small glass bubbler, and coughs are rare. Plus, there’s nothing smoldering, wasting weed.
@purplehorseshoe might be able to help with this since she works for a weed shop in Michigan
Oh, I’ve been watching this thread since it was started. 
Frankly, I wanted to 1a.) see what other folks had to say, and 2b.) avoid barreling in being all, “Shove aside, the EXPERT is here, rawr!”
I do not disagree with anything that’s been posted - even if some of it seems contradictory. So much depends on personal body chemistry, mental health/illness, etc.
Sure! You’d be surprised how often I get something similar.
“Hi, I haven’t smoked since …” { looks me over } “… before you were born. Whaddya got that’s not all newfangled and weird?”
You can buy what’s referred to as loose flower (that’s your basic “bag o’weed”) or you can buy pre-rolled joints.
I rarely smoke a whole joint all the way through - it’s okay to put it out partway through, and re-light it later. (If they sell it to you in a little airtight tube, best way is to just drop it back in & close the top right away. Snuffs out the ember immediately, without you trying to stub it out like a cigarette and risk bending or breaking it.)
I don’t think there’s a one size fits all for cannabis effects. Never noticed any difference between sativa and indica, BTW. And there are so many custom strains I can’t keep up. They don’t seem that different to me. Except for something called 9 Lb Hammer… sex that was so amazing that I actually forgot my own name.
CBD never did squat for me; not for pain, not for anything else. Other people swear by CBD or say you need a little THC with it or it doesn’t activate. Meh. If CBD makes you depressed, don’t use it.
When I smoke, no matter what the strain is, I get bad anxiety and disorientation for about 20 minutes but then it goes away and it’s totally worth it for the euphoria, the intensified imagination, music, and being in my body. Yoga and dance are awesome. Edibles aren’t as intense, but I’m more careful with them.
There are things I don’t mix with it. First, chaotic social situations. Second is wayfinding in an unfamiliar area. I’m already bad with maps. Third is any activity requiring fast responses and aggression, like martial-arts sparring. Soooo bad
I can’t read facial expressions as well. Short-term memory is gone, which impacts logical reasoning and comprehension of new & complex material.
Over the years I learned how to get the most out of it. Since OP asked about anxiety, I’d also say just keep trying different things and don’t mix edibles. Edibles are made different ways and even something with the same amount of THC/CBD/This/That can act very different. Mixing edibles can lead to vertigo and unpleasant feelings.
I know nothing about edibles. If I had some, I’d be afraid that if I ate too little, the buzz would be insufficient, and too much I’d be couchbound. By the time I dialed in the dosages, I’d by out of the edible, and would have to start all over with some new eats. That wouldn’t be a problem if money was no object.
Be aware, edibles don’t work for some people, about 1 in 10. I am one of those “1’s.” I can eat whole pan of brownies or a whole package of gummies, and I get absolutely nothin’ except maybe a brief sugar high.
Try chocolate bars. Start with 1 square and increase by 1/2 square until you are dialed in. Should take 4 squares max. Then you still have 6 squares left.
This 100%. And with edibles, the temptation might be to do more when you get impatient waiting to feel something. You could very well end up taking a lot more than you wanted to. Or you may have taken too little and have wasted several hours waiting to get high and it’s too late to try more. It can take 6+ hours before you feel any effects.
And this.
I’m assuming 10mg/square? This is good if each increase in dosage is a new session. I wouldn’t recommend this in one session. And a newbie ending up at 40mg could be in for a very overwhelming, very long lasting experience. It might be a couple of days before one feels relatively normal.
Well, yeah. I meant but didn’t spell out that the “dailing in” would be over multiple days.
Jebus! Some of the stuff I’ve seen, 40mg would launch a repressed elephant.
I’ve never been good at smoking weed. Either I felt nothing or I got too high. I have tried to learn to breathe properly, its just something I never really did properly.
Even after taking multiple puffs, I think I only had microdose symptoms like mild depth perception issues. Taking multiple hits just gives me mild effects like drinking a couple beers.
I feel with edibles I can properly titrate doses. Maybe I’d take 2.5mg on my first time and see what happens. Then next time take 5mg. If thats not enough, do 7.5mg next time. Those chocolate bars that are made up of 20 different tiny bars, each one 5mg of THC each would make it easy to measure my dosage.
I really don’t mind if the low doses don’t do anything for me, its more to learn where my baseline level is. My understanding is that for new smokers, generally 2.5 to 10mg is the sweet spot of THC. I feel I can hit that more effectively with edibles.
When I do smoke I prefer a bong since the smoke is less hot that way, I’ve just never been able to properly gauge my smoking dose. Doing a one hitter feels like it’d do nothing for me.
One time I got tired of smoking doing nothing and I smoked half a joint made up of about half a gram of decent weed, and I got extremely high and extremely anxious doing that. If THC is measured by weight, I’d assume I probably ingested at least 20-30mg of it.
The last time I smoked pot, I got too high, got extremely anxious, and had a paradoxical reaction in that I started vomiting. I realized I had been smoking it like the weaker stuff I’d last used many years before, and hadn’t realized how much higher I was getting until it was too late. I’m in a state where it’s legal (and I was that time as well) but I am being a stickler about federal law for my own reasons. I hope it changes soon.
According to this website
https://profofpot.com/thc-anxiety/
they mention how in low doses, THC lowers levels of glutamate (excitatory neurotransmitter) but in higher doses THC increases glutamate and lowers GABA. But they mention that the difference between a low and high dose can be only 5mg or so
But wait, things are about to get complicated. There is extensive evidence that although low-dose THC is anxiolytic (reduces anxiety), high-dose THC is anxiogenic (increases anxiety). Just one recent example is a 2017 study showing that 7.5 mg of oral THC could reduce anxiety in a stressful situation, but 12.5 mg increased it.
So finding that sweet spot sounds hard when it is such a small range.
Back when I was in college (late 90’s) I used to make what I referred to as ‘pot pills’. I’d extract the THC into olive oil and put into empty horse pills shells (big capsules you can buy at heath food stores). My math said that to get a good buzz, you’d have to take six of them (and the math,luckily, was correct*. Having never had edibles before, which is basically what this was it was a bizarre feeling to be sitting around chit chatting with someone and suddenly realize you’re stoned out of your mind. Typically the ‘stoned out of your mind’ feeling is accompanied by having just smoked 5 minutes earlier and your throat being really raw from coughing. By the tome these kicked in, not only did you not have the [physical] ‘i just smoked’ feeling, but you typically forgot you even took the pills.
I always thing back to the time a bunch of friends and I were in line to check out at some store at the mall and one of them suddenly blurted out ‘I think those pills just kicked in’.
*though there was a subtle reminder that you took them in that any time you burped over the next few hours it tasted like olive oil.
I have not smoked much weed in the past 5 or 6 years now, nor do I use edibles that often.
Vaping is the way to go.
The cartridges are cheap and last a long time because large hits are not necessary. Cartridges are specific to strains and have been tested and so list their terpenes and the percentage of THC present overall. There’s no particulate matter that your ingesting and no heat going in your mouth and throat; very easy to take a 1 second hit. Not as easy to take a 10 second hit (the limit on most pens/devices), mind. Some pens (all vape batteries can be called pens IME) allow for voltage control so less or more is vaporized each second that you are hitting. And 510 (the thread count that they accept) pens can be had at most dispensaries and smoke shops for anywhere from $5-30, depending on how fancy you want to be (some have LEDs in them and stuff).
Yes, just to reiterate, be very careful when taking edibles. They take very long to kick in and it’s very easy to take too high a dose. Take it from NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd. Anybody who tried a pot brownie in high school and then ate a second one because nothing was happening can relate to her tale:
Agreed, it can take 3 hours or more to hit. But luckily a lot of edibles come in 5mg servings. However I have heard of people who thought 1 serving = 1 chocolate bar too, which is about 20 servings.
My current issue with getting cartridges is that with no real oversight due to it’s quasi-legal status, you can end up with some real shitty substances in there. It wasn’t that long ago that people were using (off the top of my head) Vitamin E Acetate and a lot of people ended up hospitalized, some dying IIRC.
When it’s fully legal, regulated and manufacturers/products are inspected, I’ll feel a lot more comfortable.
Hell, just a few days ago I found out about Delta-8 THC (a legal-ish drug similar to standard D9-THC). I never did buy any, but even then I couldn’t bring myself to risk the vape pens.
Pennsylvania’s Medical Marijuana Program has pretty tight controls on what can be present in vape cartridges. But yeah, buying them on the black market who knows what you’re getting.
Nevada has good controls too IMO. I defintely wouldn’t recommend buying vape carts from anywhere but a licensed dispensary.
[quote=“kayaker, post:38, topic:941886”]But yeah, buying them on the black market who knows what you’re getting.
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Wasn’t that “vape lung” epidemic a couple years back caused by knockoff-brand THC cartridges where the manufacturers used vitamin E oil as a cheap solvent or something? You don’t hear about vape lung anymore so I guess that’s been sorted out, but as convenient as I’m sure the cartridges are, I still wouldn’t trust them. I have a vape but it’s for flower only.