I’ve “heard” that when one smokes pot, when you first smoke it, there’s a bit of a delay between when you finish smoking to when it takes full effect. If you’re body is pulling whatever it does out of the smoke as soon as you’re inhaling, I presume it’s going straight to your blood stream and thus should have an immediately intoxicating effect. What causes the delay?
he he
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I think I’ll go eat some chips.
It may be absorbed into the bloodstream right away, but it’s absorbed in the lungs (and in the mucous membranes of the upper respiratory system). It takes some time for the drug to reach the brain because the THC-laden blood has to go first to the heart. When it reaches it, only a part of it will go to the brain immediately; some will go to other parts of the body. (During this journey, some of the THC will go into other tissues, particularly fatty ones.) In the brain, only some of the THC will actually migrate out of the bloodstream in the first trip, though it may be a large percentage of it. THC is a non-polar molecule that is much more soluble in fats (including the brain) than in water (such as in blood). Eventually, most of the THC will reach the brain, and it could take a bit more time for it to start causing psychological effects, though most of the reactions it causes are probably quite fast. No drug, however, can take effect instantly. There is always a delay as it is distributed to the target organs and begins to cause its effect.
wait - what did you say before that?
When they show heroin junkies in movies, they typically show them injecting the heroin, then waiting a second or so, and then their body sort of convulses and they get a painful/ecstatic look on their face. Is that just Hollywood garble? Does it take a few minutes to get the hit from heroin like it does from pot?
When I went for surgery years ago, I could feel the whateevr they put into my drip, (it was COLD), go travel to my heart then up my neck then I didn’t feel much anymore. It was a matter os a second or two tops. Since the mechanics are about the same, I’d assume that it works the same way for heroin. Maybe Qadgop will 'splain.
Maybe marijuana has to do something more than just get into the brain. Maybe there’s a chain reaction that it triggers. IIRC, LSD works this way.* IIRC, it’s pretty much gone from the body by the time one starts tripping.
*Yes I know that the delay for LSD is related to the blood-brain barrier, but I’m not talking about that, am I?
The word on the street is, when smoking marijuana, it usually takes about 7 seconds for you to feel it.
This information is not to be considered reliable. It seems in the ballpark to me, though.
Different types of marijuana supposedly have different delays in the time it takes to really intoxicate a person. Hence the term, “creeper,” to denote marijuana that sneaks up on someone because it takes a little longer to reach the peak intoxication level. I’m not sure if this is true or just psychological, but it seems reasonable that different strains could work at different speeds.
From what I understand, though, the first intoxicating effects take some amount of seconds (10-20 at most – the seven seconds mentioned sounds reasonable) while the full effect can be felt in minutes.
A lot of this has to do with perception, too. Marijuana intoxication is not exactly overpowering, so though people may be feeling the effects, I don’t think they necessarily notice the exact point at which they become intoxicated or when the level of intoxication peaks.
I’d count the changes in heartrate, blood pressure and other physical effects as part of the high, and I expect that’s what is felt first … the ‘full effect’ can take 30 minutes or more.
Marijuana will take the same amount of time to initiate intoxication as the CO from any regular cigarrette - applies to a non smoker. However, unlike a cigarrette where the “kick” dies off quite soon(regulars do not even feel the “kick”), the effect of marijuana increase with the number of times the smoke is inhaled and takes about 3 to 4 minutes to reach the plateau stage. Continuing smoking after that will not increase the level of intoxication, the latter being dependent on the “quality” (how much TLC it has) of the weed. The time to get “high” has nothing to do with the intensity, although it might feel that way since a good “high” registers better.
uh, ok, but what did you say just before that?