Why hold your breath for Marajuana?

I’ve always heard that you are suppost to hold the Marajuana smoke in your lungs for as long as possible to absorb the THC. However, we normally don’t hold in cigarette smoke for as long as possible, inhale, exhale.

So my question is: Does it take longer for THC to diffuse into the blood stream, if so why? How is the rate of Diffusion of THC and Nicotine compaired?

The point of smoking pot is to get as much of the drug into the bloodstream as soon as possible.

The point of smoking cigarettes is to get the flavor and the nicotine in the lungs. But you don’t really need to force that much nicotine into your system – the amount in a regular lungful is enough, and you’re generally able to smoke more of a cigarette than you are of a joint.

So it’s really not about the diffusion. Nicotine doesn’t get you high the way THC does, so you’re not in a rush to get it into your system.

I’d also have to say that the cost and ease of aquisition/assembly/consumption of a cigarette vs. a joint merits far less effort to use the cigarette ‘efficiently’ as opposed to your blunt.

That’s exactly what I was going to say, I can get a pack of cigs 24 hours a day and when I run out I can walk up to someone on the street smoking and bum one. When I smoked pot I was engaged in something illegal that required me to access limited dealers.

what the others said. Economy of use. Back in the day a pack of smokes was 50 cents, weed was thirty dollars an ounce. (Dating myself there). One was a cheap easily obtained commodity with no legal risk or ramifications, the other was expensive and had all sorts of legal landmines involved. Twenty five years later, I realize the legal stuff was more dangerous. Wish I had given up both instead of just the illegal stuff.

Our lungs are not very efficient when it comes to passing gases and other substances from inhaled air to the bloodstream. You might think that exhaled air has very little oxygen and lots more carbon dioxide, compared to the air you breathe in. Actually, the exchange isn’t that fast. Our breathing would be more efficient if we inhaled, waited a couple of seconds, then exhaled. It’s the same with inhaled drugs, such as Advair® and, ah, that other thing. The instructions for Advair, an asthma drug, tell us to hold the drug in the lungs as long as possible. The sooner you exhale the dust cloud of Advair, the less you absorb into the blood.

Just remember that when you use an inhalable prescription drug, or ordinary air, for that matter.

According to some past threads on this topic, holding marijuana smoke in your lungs doesn’t get you higher. I nearly brought this up the last time I hung out with some musicians who were getting stoned, but I thought better of it.

What about those who don’t inhale?

I wonder if it also has something to do with lack of oxygen making the user* feel *higher. If I take deep breaths and hold them several times in succession, I get a little light-headed even though all I’m inhaling is air.

Don’t know about holding it in, but I’ve heard that if you cough after taking a hit, it opens your capillaries, causing more THC to enter the lung allowing you to get “higher”. No cite though…

Digglebop, not sure if it counts as a source, but Bridget Fonda’s character in Jackie Brown makes that exact point.

In my cigarette smoking days, I’d often do just that after going without for quite a while, trying to get that initial nicotine load. Yeah, I was pretty addicted.

Here’s a factual answer, even though the question might be a nudge to Bill Clinton. :wink: All mucous membranes have some capacity for contact absorption, so even a non-inhaler gets a little bit of the substance. Smoke that’s briefly held in the mouth leaves some particulate smoke on the wet surfaces, and all of those particles will eventually be swallowed. The mouth, the esophagus, and everything down the line can absorb the drug.

Summarizing, the non-inhaler gets a small amount of the effect of the smoke, but less than the inhaler.

There is a difference between inhaling a powdered, inhaled drug and inhaling a gaseous drug, which is the form I am assuming THC is in when it is inhaled. In your Advair example you want the powder to settle out in the large airways where the inflammation, etc, related to asthma occurs. Prescribed inhaled drugs should be used as directed because different breathing patterns can target different lung areas.

Absorption of THC however will mainly occur in the alveoli where there is a large surface area for the drug to diffuse to. This process will equilibrate pretty rapidly.

The little surplus carbon dioxide in an exhaled breath really only shows that your body doesn’t produce all that much during a normal breathing cycle. The lungs can only exchange as much carbon dioxide as needed to maintain steady state, regardless of how quickly they do so. Holding your breath might increase the amount of oxygen you extract from that lungful of air (especially as your blood oxygen level drops) but your overall rate (i.e. unit/time) of oxygen absorption will drop.

They get skipped next time 'round if they’re just gonna waste it. :stuck_out_tongue:

I’d love to know if there has been a study on this because I would swear it is true.

I always thought it was because it was illegal and expensive. You don’t do a French inhale with a quarter-inch roach.

If it were legal and cheap, wouldn’t pot smokers smoke it more like regular cigarettes, i.e. (1) suck in mouthful of smoke, (2) inhale air together with smoke, and (3) exhale?

They’d go through more pot that way, but need more to get the same affect.