Herbsman
02-27-2008, 05:32 PM
The best advice I have ever been given with regard to eating/drinking cannabis are as follows:
- Make sure you have an empty stomach
...before consuming the cannabis preparation. This ensures that whatever it is you're eating or drinking will start getting digested straight away, and fast. If there's food already in your stomach, this will delay digestion and absorption of the THC, cannabinol etc.
- Don't eat anything for a while afterwards.
For the same reason as above.
- Make the smallest possible portions. The aim of eating cannabis is to absorb cannabinoids. obviously! the cannabis-laced food that you're eating takes time to digest. the more you eat, the longer it will take to digest, and the slower the THC etc. will be released into your bloodstream. For example, if you put 1/16oz of ganja into a large pie, and an 1/16oz of ganja into a few small biscuits, then the biscuits will get you stoned faster.
I am guessing that the slower the THC is released, the easier it is for the liver to process it and break it down before it can reach your brain... therefore you get less stoned. This is purely untested hypothesis though.
- Don't use too much fat.
You obviously need to use fat to enable the thc to dissolve and mix with whatever you're making, but don't use too much. fat takes much longer to digest than sugar and starch does. you just need enough to dissolve the thc; any excess fat will just needlessly increase digestion time, reducing the rate of cannabinoid release
- Use heat.
But not too much. Heating the bud in butter to make cannabutter is probably the most common way of making edible cannabis products; the aim is usually just to dissolve the THC. But an additional effect, apparently, is to make the cannabis stronger.
In The Science of Marijuana, Leslie L. Iversen reckons that heating causes carboxylic acid THC derivatives to break down, to form additional THC. Thus, apparently, gentle heating actually increases the potency of the cannabis!
Too much heat, however, can cause THC to evapourate. So don't heat it up to too high a temperature.
- Don't use too much sugar.
I have read in quite a few places, including the UKCIA (http://www.ukcia.org/culture/eat.php). This site (http://members.tripod.com/~PowerHitters/) says:
If too much sugar is present, the fats containing the active resins will be detained longer in the stomach. Too much sugar... can interfere with the digestion of the fats and their payload of THC.
And the best of all... don't be tempted to eat too much! It's easy to regulate how high you are when smoking, because the effects begin to take place quickly. You simply smoke until you feel high, then stop when you are happy with that level of stonedness. You can't do that with eating. Because it takes so long to take effect when eaten, it's very difficult to judge how much to eat. If you eat too much, you won't know until later on, and you can't do anything about it! So just start with small amounts, and build up from there.
- Make sure you have an empty stomach
...before consuming the cannabis preparation. This ensures that whatever it is you're eating or drinking will start getting digested straight away, and fast. If there's food already in your stomach, this will delay digestion and absorption of the THC, cannabinol etc.
- Don't eat anything for a while afterwards.
For the same reason as above.
- Make the smallest possible portions. The aim of eating cannabis is to absorb cannabinoids. obviously! the cannabis-laced food that you're eating takes time to digest. the more you eat, the longer it will take to digest, and the slower the THC etc. will be released into your bloodstream. For example, if you put 1/16oz of ganja into a large pie, and an 1/16oz of ganja into a few small biscuits, then the biscuits will get you stoned faster.
I am guessing that the slower the THC is released, the easier it is for the liver to process it and break it down before it can reach your brain... therefore you get less stoned. This is purely untested hypothesis though.
- Don't use too much fat.
You obviously need to use fat to enable the thc to dissolve and mix with whatever you're making, but don't use too much. fat takes much longer to digest than sugar and starch does. you just need enough to dissolve the thc; any excess fat will just needlessly increase digestion time, reducing the rate of cannabinoid release
- Use heat.
But not too much. Heating the bud in butter to make cannabutter is probably the most common way of making edible cannabis products; the aim is usually just to dissolve the THC. But an additional effect, apparently, is to make the cannabis stronger.
In The Science of Marijuana, Leslie L. Iversen reckons that heating causes carboxylic acid THC derivatives to break down, to form additional THC. Thus, apparently, gentle heating actually increases the potency of the cannabis!
Too much heat, however, can cause THC to evapourate. So don't heat it up to too high a temperature.
- Don't use too much sugar.
I have read in quite a few places, including the UKCIA (http://www.ukcia.org/culture/eat.php). This site (http://members.tripod.com/~PowerHitters/) says:
If too much sugar is present, the fats containing the active resins will be detained longer in the stomach. Too much sugar... can interfere with the digestion of the fats and their payload of THC.
And the best of all... don't be tempted to eat too much! It's easy to regulate how high you are when smoking, because the effects begin to take place quickly. You simply smoke until you feel high, then stop when you are happy with that level of stonedness. You can't do that with eating. Because it takes so long to take effect when eaten, it's very difficult to judge how much to eat. If you eat too much, you won't know until later on, and you can't do anything about it! So just start with small amounts, and build up from there.