Basically, I’m pretty wary of the adverse effects of drugs and becoming dependent on them. I’ve never done any, including drinking etc. But I’m curious about edibles, since it seems like there’s barely any downsides, besides the risk of the edible itself being too potent(?).
Starting out with an edible is a little hard-core. An edible high can last quite a while and if you don’t enjoy it there isn’t really anything you can do to make it go away. I vaporize my weed and since that activates the THC I’m able to eat it once I’ve saved up a bit. 1-2 tablespoons is enough to creep up on me after a couple hours and after a few more hours I’m basically to high to even play video games. I only do it when I have 2 days off in a row because the after high makes focusing pretty hard. If you do start out with an edible only eat a little bit of it. You can always go back for more if nothing is happening after 45 minutes but you can’t undo what you’ve already eaten.
I tried edibles for the first time last year and they’re really nice. I haven’t noticed any withdrawal issues and tend to go a week or so between high sessions.
People here are recommending smoking it first (which idk if I agree with but I’ve never smoked before), but I’d definitely recommend a 5 mg dose first if you do edibles. I did a 10 mg dose for my first time and I nearly threw up during the high. Your body will get a bit more used to it over time.
Smoke first. Micro dose (in theiry) by smoking one or two draws, waiting 20 minutes, then reassessing
This si much! It’s an awful idea to take edibles your first time because they can take 3 hours to kick in, last for half a day, and most importantly are a different drug - THC is metabolized to 11-hydroxy-THC when eaten, which gives different effects to D9-THC that you get from smoking. 11-HO-THC is more psychedelic, physical, and more terrifying if you overdo it.
When you smoke it, the most intense part only lasts about 30 minutes to an hour, so it’s not as big of deal if you take too much. It will also have much less body load and potentially scary effects like racing heart.
Smoking or vaping bud for first time is absolutely the way to go.
So, story time. Long-time abstainer; never touched weed in any form until I was well into adulthood. I tried delta 8 edibles last summer, and it was… Quite a trip. Delta 8 is less potent overall than “regular” THC, but it’s still weapons-grade compared to the ditch weed crap that was going around when our parents were kids. I was home alone for the weekend and I had a big-ass bag o’ Taco Bell in front of me, and after a few pulls of Baja Blast Zero, I just kind of said “fuck it, YOLO” and took triple the regular dose (3 x 25mg gummies).
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It took about 40-45 minutes for the gummies to kick in. I was walking up the stairs when my balance just suddenly went out, and I was suddenly climbing the stairs on all fours in slow motion. I wanted to turn my head to make sure I wasn’t falling down the stairs, but I got paranoid that I’d just make it even worse if I did, because I could feel my sense of time starting to get away from me. I clambered the rest of the way up the stairs like a damned chimpanzee, and managed to make it to my desk chair. I remember that my chest felt really heavy, like being under a weighted blanket or being laid upon by a particularly obese cat. My balance got even worse, and pretty soon, I was having trouble staying upright at my desk. I was worried about spilling my water on my PC or something, so I decided to make my way to my bedroom and wait it out while lying down.
All of this so far felt like an eternity, but according to my clock, it was maybe 7 minutes. I knuckle-walked to the bedroom, climbed into bed, and immediately felt difficulty breathing. I sleep with a CPAP machine, so I decided it would be a good idea to put that on. If nothing else, it would stop my throat from relaxing too much and closing up enough to possibly suffocate me. This is when the auditory hallucinations started to kick in, and I was seeing motion trails on things in the room. The noise from my CPAP unit sounded like a hospital ventilator, and the way the sunlight came in through the curtains made me think for a brief moment that I had blacked out and awoken in the emergency room, and that I was strapped to a hospital bed with a breathing tube down my throat. I kept reminding myself that, no, I’m in my own house, safe in my bed, and I’m not going to suffocate. Again, this felt like an eternity, but when I checked the clock, I had only been in the room for about 12 minutes.
The auditory hallucinations continued to get worse. It was windy outside and my next door neighbors were shoveling gravel into their garden. I kept thinking the wind noise was my CPAP, and that the gravel crunching sounds were footsteps. Whooosh. Howl. Scraaaaape. Crunch, crunch, crunch. I tried to sleep, but I was too wired from the aforementioned soda. I felt my pulse doing erratic things. Well, early on in the pandemic, I got my hands on a pulse oximeter just in case we needed to diagnose COVID (long or otherwise) by measuring saturated O2 or something. I clipped it on and tried to measure my pulse, which was pretty high. Not “impending heart attack” high, but definitely elevated. Like I’d been doing cardio or something. I was also keeping an eye on my O2 levels because, well, sleep apnea is a motherfucker, and that’s one of the stats that will crash when you’re choking on your own soft palate tissue. That was a little low. But the steady beeping from the pulse ox was feeding into the recurring delusion that I was in the hospital on my deathbed. I checked the clock, and this had all happened over the span of 4 minutes.
I eventually calmed down and made a valiant attempt to sleep it off. I remember dozing off and thinking I was 11 years old again, living in my childhood home and sleeping in my old bed. Eventually, I drifted off, still sort of between temporal realities. I woke up about 9 hours later, still woozy as hell, and completely ravenous. I wound up cooking and devouring an entire box of Hamburger Helper at about 2:30 AM. I think I spent the rest of the night/morning down a rabbit hole of Hexbear doomscrolling and checking out Type O Negative videos.
The high lasted around 14-15 hours total. I was coherent after about 8 or 9, but still impaired until 15-16. I’ve tried lower doses since then without any issues/anxiety/paranoia, but it does hang around for a long time. My main takeaway here was that if you are going to go way over the normal dose, don’t do it alone. My partner and I both took 3x doses on New Year’s Eve after our kid was in bed, and we were both fine. Giggly, but fine. I vaguely remember zoning out in the shower, and then coming in to find her eating cold pizza and watching an episode of The Grand Tour; I remember being really uncomfortable because Jeremy Clarkson was laying it on a little thick with the boomer :france-cool: jokes. She also kept referring to the cat as “that guy,” and he kept trying to steal her pizza because she was too impaired to stop him. Our brains were soup well into the following afternoon, but we were both able to keep it together.
Bottom line, edibles may hang around in your system long enough to blow away your entire day, so plan accordingly. Don’t overdo it your first time, and either have food on hand or a DoorDash/GrubHub/Postmates/whatever order queued up and ready to go BEFORE you take your edibles. Figure on 30 minutes to an hour before they kick in on a full stomach, possibly 25-35 on an empty one. Drink plenty of water both before and during. Do not, under any circumstances, try to leave the house or drive while you are impaired, especially if you’re in a state where the legality is iffy – even after the 10-12 hour mark.
