Fun with Edibles

[jducoeur]

Harkening back to the last post: remember the bit about me wandering into a random dispensary on Broadway, the night before our big "we've been acquired" party? It was bright, friendly, well-lit and full of Fun With Pot.

While there, I picked up a bag of three "high-strength" caramels -- 40mg CBD and 20mg THC-O each. (I'm still not clear on the difference between THC-O and delta-THC, which are called out distinctly on these things.) In the name of relaxing, I had tried one of those in the late evening when I got back to my hotel, maybe an hour before bed, and gotten no reaction at all, save being a little tired in the morning -- so much for high-strength, right?

Yesterday, I decided to do a more principled experiment, and took one mid-evening (I think around 5:30 or 6pm) instead of my evening cocktail, so I would be more properly awake and could detect the sensations better.

So, the answer to "why didn't I feel anything the first time around?" is that I was asleep. The caramel last night took somewhere between 2 and 3 hours to take effect -- and then hit me, quite suddenly, like a freight train. (Right before family meeting with my parents, yay.)

The experience wasn't bad, but I'm not sure that it was good. I haven't been that high in many years. Indeed, it felt closer to college memories of tripping than to what I would generally describe as "high". I didn't quite get to the point of full-on visual hallucinations, but I could feel them occasionally fighting to break out: the TV image seeming to be choppy, the people on Zoom seeming just a little wrong -- excessively sharp visuals, body parts just seeming out of proportion.

There was no euphoria per se, but I discovered that I get annoyingly and almost uncontrollably giggly when that high, and can't tell a story to save my life, because my thoughts get very disorganized. (I had to apologize to my parents for my rather disjointed telling of the trip to NYC -- fortunately, they are children of the 60s, and were understanding about "I'm quite a bit higher than I expected to be".)

Most disconcerting was the sensation of time "snapshotting" on me: I kept finding myself doing something, reasonably confident of what had come before but without a sense of continuity. In many cases, I was absolutely certain that I had just been dreaming a moment before, and wasn't sure whether I was still doing so.

I'm mostly better this morning: a bit muzzy-headed, but back down to Earth. My general sense is that I slept restlessly, with dozing/dreams that was vivid but not unusually interesting. I think the high may well have lasted a solid 6-8 hours, which puts the expense of the caramel in perspective.

Overall -- an interesting experience, but not necessarily one that I would recommend or do again. I'll probably continue to experiment with edibles a bit, now that they're increasingly legal, but the moral of the story is that 20mg THC is, for me at least, powerful enough to not be all that much fun. (And nothing about the experience felt relaxing, despite the large amount of CBD.) We'll see if lower doses are worthwhile -- the whole thing has reminded me that the reason I largely swore off of pot (freshman year of college, when it was everywhere) is that it makes me feel somewhat unpleasantly stupid...

ETA: a bit of online poking around indicates that THC-O is three times as potent as conventional THC, and yes -- sometimes hallucinogenic. So starting with 20mg of that was probably inadviseable...

Comments

[writerkit]

I've heard a variety of different descriptions of what exactly pot does to you-- I know people who take it for anxiety and your experience with it does not make it sound like it would be useful for that. I wonder if that's a person-response or a dose-response. I will be curious what the experience is like for you if you continue your experiments at lower doses.

Honestly, fear of a response like yours is why I never tried it; I didn't have anyone in college I trusted enough to be a spotter and I wasn't going to do it without one. (Now it's not an option; I don't even want to *think* about how it would mix with my existing meds.)

[jducoeur]

I have a small incentive to understand this stuff: arthritis runs in the family, and the grandmother who was severely crippled with it told me that pot was sometimes the only effective thing for the pain.

Hence, possible recreational use entirely aside, it's worthwhile for me to do some experiments now, so that I know how I react to the various aspects of the stuff should it prove necessary.

[kiya]

I suspect CBD is the anti-anxiety chemical primarily; I have a supply of CBD sources that I use to pull myself out of autistic meltdowns before I start screaming, crying, or gibbering incoherently.

My curiosity about other things is insufficient to generate the spoons for experimentation thus far.

[stitchwhich]

I have been trying CBD at 20mg doses when I can't relax enough to fall asleep (I have bad nocturnal leg cramping) and at that level it does relax me, enough that I'm dozy even though the cramping is still happening, so not becoming more and more tense from pain and tiredness. I don't think it'll ever become a nightly thing for me but on poor sleep days it does help. I appreciate being relaxed and dozing off and on.

[mindways]

At one point, my doctor suggested I try THC. Her fairly strong advice for edibles was, "Start with 1mg - it has a decent chance of doing nothing, but could be quite noticeable, it really depends on the individual - and work your way up slowly."[1] That's kind of water under the bridge for you at this point, but it jibes pretty well with "jumping in at 20mg is kind of a lot".

Not relevant to your recent experience, but she also recommended basically any other edible over gummies - said they seem to be somewhat erratic in how quickly one absorbs THC from them, creating variability both in onset time and effectiveness of any particular dose.

[1] = Online research seemed to corraborate this, both for the obvious reason of not taking too much and having an unpleasant experience that wouldn't wear off for quite some time, and for the less-obvious reason that taking smaller doses may make one's brain more sensitive to THC while hitting one's brain repeatedly with large doses may make it less sensitive, and that doing the former is more economical - $X of edible will go further.

[alexxkay]

Been there :-)
https://alexxkay.dreamwidth.org/681362.html

[jducoeur]

Yep, I was thinking about your story this morning...