Cannabis Tolerance

[phactor]

i used to smoke daily and when i took a months break and smoked again i got maaad high.. i also stopped smoking for 2 years about 4 years ago, and when i started smoking again i got mad high, now i smoke rarely and if its strong weed i can get really high of a few tokes, hash i can smoke quite a lot and still be functional (which is why i prefer some nice mellow afgan hash), but when i smoke ganja i can't concentrate or work or read anything serious for a good few hours, which is fine if i'm just hangin with friends, but i can't smoke a weed spliff before work in the morning and go about my day as if nothing had affected me ...

Yeah, that is why I would only smoke after work. I can't do serious work or anything while high. Its basically just time to chill either by myself or with friends, watch tv and maybe have a beer or two. I can really only puff indica dominant strains nowadays anyways.

I also prefer hash over weed. It is a bit harder to get hash in the US, but it can still be found relatively easily.

 

[Swift Serenity]

i cant even finish a joint when i smoke. but i do put about a g in it. still though thats why i love not smoking much

 

[jimmyblaze1]

weed smoker for 9 years -

I have had years of smoking every day, years of smoking a few times a week, and now I'm onto blazing up every coupla weeks...

I find this the best way - yo uget he most of of your weed, you can get high off toothpicks during the week and feel fine not shattered the next day all fuzzyheaded and shit, and you can still smoke up blunts and fat pure spliffs on the weekend.

The first time I stopped smoking weed was 3 years ago - when I picked up weed after that (3month break) it wa like when I first started smoking again in EVERY way...because of the heart rate speeding up so majorly I got "para" - not about anything, just abit anxious and stuff..like when I first started smoking...what I didn't realize was I just had forgotten what it felt like to get high and as soon as I realized I was feeling anxious coz my heart was pounding in my chest more the paranoia disappeared never to come back.

Cannabis tolerance is awful - it used to take me 1.8g high grade to get as high as 2 tokes on a pure spliff gets me now - plus I enjoy it more when I do smoke, coz I'm not constantly in a state where I'm "too chilledout"

 

[Newbierock]

The reason that your tolerance goes up is becasue. It's not like when you first started smoking, when you got high you stopped. (at least for me)

Bang on dude, I Remember the days where you'd pass a couple j's round and everyone would be cool. Nowadays it's just constant smoking no chilling and you ain't never gonna get as high.

Still good though.

 

[Swift Serenity]

you should slow down so you can "pass a couple j's round and everyone is cool"

 

[respect authority]

I've had a great deal of success in the past year scaling back my use - not by days, but by quantity. So, I still smoke practically every day, sometimes twice a day, but will keep it to a maximum of three hits taken in quick succession, and no more than one big one if it's in the day time.

Just as normal tolerance forms, I've found that reverse tolerance is true to an extent as well, so just one hit can get me quite high for a couple hours. Sure, I'm not getting knocked the fuck out every time - I save that for the weekends - but I've found it a really manageable way to smoke every day, still get good and high, and go through less weed! If you've got the self control to put the bong away after just a hit or two, I'd recommend trying it out. For me at least, it takes a solid fifteen minutes for the effects to really peak, so even if you don't feel high at all right away it can definitely creep up on you.

 

[nepalnt21]

im surprised this discussion hasnt generated a big & dandy. i was gonna start a new thread, but i thought it would be better to add my experience to an already established (albeit dusty) thread.

im not convinced that tolerance to thc happens like it does with other drugs.

over the last few months, ive been heavily experimenting with cannabis in varying amounts.

my most recent high-dose experiment was probably 5 days ago, with thc-distillate (estimated to be above 90% pure), where i ingested a gram total over the course of two hours.

the entire experience was nearly a 48- hour commitment, but thats another story.

two full days later, a paltry amount (estimated to be 100mg of thc) produced results exactly as i wouldve expected BEFORE my one gram experiment.

all the while, i was smoking the same variety of bud, which gets me the same amount of high from exactly the same amount. in fact, i was toasted last night more than the night before, and just awhile ago vaped a TINY amount (1/4 what i normally would), and i am quite satisfied.

my guess is that the physiological and direct brain modulatory effects of thc never cease happening in the same way, but it is merely our psychological reaction to the high that becomes desensitized. ie, if i smoke every day for a week, i get just as high every time, except the novelty has worn off. just a thought.

tl;dr my conjecture: tolerance is mental and not physical

 

[swilow]

tl;dr my conjecture: tolerance is mental and not physical

But its really not. Cannabis exerts tolerance in the way every drug does, by causing the target receptors to down regulate in response to heavy input of an exogenous ligand. You effectively end up with 'less' of the receptors THC/cannabinoids bind to. Subjectively, this translates to 'getting less high'. Its the way your body tries to adapt to a change in its biochemical makeup and an attempt to regain a sort of neurochemical equilibrium.

What's the difference between mental and physical anyway? The mind is not some seperate piece of hardware floating near the body. Its part of it. I think a lot of us first smoked when we were young and naive and so the experience was extremely new and novel in comparison to most previous experiences. Of course, you get used to most experiences and learn to navigate and understand them and so they can become less immediate or intense, but this has very little to do with actual physical tolerance.

The best way to test the theory of tolerance would be simply not smoking for a few days and then seeing how high you get. If you don't drive a car for a few days, you don't forget how to (yes, an imperfect analogy, I know! ), so its not like a few days of smoking leads you to forget the experience. All that is happening is a decrease in physiological tolerance.

 

[Moxious]

But its really not. Cannabis exerts tolerance in the way every drug does, by causing the target receptors to down regulate in response to heavy input of an exogenous ligand. You effectively end up with 'less' of the receptors THC/cannabinoids bind to. Subjectively, this translates to 'getting less high'. Its the way your body tries to adapt to a change in its biochemical makeup and an attempt to regain a sort of neurochemical equilibrium.

You're correct, but tolerance develops tied to environmental cues, including method of ingestion, so to some degree he may be getting some benefits if he's switching around with the two methods he's describing, but I wasn't totally clear on his procedure

 

[swilow]

Well, I certainly get stronger effects of a bong than a joint so method can't be discounted but we aren't really only talking about tolerance there. The speed with which a drug is taken up by receptors will alter subjective experience but ime causes much more rapid tolerance.

A surefire method for increasing the effects of a drug is using it less. Daily smokers benefit from smoking only once a day.

 

[nepalnt21]

it must be the one time per day thing. if i do this, i feel subjectively the same level of stoned as i did the night before, from the same amount (sometimes less)

 

[ShroomySatori]

It goes down fast. I've been smokin for 15 years and if I take so much as 4 hours between bong tokes, better yet 8, I won't be taking more than one bong toke before getting what I get out of cannabis that sesh without wanting more for a while and the high lasts longer too.

Once you get a tolerance it sucks, you gotta smoke way more, the euphoria diminishes, I get irritable as fuck, it can become expensive so I try to keep mine low... not very good at that. I enjoy hitting that bong too much.

 

[nepalnt21]

edibles raise my edible tolerance like crazy. just very odd how i can still get high from smoking a small bowl, all the while taking hundreds and hundreds of milligrams of thc.

 

[Moxious]

edibles raise my edible tolerance like crazy. just very odd how i can still get high from smoking a small bowl, all the while taking hundreds and hundreds of milligrams of thc.

This and it really frustrates me lol! If i'm smoking, a gram will last me about a day, which I think is totally reasonable. But there's only like 250mg THC in that absolute max. Why is it that taking a 250mg edible has no discernable effect? I've taken up to 500mg and felt nothing and just went for a smoke because it's less of a waste of money.

Really interesting how edibles are probably most economical for newbies but least for long-term stoners

 

[nepalnt21]

yeah, i used to think edibles were soooooo economical. now, i just smoke (even though im tired of letting smoke into my lungs) and go all out with one very high potency edible session once in awhile. it helps keep me sane lol