Cooking Marijuana & Hash: Part 1
Ingestion of Medical Marijuana and Hash
Ingesting marijuana and hash, aka eating it, brings very different affects compared to smoking. Veteran smokers are often floored by a standard strength edible. Why is this? What about tolerance? Why do high tolerance smokers get so high from standard edibles?
The simple answer is that smoking Cannabis creates delta-9-THC, and eating it makes 11-hydroxy-THC, which is 10x more psychoactive than delta-9-THC.
When you smoke marijuana or hash the delta-9-THC goes into your blood, and then straight to your brain, where THC binds to receptors in your brain. This is why we feel high immediately after smoking.
Edibles are different. When you eat an edible it goes into your stomach, where it gets digested and enters your GI tract. The delta-9-THC in the edible enters your blood stream after about 30 minutes. Once the delta-9-THC enters your blood stream from your GI tract it goes to your liver. Your liver does something amazing. It converts delta-9-THC into 11-hydroxy-THC, which is TEN TIMES MORE PSYCHOACTIVE. This 11-hydroxy-THC then goes to our brains and binds to our cannabinoid receptors. Then seasoned smokers feel like we are almost tripping on Cannabis edibles.
The affects of edibles take longer to come on due to how it enters our blood and moves to our brains. These affects also last longer, and can be more powerful due to 11-hydroxy-THC. The contents of your stomach, body size, metabolism, and other biochemical factors will make the affects of edibles slightly different for everyone.