Anybody gone edibles only?

[Truth Seeker]

Anybody gone edibles only?
Would love to hear your experience transitioning to edibles, tinctures only and giving up any forms of inhalation.
It seems like a natural process the older one gets when weighing the risk/reward of any kind of inhalation usage.

Any tips, pointers etc?

Bought the Ardent Flex to properly decarb and it does seem better than the oven method.

 

[FlyingLow]

I don't like it for exclusive use, but it is great for evenings.
I don't like it for exclusive use because it is not immediate, difficult to dose, and all too easy to inadvertently nap through the day.

YMMV

 

[Philabrookla]

My girlfriend did go edibles only for a couple months to save her vocal cords, she's been teaching a lot of fitness classes and already had an acid reflux/vocal fry issue. Vaping, even at low temps, was making it worse.


This week she feels like she's gotten on top of her voice issues, and the last batch of edibles we made were a bit too psychedelic/sleepy. So vaping is preferable. Gonna make another batch of edibles today for the holidays/in-laws (with fresh herb, and not 2x the amount).

Even with perfect edibles though, vaping and the high from vaping is just a hit more fun. So it's nice to have both around, but I doubt we will ever go edible only.

 

[Zipford]

I was using tinctures fairly exclusively for a while as an edible (not sublingual, which I could never get to "work"). Once you get your preferred dose dialed in, it is pretty easy to get predictable effects and to adjust as needed. I really enjoyed the gradual onset and overall effects. One downside is re-dosing, if you'd want to when it wears off, because it can be impractical -- a bunch of wait time and likely a larger dose needed back-to-back.

I stopped because edibles raised my triglycerides through the roof. As in the doctor calls you in a panic over a level that could cause acute pancreatitis. I stopped edibles and vape exclusively after that issue, and my bloodwork is better than ever. Edibles are processed through your liver, and are really a different animal from vaping or smoking.

If you make your own, obviously be careful about the dosage until you have a sense of the strength.

 

[florduh]

Titration with vaping is much easier than edibles. I feel like my tolerance would skyrocket going edible only.

 

[Nina]

I stopped because edibles raised my triglycerides through the roof

yikes!!
I switched to edibles a few weeks ago and have generally been pretty happy with things....
I concur with those who find edibles less euphoric, but I find them more soporific and that's the effect I'm most interested in. I'd been feeling pleased about making the switch because my lung capacity is noticeably better, sounds like I should be checking in with my liver/pancreas tho

 

[Zipford]

Titration with vaping is much easier than edibles. I feel like my tolerance would skyrocket going edible only.

In terms of tolerance, I found that mine plateaued at around 25 mg. That is with daily use, but just once a day. Onset would be a little over an hour after taking it, with the effects lasting around 2 hours. Getting the dose right does take some trial and error, and probably a few days of getting little to no effect.

With regard to triglycerides, they were over 1,000 so truly very high. I had quit alcohol a few months before entirely in favor of edibles, so was expecting improvements in my bloodwork. When my doctor called with the alarming results, I quit the edibles for 4-5 days and had another blood draw, and my triglycerides were back to normal. It turns out that THC can cause the body to overproduce a protein ApoC-111, which is linked to elevated triglycerides. I was taking about 25 mg of tincture daily. Interestingly, daily vaping does not have the same effect, and if anything my numbers are better than before, but it is well known that processing THC through the liver has a different effect.

If you're using edibles once in a while it's probably no big deal at all. But if you're going to take edibles on a regular basis, it's worth knowing about the triglycerides.

 

[BabyFacedFinster]

I did get into edibles as a way to decrease my vaping needs at night. I usually pop something early in the evening when I'm settling down. That type of high tends to be pretty eye-dropping and stoney. Just right for before bed, but not great during the day.

I am also having a preference right now for a tincture to be added to food. Making chocolates and gummies adds a lot of sugar to my diet. An mct or alcohol based tincture dropped into my tea is an easy option. I have not had great results from tinctures under the tongue, but dropped into food or drink I believe the carrier quickens the onset compared to a regular edible.

 

[Zipford]

I did get into edibles as a way to decrease my vaping needs at night. I usually pop something early in the evening when I'm settling down. That type of high tends to be pretty eye-dropping and stoney. Just right for before bed, but not great during the day.

I am also having a preference right now for a tincture to be added to food. Making chocolates and gummies adds a lot of sugar to my diet. An mct or alcohol based tincture dropped into my tea is an easy option. I have not had great results from tinctures under the tongue, but dropped into food or drink I believe the carrier quickens the onset compared to a regular edible.

I had the same experience trying to put it under my tongue -- I never seemed to get the sub-lingual onset 20 minutes later, as promised. So I just started washing tincture down with water, in which case it just acted like an ordinary edible. It may have had a quicker onset, but I never paid enough attention to tell.

 

[shredder]

About 98% of my usage is edibles, and has been for roughly 2 years. I feel better because of it.

I think one secret is to have choices, and make them yourself, keeping track of the strength in mg, and then label.

I have some for sleep, some for a quick lift, strong, weak and in-between.

In my freezer I have 12 varieties of weed capsules. They have the varietal characteristics of the underlying variety. If I want a blue dream buzz I take a blue dream capsule. I also have a few hash and rosin capsules, but use more weed capsules.

I have a super silver haze tincture that i use with a drink, but I much prefer mct oil infusions. If I only had one edible, God forbid, it'd be a mct oil inusion.

The last infusion I've made is powered by feco and rosin with cbd isolate and added terpenes. The Swiss army knife of infusions, lol.

I make the infusions 4+mg per drop, so I count drops and do not have to eat a ton of oil.

I'm currently taking a sleep capsule that has single, double, and triple decarbed indica dominant sift hash. Still experimenting with sleep caps and havnt settled on any favorites yet, but I'm getting closer.

I also have 3 varieties of infused chocolate bars. Dark chocolate cherry with real dried cherries, cookies and cream and a plain dark chocolate. I use feco in these for ease of use and less weed taste.

The only time my tolerance gets out of whack has been after a dab. I did 3 dabs in the last year, lol.

I use anywhere from 50 to 150mg per day total.

I've just been taking a night 50Mg sleep capsule because of an ongoing stressful situation the last couple weeks with no real problems.

Did I mention powdered cannabis, or infused honey butter?

 

[Shit Snacks]

I recently got a Levo from another member here, I have not made edibles, proper edibles, and a long while, so I'm planning to try again with this using a French press coffee filter filling the entire chamber instead of that little pod based off a hack I read... Levo2 has a built-in decarb feature, I've literally never decarbed before, and like I say it's been a long time since I've used greens instead of browns when I cooked and cooking it all, but the stuff I have is not that fresh and sticky so I was thinking I wouldn't need to decarb when I tried? But anyway we'll see how it goes, maybe I will decarb first, should I just grind it up put it in foil and bake it in the oven at 150F for like 10 minutes??

My girlfriend did go edibles only for a couple months to save her vocal cords, she's been teaching a lot of fitness classes and already had an acid reflux/vocal fry issue. Vaping, even at low temps, was making it worse...
This week she feels like she's gotten on top of her voice issues,

I don't know how many of different vapes you have, I feel like you do have a good collection with variety, but I think in her case in particular it would be important to have one with a good vapor path that offers a lot of cooling? And no particulates getting through to irritate further... I really like using dry pieces that have right angle bends, and I am using drop-down adapters with all my water pieces now too, I feel like I've noticed a big difference compared to when I used to use more direct draw style vapes with limited cooling?

And @Zipford I wonder if that liver stuff is really related specifically to the tinctures more than anything else?? Interesting stuff...

 

[Nina]

It turns out that THC can cause the body to overproduce a protein ApoC-111, which is linked to elevated triglycerides

thanks for sharing this info I'll have to do some research!

 

[shredder]

I was using tinctures fairly exclusively for a while as an edible (not sublingual, which I could never get to "work"). Once you get your preferred dose dialed in, it is pretty easy to get predictable effects and to adjust as needed. I really enjoyed the gradual onset and overall effects. One downside is re-dosing, if you'd want to when it wears off, because it can be impractical -- a bunch of wait time and likely a larger dose needed back-to-back.

I stopped because edibles raised my triglycerides through the roof. As in the doctor calls you in a panic over a level that could cause acute pancreatitis. I stopped edibles and vape exclusively after that issue, and my bloodwork is better than ever. Edibles are processed through your liver, and are really a different animal from vaping or smoking.

If you make your own, obviously be careful about the dosage until you have a sense of the strength.

What type of edibles were you using that raised your blood levels?

My triglyceride level have been on the high side but nothing crazy and I eat a lot of edibles.

I found a link that links triglyceride levels to high thc use, but through smoking

Understanding Heart Disease

WebMD's guide to the symptoms of the various types of heart disease.

www.webmd.com

 

[Zipford]

What type of edibles were you using that raised your blood levels?

My triglyceride level have been on the high side but nothing crazy and I eat a lot of edibles.

I found a link that links triglyceride levels to high thc use, but through smoking

Understanding Heart Disease

WebMD's guide to the symptoms of the various types of heart disease.

www.webmd.com

I was using Wishing Well sativa tincture sold by NETA in Mass, roughly 25 mg every day.

I know I am a sample size of 1, but there are studies that found THC can raise triglycerides. Not specific to edibles per se, but that's just how it luckily turned out for me (I can still vape, after all, and I'm not sure why other than the liver processing THC differently). And I'm sure it doesn't affect everyone the same way -- I don't want to be alarmist, but I did have this very specific situation when I changed to tincture exclusively.

And the chronology is pretty striking. My triglycerides number has been checked for decades and has been in the 200 range forever. I switch to edibles exclusively and 3 months later I'm over 1,000. I quit edibles for a handful of days and my number is back where it started. The obvious alternate explanation is a faulty test, though I tend to doubt that (and in my case would have been motivated reasoning: I don't want to quit edibles, so I'll assume the test was wrong.)

I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade, although I think too many people consider cannabis an unalloyed good thing. It's wonderful, but it's still a drug, and this was just a weird side effect I experienced personally.

 

[Nina]

I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade, although I think too many people consider cannabis an unalloyed good thing. It's wonderful, but it's still a drug, and this was just a weird side effect I experienced personally

Being very honest I did feel gloomy upon learning about this problem, but knowledge is power and truly I thank you!!
Realistically most of us understand that many things come with a cost, knowing and understanding those costs means we can make better choices, gives us a reason to monitor our consumption and find the right balance for our own situations.

 

[Truth Seeker]

I was using tinctures fairly exclusively for a while as an edible (not sublingual, which I could never get to "work"). Once you get your preferred dose dialed in, it is pretty easy to get predictable effects and to adjust as needed. I really enjoyed the gradual onset and overall effects. One downside is re-dosing, if you'd want to when it wears off, because it can be impractical -- a bunch of wait time and likely a larger dose needed back-to-back.

I stopped because edibles raised my triglycerides through the roof. As in the doctor calls you in a panic over a level that could cause acute pancreatitis. I stopped edibles and vape exclusively after that issue, and my bloodwork is better than ever. Edibles are processed through your liver, and are really a different animal from vaping or smoking.

If you make your own, obviously be careful about the dosage until you have a sense of the strength.

Was your Doctor sure it was edibles that raised the triglycerides that high? This is VERY concerning to myself and I've never seen that before in my research of edibles and THC. Was your diet terrible at the time or were you able to narrow it down to edible use only? Did your fat, salt, and sugar intake go higher or was it strictly a side effect of edible use? Thanks for brining this up as it's the first time I've heard this.

 

[Zipford]

Was your Doctor sure it was edibles that raised the triglycerides that high? This is VERY concerning to myself and I've never seen that before in my research of edibles and THC. Was your diet terrible at the time or were you able to narrow it down to edible use only? Did your fat, salt, and sugar intake go higher or was it strictly a side effect of edible use? Thanks for brining this up as it's the first time I've heard this.

My doctor accepted that it was the most likely cause, after I explained the situation to him. I can't say he was "sure" that was the cause, but stopping the edibles was followed by my number returning to its baseline, so we got the result we wanted and a reasonable explanation for the increase and decline. After the bad result, my doctor had prescribed me a medication to bring them down, which I specifically DID NOT take before the follow-up test 5 days later, to try to only change my edible intake.

From when I stopped drinking, I did not make any other changes that should have impacted that number: no dietary changes, no exercise changes or anything like that. I stopped drinking and started taking tincture daily -- to be honest I was looking to see an improvement in my numbers because of that change, so when the opposite happened, the edibles were a natural suspect to me (because that was the only real change). And when the number returned to normal after a roughly 5 day abstinence, that sealed the deal in my mind (considering there is an apparent link between THC (not specific to edibles) and elevated triglycerides). If I google THC and triglycerides, the first thing I see is webmd citing some study that THC can cause an increase in a protein called ApoC-111, which can raise triglycerides. That said, you can probably find studies saying the opposite.

Even I would be comfortable taking an edible once in a while, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't have this effect on everyone. But for someone switching entirely to edibles, which do get processed through the liver, I just wanted to share my experience.

 

[pretty-chill]

"Marijuana-induced increases in apoC-III levels might occur through chronic stimulation of hepatic cannabinoid receptors (CB1 and/or CB2) by its active ingredient, Δ9tetrahydrocannibol (THC). Thus, chronic MJ abuse might cause increased transcription and/or translation of apoC-III in the liver with corresponding changes reflected in the plasma of these patients."

Heavy marijuana users show increased serum apolipoprotein C-III levels: evidence from proteomic analyses - Molecular Psychiatry

Marijuana (MJ) is the most commonly used illicit drug in the United States. Its abuse is associated with cognitive dysfunctions and increased resistance to blood flow in the cerebral vasculature. In addition, MJ abuse is associated with increased risks of potentially serious cardiovascular...

www.nature.com

So looks like this effect may be due to THC and/or other cannabinoids directly binding to CB1 and CB2 receptors in the liver. So it stands to reason that with oral cannabinoid consumption, you would have some THC or other cannabinoids in the liver that can directly bind to CB1 or CB2 receptors. This effect is also possible through inhalation, but you would likely need to consume A LOT more before you start reaching significant levels of active cannabinoids in the liver rather than just metabolites of cannabinoids. In that study, heavy using participants were claiming to be smoking up to 350 joints a week (maximum) and at a minimum of 78 joints a week:

"The heavy users smoked the equivalent of 130.8±73.0 joints per week (n = 20; range 78−350)."

So yeah, that's probably more than sufficient to start reaching high cannabinoid levels in every organ, cell and tissue in your body

 

[Truth Seeker]

My doctor accepted that it was the most likely cause, after I explained the situation to him. I can't say he was "sure" that was the cause, but stopping the edibles was followed by my number returning to its baseline, so we got the result we wanted and a reasonable explanation for the increase and decline. After the bad result, my doctor had prescribed me a medication to bring them down, which I specifically DID NOT take before the follow-up test 5 days later, to try to only change my edible intake.

From when I stopped drinking, I did not make any other changes that should have impacted that number: no dietary changes, no exercise changes or anything like that. I stopped drinking and started taking tincture daily -- to be honest I was looking to see an improvement in my numbers because of that change, so when the opposite happened, the edibles were a natural suspect to me (because that was the only real change). And when the number returned to normal after a roughly 5 day abstinence, that sealed the deal in my mind (considering there is an apparent link between THC (not specific to edibles) and elevated triglycerides). If I google THC and triglycerides, the first thing I see is webmd citing some study that THC can cause an increase in a protein called ApoC-111, which can raise triglycerides. That said, you can probably find studies saying the opposite.

Even I would be comfortable taking an edible once in a while, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't have this effect on everyone. But for someone switching entirely to edibles, which do get processed through the liver, I just wanted to share my experience.

Thank you so much for sharing this with me. I have to watch my A1c, liver enzymes and triglycerides so this is of great interest to myself as I've been eating a lot of decarb weed after buying the Ardent FX. A negative about cannabis is munchies after smoked, vaped or eaten and the best food choices are not always the ones chosen at the time the cravings for crunchy, salty, fatty foods hits. Triglycerides are essentially a measurement of fat in our bloodstream so it's shocking that a tincture would produce this effect in your lab work. Thanks again!

 

[Nina]

A negative about cannabis is munchies

Not sure about anyone else but for me the munchies are 'easier' with edible cannabis, food still tastes better but not in such an extreme way and I dont get the same drive to eat way more than I would when not stoned!

 

[shredder]

I stopped drinking and started taking tincture daily

Just curious, why would you use a tincture (alcohol) after quitting drinking?

 

[florduh]

I specifically got into smoking and then (quickly) vaping cannabis because Tylenol almost killed my liver. I was in a tremendous amount of pain for months as my liver healed and couldn't take any oral pain reliever. My doctor was fine with inhalation, but specifically said to refrain from edibles for at least a year. This was years ago. Forgot all about it until now.

 

[Zipford]

Just curious, why would you use a tincture (alcohol) after quitting drinking?

The tincture I was using was based on MCT oil, not alcohol -- it was the Wishing Well tincture sold by NETA in Mass. I also quit alcohol very close to 100%, but not strictly like an alcoholic would. I thought (and still think) cannabis would be healthier than alcohol, but the small amount in a tincture would have been OK with me. But it just happened that what I was buying had MCT oil instead of alcohol.

 

[Nina]

My doctor was fine with inhalation, but specifically said to refrain from edibles for at least a year

Can we infer that edible cannabis is more likely to be a problem if your liver is injured or compromised in some way?
That those without pre-existing liver problems are probably ok?
(Obviously it makes sense to have a blood test anyway just in case)

 

[invertedisdead]

What kind of edibles were they?
Were they full of butter and cholesterol and stuff?

Even vaporized THC is processed by the liver eventually so it would make me think your results were from something in the edibles themselves.