A few days ago, after I wrote
that article about AVB, I decided to eat some straight AVB, without benefit of a meal or extraction into oil, so it would just be the AVB itself with no lipids to help or hinder it. I wanted to see how that would affect the absorption speed and whether it would be as strong as eating it with fatty food. Since I knew it would taste kinda bad, I put it into a capsule. And since my wife can only use capsules or edibles, I tamped it way down into the capsule, just to give me an idea of how much would fit in there if she needed a larger dose.
Well, I learned a lot from that experiment, including that
it can take four solid hours to feel the effects and that it’s not necessarily THC, dehydration, or low blood sugar that cause you to green out!
Here is the exact log I wrote during the experience, followed by plenty of explanation:
"OK so as an experiment I took 1/4 tsp of ABV at 6:15 pm in a capsule, not near a meal.
Almost nothing happened until an hour or so ago, complained to my wife that it wasn’t nearly enough because i only felt around a
[2] and there’s less chance of getting high with ABV, so I could easily go to a [4] without worrying about being too high.
Now it’s 10 pm and it just kicked in. holy shit, my body is a [7] and my head is about [4], but my perception is way off. my body feels weird and my arms look skinny and time dilation. the whole package feels like a [8.5], but not uncomfortable just rather weird.
The worst part is I just ate another 1/4 teaspoon on my salad 5 minutes ago!
(it tasted great BTW)"
Some elucidation is needed here. I ate more than an hour before taking the capsule and didn’t eat for at least an hour afterwards, to let the capsule get digested at its own pace as much as possible. I do have to eat every two hours or so, and I ate and drank at regular intervals. I was totally feeling fine (and continuing to get higher) until nearly 11 PM. Point is, I wasn’t dehydrated or overly hungry (most people report at least one of these conditions after every greenout).
A bit after 11 PM, I started to feel decidedly bad. Like approaching greenout. I alerted my wife and sat down on the kitchen floor. She got my handy-dandy blood pressure tester and I managed to record an astoundingly low 88/48 right before I couldn’t sit up any more.
I kept breathing very slowly and carefully while laying on the floor, and luckily did not pass out (my wife would have called 911, you betcha). But it was pretty damn scary, and the closest I’ve ever come to passing out without actually doing it.
I can say this categorically though: if I had been anywhere near this
high, I would have passed out for sure. The fact is (neuroscience nerds alert) that because of all the THC burned off in the pass through my vaporizer, I wasn’t actually feeling any higher (in my head, that is) than a [4]. Normally, when I
do go up past [7], almost any kind of little physical problem will cause my mind to go into a panic feedback loop and make me feel like I’m about to pass out. Yet there I was, lying on the floor and calmly coming up with ideas for my family to help me with (cold washcloths on my forehead and stuff like that). But this time it was “just physical”. I was having these
physical problems from some kind of overdose-like effect (which I will explain presently), but I wasn’t high enough for them to trigger a panic attack.
Hell, just looking up “human digestive system” on Wikipedia for some extra information today made me queasy.
Oh, and the extra dose on my salad? I felt that kick in around 2 AM, but it wasn’t a big deal. I can’t really quantify it, but it was more or less what I would have expected from 1/4 teaspoon of loose AVB sprinkled on my salad (rather than tamped down tightly into a capsule).
Anyway, I had some suspicions about what caused this — it certainly wasn’t the dose itself, since 1/4 teaspoon of AVB should not do this to me at all — so I had to do a number of experiments. Double-blind they are not, but the results make sense.
The first thing I did was to simply try the exact same dose — 1/4 teaspoon of AVB — on my pizza, to compare it to the 1/2 teaspoon I had used to test dosing for the Pot Pizza article. Sure enough, it was a light [3] or so, about half the results of the larger dose. No problem.
But my hypothesis is that it wasn’t the amount of the dose, it was the physical characteristics. Except for some
powdered hash capsules I tried two years ago, all the capsules I’ve been taking have contained either one of my coconut oil extractions (aka Canna Caps), or loosely-stuffed plant dregs
from one of my oil extractions.
This time, the AVB was tightly packed and almost like a powder. And I think that it all tended to hold together in my gut, so it all hit my bloodstream in a rush (Update:
chem_monkey on reddit explains how this could work). My
Canna Caps never work that way; in fact, they reliably work in 45 minutes every time for me with no surprises and consistently get me to the same level, again every time.
So today I put 1/8 teaspoon of AVB into a capsule, trying to pack it in tightly. Then I realized there wasn’t even enough AVB for my tamper to reach the top of the pile. So I poured some
Spirulina powder down there to fill the gaps (it’s not good for your head, just good stuff in general And I took it, and I waited.
Not a damn thing for three hours.
Suddenly, there it was. And it wasn’t anywhere near the next-to-nothing [1.5] or so I could reasonably expect from a tiny dose as this, but definitely around [6]. Note: I’m talking about an estimated “total experience level”, since as I’ve noted, AVB’s “head effect” is lessened due to the removed THC, so you’re getting nowhere near as high
per se as you normally would. In fact, I had to lay down for awhile before it went away.
So, even though this is all kind of rough estimates, it still make sense. If “compressing the charge” in a capsule gives this turbo effect as if you took four times the actual dose, what would the same effect applied to 1/4 teaspoon have? Answer: it would be the equivalent of a full teaspoon, or around level [12]! That fits, both in terms of what actually happened to me, and my highness level
the last time I greened out (which was
not on AVB, but also at least [12]).
Of course, if you’re a recreational user, a light bulb probably just lit up over your head. But MMJ patients, and anyone over 40, should be careful with attempting to stuff AVB into capsules.
TL;DR: taking AVB plain, or even in a capsule,
doesn’t increase the effect — but tightly packing it together does.
Note: I don’t want to worry people unduly, because (a) I am more susceptible to this problem due to my delightful vasovagal sensitivity and (b) I am also on beta blockers and lots of other things that lower my blood pressure. But if either of these might apply to you, or you’re in some kind of poor health,
be very, very careful with stuffing capsules too tightly!
P.S. Uptokes to my wife and son for looking after me…my son even stayed up watching TV with me until 4 AM to make sure I was OK!
