The thing that concentrate fanboys forget is the tolerance and dependency issue. Every single dabber I know doesn't use herbs at all because it doesn't get them high anymore.
Man this is a false equivocation between concentrates and tolerance/dependency (cannabis dependency is not something that even addiction experts all agree is a real thing!).
Sure, dabbing can be more efficient in getting cannabis actives into you than flowers will ever be, but the person consuming the concentrate decides how much oil they put on the dabber and how often they repeat the exercise. I do not have a tolerance and dependency issue.
I use concentrates because they are much more medically effective for my needs, much less debilitating on my throat and lungs and much better tasting. I am telling you, as someone who has as much access as necessary to all kinds of concentrates and the flower they were made from, that concentrates are unequivocally smoother on the throat and lungs than concentrates that have been properly made. Flowers hurt my throat with continued use or higher temps. Dabs only hurt my throat if I use temps that are far too high. As you say, you can't necessarily find well made concentrates easily and this may explain your experiences.
Add to that the cleanliness of a sapphire/borosilicate/titanium vapor path with no other materials in the mix and this is one of the safest possible ways to consume meds. I tend to dab .25g or so a day. Flowers do get me high still. As Psychonaut says above, I find that roughly .25-.3g of flower gets me as high as a dab extracted from the same flower. If you were to rosin a flower that size, you'd expect to get one dab out of it. The relationship is by no means a mystery!
Can you not understand that when done properly, a concentrate is simply the part of the flower that boils, rather than burning and that by removing the parts that burn and degrade into unwanted byproducts, concentrate vapor should actually be cleaner and only contain the actives that we desire?
Then when they have to quit or go on a t-break the withdrawal symptoms are so through the roof it's comparable to quitting harder drugs.
I can't understand this comparison.
Concentrates are not comparable to harder drugs in any way in negative or positive effects IME. I have had times where my tolerance was higher at .5g-.75g per day of dabs and even then, when I had to fly long distance for work and had no access to any cannabis of any kind for a week, did not feel anything aside from noticing my dreams again and difficulty sleeping (this is not a withdrawal symptom - I medicate MONSTROUS insomnia which is caused by a condition I was born with, cannabis concentrates are the safest of the effective insomnia medications that I have ever used BTW).
I also had more issues with other medical symptoms of chronic conditions that I medicate being more prominent again which is to be expected - stop using the medicine that treats the symptoms, start getting the symptoms again. If you stop using a harder drug, you get REAL withdrawals. Withdrawals that can lead to death or hospitalization (alcohol withdrawals, opiate withdrawals etc).
I have addressed the profoundly misunderstood topic of withdrawals as they apply to cannabis here before. The DSM V is very clear that it is not a withdrawal if it is a pre-existing symptom. There are many other such exclusionary criteria. My insomnia after cessation of use is an example of this kind of failure to satisfy the criteria to be called a withdrawal. Most of the reported 'withdrawals' I have ever known from cannabis users could easily be explained as symptoms that they were treating/masking with their cannabis use, which became noticeable when they stopped. Please understand that I am speaking from professional expertise here.
If you wanna use flowers and don't care to learn about or use concentrates because what is available locally is questionable, that's fine man. But don't go and spread this kind of slander against all concentrates when what you have said simply doesn't describe what most of us high quality concentrate users experience. I use the term slander to describe the way you spoke because if there is one thing that will make the most effective cannabis medicines for many of us (concentrates, that is, not flower!) harder to access for patients, it is comparing cannabis extracts to hard drugs. Please, consider the comparison you have made. Heroin, Meth, Cocaine, alcohol etc kill people all the time. Properly made cannabis extracts do not, and even the badly made ones have not been attributed to any deaths as of yet in the literature to my knowledge.
I would never say your choice to use flowers is inferior. There is nothing wrong with people using flowers if it agrees with them. If you're only using for recreational, then what does it matter if concentrates tend to be more medically useful?
I will say however that from the sound of it, you only have access to inferior concentrates though. Anything that hurts your airways like that from the first dab is NOT a good concentrate (or was dabbed way too hot)!
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