Traumatic Edible experiences and how to prevent them

As a medical clinic and harm reduction educator, Medcan will always support consuming cannabis through edibles, creams, suppositories or vaporizers before inhalation of smoke through joints, bongs, or pipes.

This being said, consuming cannabis by eating it brings a very different experience with it than smoking cannabis. In fact, eating cannabis can cause effects far and beyond the sort of high that you get from smoking it.

Many users will tell a story about the time they ate an edible and got very, uncomfortably high and had a bad time. Even users who have been smoking for years, and have what would be perceived as a high tolerance for smoking weed are still likely to find themselves completely rocked by an edible at some point or another.

There are a few things going on here:

First of all, THC when eaten becomes metabolized in a different way than when it is smoked. Furthermore, some of the byproducts of the metabolism process can also affect you. Some byproducts of eating cannabinoids can even be psychoactive themselves, and add to the overall effect that one might feel. One of those metabolites is 11-HO-THC. This compound itself is highly psychoactive, and in a different way than THC by itself.

Second of all, we have a major problem with consistency of edible products in the industry. There are a lot of variables in the making of edibles that, when not meticulously accounted for, lead to vast difference of cannabinoid content from one batch of edibles to the next, even following the exact same recipe or company.

Not only is cannabinoid content batch to batch inconsistent, but we also have a problem with labeled dosage vs actual dosage. Many times the mg dosage applied to edibles is based on one batch made long ago, or in some cases it is complete fiction and guesswork.

Finally, the chemistry involved in making consistent edibles also means choosing very specific fats and phospholipids with which we encapsulate the cannabinoids and deliver them in a predictable way.

This is to say, each recipe and the fat content differences of edible products will result in the same cannabinoids of the same dosage effecting you differently – in part because of a difference of blood plasma concentrates these different delivery systems result in.

In fact, did you know that butter is absolutely not the fat you should be using to encapsulate cannabinoids?

Using edibles instead of smoking flower or hash is a healthy choice that Medcan medical clinic completely supports.

Because the specific techniques necessary for consistent, uniform edible making are not well known, Medcan University offers courses for edible manufacturers at home or in a commercial setting.

In these courses you’ll learn about the science behind edibles, as well as be taken step by step through specific formulations used in medical clinics to create professional, consistently dosed edibles at home, in a cannabis club, or even on a commercial scale.

The best way to get to know how your body responds to eating cannabis, is to make your own quality edibles and start experimenting. But be careful! Always start with the smallest dose possible, and give the edible time to completely take effect before ingesting more.

While you probably will never truly hurt yourself physiologically with even high doses of edibles – hours of anxiety and paranoia, because of being far too high can be a very traumatic experience.