Holding the Hit?

[HempKat]

I really don't understand why these topics about how people smoke weed always seems need to turn into a battle of whose smoking style or equipment is the best. Each style has it's pros and cons. For health vaping is probably best but the trade off seems to be reduced satisfaction compared to more traditional methods. To many claim to feel less "satisfied" when vaping to ignore this.

Bongs are great for stretching weed out by doing individual hits but they can be hard on people with less then healthy lungs, require regular care/cleaning and are too cumbersome and too visible when wanting to smoke while out and about.

Pipes aren't quite as good as bongs for stretching weed out but they can be close if one doesn't tend to pack big/deep bowls. They also have virtually nothing helping to remove at least some tar causing it to dribble into your mouth or onto your lips when it goes too long without cleaning. They are more potable and therefore better for outdoor use but if you're about to be caught by LEO then you're either going to have to toss it or get hit with an additional paraphernalia charge. Also there are elitist pipe users such that if you want to be a pipe aficionado you're going to have to buy ridiculously expensive gear such as Meerschaum, Glass or metal alloys with unique qualities. The throwing away of such gear is very hard on the wallet. The traditional joint is a favorite of many old timers because their smoking habits predates most of the gear in wide use today. A big deal for them was when they invented the joint with a built in roach holder (A wire that would gradually become exposed as the joint burned down). Joints are probably the least efficient in turns of the volume of weed used with the exception of it's more resent counterpart "The Blunt". Joints and blunts make it easier for people to tailor the size of their hits to what they are comfortable with by how light or hard they hit the joint or blunt. Joints and Blunts are very poor for handling tar and such some gets soaked up by the paper and becomes that brown goo at the end of a joint someone asked about previously. Yet due to the ability to adjust your hits for comfort it ends up being the most comfortable method for many old timers. Blunts deserve a unique mention in the con column in that they use tobacco leaf to roll with and so you are not only holding in pot smoke for 7 or however many seconds but also tobacco smoke which is pretty much universally accepted as bad for you in and of itself. Same goes for some Europeans that have developed a tradition of mixing tobacco with marijuana even if rolled in a paper joint. The biggest pro for joints or blunts is they're very portable, fairly concealable and if you think you're about to get caught you can typically flick or throw them far enough a way that they'll likely not be found by the police. The only cost to you being the weed and the paper/tobacco leaves. What I really like about joints and smoking in public is that as long as you can only be viewed from a distance and if you roll a nice healthy joint, others can't tell if it's a joint of a cigarette unless maybe the wind is blowing from your direction towards them. Chances are though if they recognize the odor they're more apt to want to join you rather then dime you out to a cop.

So hopefully now we can all recognize the pros and cons and trust that each of us have decided on our preferences based on our unique wants and needs and that our preferred delivery system is the best....for each of us.

Here's a couple of things to consider about enjoying marijuana, if we were all as truly self conscious about health and getting high as we like to think we are we would all be ingesting marijuana rather then smoking it. Breathing in the results of burning anything at high tempurates is not good for you. Even if it does give you a nice buzz.

The other thought is this, and this is more to do with the topic of how long to hold in a hit. Most if not all of us have had smoking sessions where for various reasons we had a hard time keeping a hit in for more then a couple of seconds. Yet if you recall those times honestly you'll likely remember you got pretty much just as stoned as you would have if you could have held it in longer and all without having to smoke more to get there.

Short of injection directly into your veins smoke absorbed by the lungs is about the fastest way to get the cannabinoids from marijuana, into our blood stream. The lungs do it so well that they absorb most of them in the first 2-3 seconds (about 95%). Seven seconds is the agreed time length needed to be able to get that last 5%.

The most common way to use marijuana is to smoke it (more on how people do that later). Smoking is also the most expedient way to get the THC and other chemicals into the bloodstream. When a person inhales smoke from marijuana, the THC goes directly to the lungs. Your lungs are lined with millions of alveoli, the tiny air sacs where gas exchange occurs. These alveoli have an enormous surface area -- much greater than that of your skin -- so they make it easy for THC and other compounds to enter the body. The lungs absorb the smoke just seconds after inhalation. Vaporizers, which heat the cannabis sufficiently to vaporize its active ingredients without burning it, provide an inhalable alternative to smoking.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/marijuana2.htm

 

[Jellyfish]

I really don't understand why these topics about how people smoke weed always seems need to turn into a battle of whose smoking style or equipment is the best. Each style has it's pros and cons. For health vaping is probably best but the trade off seems to be reduced satisfaction compared to more traditional methods.

You answered your own question. Vape people START with "For health vaping is probably best". But you have no science to back that up.

That's what pisses me off. Smoking cigarettes is bad. What medical proof is there that smoking pot is bad?

It's like, whose side are you on? We're trying to get pot legalized, and you guys are giving the enemy ammunition.

 

[HempKat]

You answered your own question. Vape people START with "For health vaping is probably best". But you have no science to back that up.

That's what pisses me off. Smoking cigarettes is bad. What medical proof is there that smoking pot is bad?

It's like, whose side are you on? We're trying to get pot legalized, and you guys are giving the enemy ammunition.

You must be fairly young? I don't mean that as a dig I'm just saying it would take a fairly young person to not know that the costs and benefits of smoking weed and the various ways people smoke weed have been tested 9 ways to Sunday. People like me and many others have been enjoying weed on a fairly regular basis for over 40 years now. This "ammunition" as you call it has been in the "enemy's" hands for years.

Also it would take someone fairly young to think that one stoner voicing the pros and cons of different ways of smoking would influence anyone but the other stoners reading this thread. I mean it's not like CNN is going to announce "BREAKING NEWS....This just in, Hempcat has revealed that smoking weed can be harmful!"

The idea of smoking weed has more then anything else slowed the progress of medical marijuana from taking hold more firmly due to the risks of smoking it and only because it is generally accepted that smoking anything is harmful. Not so much because of the item being smoked (although that can also be a factor) but because the process of combustion creates chemical reactions that can form toxins not present before combustion. The preferred method of delivery for medical patients should be edibles as it can provide a more powerful and longer lasting effect. The downside to ingestion though is it is difficult to determine the optimum dose and it's a very different kind of high then smoking. It is however completely safe and has no known negative health effects. Even though many who have eaten too much especially people that have never been high before often end up thinking they are dying for some reason.

 

[fuzzdog]

I cant remember where but a few years back I read this article on this same subject, but was done by some science guys... they claimed that after 10 or so seconds, your lungs have extracted most of the drug contained in the smoke...
Ever since then, I've tried to hold the hit for those 10 seconds... as I mentioned I read that article some years back... I'm 60 now.
So I'm here to report that holding your hits for 10 seconds has been working for me..... real good.
anyway..... my 2 cents

 

[Jellyfish]

You must be fairly young? I don't mean that as a dig I'm just saying it would take a fairly young person to not know that the costs and benefits of smoking weed and the various ways people smoke weed have been tested 9 ways to Sunday. People like me and many others have been enjoying weed on a fairly regular basis for over 40 years now. This "ammunition" as you call it has been in the "enemy's" hands for years.

Also it would take someone fairly young to think that one stoner voicing the pros and cons of different ways of smoking would influence anyone but the other stoners reading this thread. I mean it's not like CNN is going to announce "BREAKING NEWS....This just in, Hempcat has revealed that smoking weed can be harmful!"

The idea of smoking weed has more then anything else slowed the progress of medical marijuana from taking hold more firmly due to the risks of smoking it and only because it is generally accepted that smoking anything is harmful. Not so much because of the item being smoked (although that can also be a factor) but because the process of combustion creates chemical reactions that can form toxins not present before combustion. The preferred method of delivery for medical patients should be edibles as it can provide a more powerful and longer lasting effect. The downside to ingestion though is it is difficult to determine the optimum dose and it's a very different kind of high then smoking. It is however completely safe and has no known negative health effects. Even though many who have eaten too much especially people that have never been high before often end up thinking they are dying for some reason.

I'm 59. For you to say that the smoking of weed has held back the medical marijuana movement is so inflammatory to me that I have to just leave it alone. You sir, are an idiot.

 

[Snook]

I cant remember where but a few years back I read this article on this same subject, but was done by some science guys... they claimed that after 10 or so seconds, your lungs have extracted most of the drug contained in the smoke...
Ever since then, I've tried to hold the hit for those 10 seconds... as I mentioned I read that article some years back... I'm 60 now.
So I'm here to report that holding your hits for 10 seconds has been working for me..... real good.
anyway..... my 2 cents

some years ago, when I was around 60, my brain started to 'not remember' too. it doesn't get better...

 

[Snook]

Big picture, I do not think you're an idiot, HK.. IMO, you make some good points.

How we get from holding the hit to name calling... I dono?:friends:

 

[waveguide]

the absent point in hempkat's rhetoric is that smoking weed may harm you, but it won't harm me

it's like saying lao tzu and jeb bush had the same number of lungs.

 

[St. Phatty]

smoke with vietnam vets, you turn red not blue.

hold it in, pinch your nose and puff yourself up until you're beet red from head to foot.. and wait 2 whole minutes.. that's how to make your weed work for you. if you've lived on scarcity, you can appreciate this technique.. it's hard to stop "respecting the weed" enough to maximise it and use it to the fullest since it was a living thing..

yeah, i've seen kids they blow it out as soon as they inhale. i appreciate the "bless this space with my thc exhalation," but i smoke to get high. kids that don't have to deal with scarcity.

Once I smoked with a lady doctor who grew (2 600's).

She said it didn't matter how long you held it. It became part of the conversation when I smoked my normal way, I hold it in a minute or so. Nothing uncomfortable, just like holding your water in the pool or something.

I think it does matter, but that the transmission rate (THC into the bloodstream) decreases from the beginning of the hit to the end of the hit.

Let's write Obama and ask for a grant to study absorption rates.

 

[HempKat]

I'm 59. For you to say that the smoking of weed has held back the medical marijuana movement is so inflammatory to me that I have to just leave it alone. You sir, are an idiot.

Fine, resort to name calling, that's the tactic of the close minded who have nothing to back up their opinion. The fact is one of the chief complaints that has held doctors back from embracing Medical Marijuana as a viable medical alternative is most people only think about it as something you smoke. Anything that is smoked has a harmful impact on overall health. Ingesting it has been an option for decades but it was never widely practiced for a number of reasons and so it's something few people realize as an option.

Granted that attitude is changing as more and more unbiased data on the effects of Medical Marijuana has become available to doctors and law makers. That still doesn't change the fact that doctors have taken positions against marijuana in the past all because of the smoking being harmful issue. That's not to say there aren't any other things that make doctors reluctant however it is the one thing that has been difficult for pro medical marijuana people to argue against.

 

[HempKat]

the absent point in hempkat's rhetoric is that smoking weed may harm you, but it won't harm me

it's like saying lao tzu and jeb bush had the same number of lungs.

You should try rereading, the main point I've been making is that smoking marijuana or anything else for that matter is harmful. Vaping isn't because the temperatures don't get high enough to create the reaction that makes smoking harmful. Obviously ingesting it isn't harmful as there is no smoking involved.

Personally I smoke my weed in joint form so I'm not saying what I am saying from the perspective that I'm trying to change anyone over to a non smoking form of use. I'm just stating facts without letting my own personal bias get in the way.

 

[SpasticGramps]

I hold my hits on average about 3 seconds. When I'm short on weed probably double that.

I believe holding it for 3-7 seconds increases the high over smoking weed like a cigarette. That's my anecdotal evidence anyway and I'm sticking with it.

 

[DR.Thrax]

I find myself holding smoke in longer as quantity decreases

 

[HempKat]

I find myself holding smoke in longer as quantity decreases

Another good way to stretch that last bit of smoke is to just smoke enough each hit to get one full hit, even if you aren't using a bong. That in an of itself isn't enough though, you should try to hold off on doing the next hit for 3-5 minutes. I find when I do this I get sufficiently high off of just 2 or 3 hits. How many hits though will obviously vary with strains.

I think what happens is we get so accustom to thinking we need to smoke a joint or a full bowl that even when we change we still try to consume the same volume when in reality we don't need as much as we think. Like with a joint for example, a certain amount goes up in smoke, some becomes the roach which if smoked is usually smoked at a different time. Also with a joint or a full bowl you often end up sharing with someone. So some of the weed is going towards their hits. Depending on the variable you might only really get half or maybe less. So when you do it as individual single hits you really only need half a joint's worth or less not a full joint's worth.

 

[DR.Thrax]

Another good way to stretch that last bit of smoke is to just smoke enough each hit to get one full hit, even if you aren't using a bong. That in an of itself isn't enough though, you should try to hold off on doing the next hit for 3-5 minutes. I find when I do this I get sufficiently high off of just 2 or 3 hits. How many hits though will obviously vary with strains.

I think what happens is we get so accustom to thinking we need to smoke a joint or a full bowl that even when we change we still try to consume the same volume when in reality we don't need as much as we think. Like with a joint for example, a certain amount goes up in smoke, some becomes the roach which if smoked is usually smoked at a different time. Also with a joint or a full bowl you often end up sharing with someone. So some of the weed is going towards their hits. Depending on the variable you might only really get half or maybe less. So when you do it as individual single hits you really only need half a joint's worth or less not a full joint's worth.

I was told to pack it full and keep it burning

 

[HempKat]

I was told to pack it full and keep it burning

Well that's what most people do when they have a lot and they are their own source. When you're buying on the street it's so expensive for the average customer that every little crumb is precious such that if a few flakes fall on the surface you prepare whatever you're smoking, you carefully brush them back into the bag. When you grow and have a stash that would last you a year with another crop ready to harvest soon you're more likely to casually brush those same flakes onto the floor.

Really though if you smoke by yourself mostly, packing full bowls or smoking joints, a lot is wasted because the bowl or joint is burning the whole time even when you're holding the last hit in.

A bong or vape is the most efficient because with each you only do a small amount each hit.