Losing Your Mind On Cannabis

Cannabis Edibles

While cannabis smoking is controllable, edibles can take you on an entire different plane. Smoking cannabis is convenient because you get to decide when to stop, based on how high you are. Cannabis edibles are very difficult to titrate and that is one main reason why many people show up to the ER in states that have legalized it. Losing your mind on cannabis is real and it can happen to you!

The biggest mistake that people make with cannabis edibles is impatience: they believe that it must not be working because they are still sober an hour later. So what they do is indulge in more edibles hoping to increase the effect. But what happens is that by the second or third hour after the first ingestion, the cannabis finally starts to kick in.

At this point, you might wrongfully believe that it’s the second edible that kicked in, when in fact, the second edible is still in the process of being absorbed by your digestive tract. So now you have a ticking time bomb cruising through your digestive track. At this point, your mind is slowly being altered by the THC from the first edible.

The difference between smoking and eating an edible is that the effect of the edible takes longer to kick in, and the high is more spread out, as opposed to smoking which is a “quick on, quick off.” But going back to the mistake mentioned above, two hours later, the second edible starts to kick on top of your ongoing high.

This is what is meant by a “recipe for disaster.” Not only do you have too much marijuana in your system, you are now juggling two superimposed highs. You are praying for the first one to end, and as soon as you sense a coming down from the high, the second edible takes you back up, like a never-ending rollercoaster ride.

One of the worst experiences under a high dose of marijuana is the feeling of losing your mind. It’s like you don’t know anymore which mindset is in touch with reality: your perception of reality has been divided into two. One mindset is your normal one that is buried under the intense high, and the other is the intense high which is sitting on top of your normal state of mind, preventing it from reaching the surface.

At this point, you either don’t fight the feeling and accept the notion that you may very well have lost your mind, or you keep wrestling the feeling, hoping that you step back into reality. Both scenarios are extremely uncomfortable: accepting the possibility that you have lost your mind puts you in a state of panic.

You start to feel your heart racing as if you’re about to have a terrible panic attack. So now you try to fight this uncomfortable panicky feeling, on top of the dooming mindset that has swarmed your consciousness. On the other hand, you can continue fighting the high by refusing to believe that you have lost your mind.

The second option is miserable as well because you cannot do anything but keep fighting the high, hoping that it will soon come to an end. Except that it doesn’t, because the marijuana high from two edibles may last up to 4-10 hours. At a certain point, it’s just better to close your eyes and try to fall asleep. Keep in mind that you may wake up from sleep and still be cruising in space; the high doesn’t end just because you went to sleep.

Overall, the lesson that should be learned here is that if you want to indulge in marijuana, do so by consuming a small dose of an edible and allowing 2-3 hours to see if the effects will kick in. Do not eat a large dose or rush into eating a second dose prematurely. Losing your mind on cannabis is a real phenomena that you want to absolutely avoid at all times.

Safety, sanity and happiness always come first.

Are you Ready? (This is Defeating Stigma Mindfully)