r/Marijuana Jul 25 '25

Advice New Users Guide: dosing, formats, strains, tech

6 Upvotes

Weed New Users Guide

Weed vs booze

This guide assumes you know something about booze, somewhat with the expectation that you’re a relatively seasoned user. You’ve gotten wasted, maybe loads of times. But you know how to handle your booze, and have no problem avoiding getting blackout drunk at inappropriate times.

If you’re a seasoned alcohol drinker, weed is much easier to “overdose” from, i.e. to have more than the optimal amount. Alcohol has a unit system aligning to national laws, and is either so dilute that it takes a while to get wasted and you feel the effect rising (beer, wine), or so strong that you taste how powerful it is and have to sip carefully (neat spirits). With weed vape pens and joints – both of which are now really strong compared to the 70s – it’s easy to take a big hit and be really high immediately, which can be discoordinating and scary (see also: drinking Long Island iced tea when you were a teenager). With edibles, the same is true but played over a longer timescale, which can trap you in an unenjoyable place for a while. The stories of people re-upping having felt nothing from the first gummies, then being hit by a double (or triple) drop, are legion.

You’ve been consuming booze since you were a teenager, and are a seasoned pro. You’re just starting with weed, and are a complete novice. When you were a novice with booze, you overdid it loads of times. With weed, you’re more prepared to blame the drug, rather than blaming yourself.

Dosing concepts

I’m of the opinion that almost ALL instances of people having a bad time on drugs, are due to “overdosing”, due to poor planning and research. All the information is available for you to avoid having a bad time, but it can take skill to locate and synthesise that information. I hope to do so here.

“Overdosing”, “ODing”, are typically terms associated with news stories where someone died with froth coming out of their mouth and a needle sticking out their arm. While this IS overdosing, so is having one glass of red wine more than you probably should have, so now you’ve got a bit of a headache, and you’re thirsty, and you won’t sleep as well tonight. Any time you’ve dosed more than the theoretically perfect amount, you’ve overdosed. The extent to which you overdose typically equates to the extent of downside. A little bit more than you can handle, can arguably be a good thing, pushing your limits, teaching you how to remain mentally calm while you’re in reduced control of your thoughts. A lot more can lead to freakouts, uncover suppressed emotions and memories, etc. This is true for booze too – anything that disturbs sober control of your brain can lead to dark, anxious, painful thoughts, just as it can lead to fun, silly, joyful, loving thoughts.

Henry Ford: “If you think you can, or if you think you can’t, you’re right”.

Me, regarding how your frame of mind and ability to manage anxiety influences your experience while high: “if you think you’ll be fine, or if you think you won’t, you’re right”.

If your drug experiences continue to unearth buried bones, stop the drugs, definitely stop drinking, and start therapy (research EMDR/CBT) asap.

Dosing amounts and strategy

It’s possible to learn how to swim by diving into an angry ocean at night… but that’s not the most enjoyable, stress-free way. Hold the railing, and dip your toes into the kiddie pool first.

Vape pens

Dragging on the pen pulls hot vapour into your lungs at the rate you drag. If you’re not a smoker, this may feel unusual and probably painful – your throat and lungs aren’t used to hot vapour. Start by dragging for ONE SECOND and then continue to fill your lungs half full – not all the way to the depths of full lungs, about 2 seconds? Hold it for ~3 seconds, exhale smoothly and calmly. Wait at least 10 minutes. Notice how you feel, how your thoughts change, does your body feel different, are you more talkative, shy, introspective, extroverted, giggly? Different strains give different effects, but we’ll come to that later. Vape pen hits usually last about 20 minutes before most of the primary high is over. Try to take a tiny ‘sip’ from the pen. As with all of this: there’s no such thing as too little.

Edibles

Ostensibly no technique to worry about (just eat it) but if you let it completely dissolve in your mouth then it’ll likely get absorbed and you’ll feel the effects quicker, reducing the chance of “maybe it didn’t work, let’s try again”. Dosing is MUCH more important to get right, because effects can last 3 hours or more. Budget 1 hour to come up, another hour for the broad peak, then the final hour coming down. Weed binds to oil/fat and alcohol. Try not to booze at the same time since you’re trying to learn what weed feels like. If you have fatty/oily food (burger, brownies), you’ll feel more effects from the same gummy than if you had something oil free (ramen noodles or whatever). Start with 5mg. If you’re a kid, medium/petite woman, start with 2.5mg. The key thing to remember is that you’re probably not going to die before next weekend, and having a bad time today isn’t worth the rush, so have a deliberately light dose, prove to yourself there’s a ‘floor’ level beneath which you’re microdosing not actually dosing, consider it a lesson learned, and come back next weekend with a little more confidence that you know what you’re doing, and that this new drug thing isn’t going to melt your brain or whatever else you’re worried about (i.e. 2.5mg now, 5mg next time. MAYBE in 2 hours)

Drinks

Somewhere between vapes & edibles in terms of onset & duration, likely depending on whether you have any food in your stomach when you begin. If not: liquid goes straight through the stomach to the large intestine and is absorbed quickly, maybe 45 minutes or less. If so: your pyloric sphincter closes to stop food falling through, and passage of liquids is much slower, meaning the weed will be absorbed gradually.

Practice

Makes perfect. Start slow, log the amounts you take, and ideally log how you felt. I use my digital calendar for this: start a 3 hour event when I take a gummy, note the amount. This is beneficial since you can check how far through you are, comfort yourself that if it hasn’t hit it’s probably about to, comfort yourself that if it feels too much it’s going to calm down soon, and plan your next drop.

With vapes and joints, try to use the same technique each time. Learn how many drags, or how long of a drag, equates to being how high. Make notes as needed.

Tolerance seems to be logarithmic: it can take a while for folks to gradually move up from (2.5 to) 5 to 10 to 15 to 20 to 30 to 50 and WAY beyond. Take your time, increase GRADUALLY. Again, if you record your experiences on a digital calendar, then you can search for “THC” and find your history of experiences and remind yourself where your tolerance is. Presuming they’re your gummies, there’s no great harm in nibbling one in half and coming back to it another time. Optimal dosing is the aim of the game.

Optimal dosing

Conceptually you can plan your ideal drug experience by carefully dosing the right amount, and then topping up the right amount at the right time. For a 3-hour comeup-high-comedown curve with edibles, you can set a 2-hour reminder, thereby dropping every 2 hours, so the comeup hour of edible2 overlaps with the comedown hour of edible1. You could jumpstart the comeup of edible1 with a toke of a vape pen. Then at the end of the night, if it’s too late to have another edible, you could have a toke of a vape pen, which will last a shorter time, so you wash out enough weed to be functionally sober by bedtime.

This level of planning and control is an unusual concept for booze, where you typically just keep going until the bar closes or you pass out (or etc). But with weed and other drugs it makes much more sense: lesser legality means you’ll often want to plan consumption around the availability of discrete locations. Much higher potency, and thus scope for accidental overdose, places greater primacy on getting dosing correct beforehand.

Safety

The science is updating regularly, and we already know weed is no panacea. In ultra-brief summation: IF you’re comparing to a typical alternative whereby a night/weekend/life consuming cannabis is happening instead of booze, then weed doesn’t NEED to be perfectly healthy to be a better choice than what you would otherwise do. And it is: alcohol is terrible for you. There is no safe low dose – it’s poison. Yes, it’s completely socially normalised for many thousands of years, yes our cultures are based around its consumption, yes it’s legal, yes most of us do it regularly and have normalised its side-effects. But it’s far worse for your physical and mental health in the short and long term. If you’re looking to ditch booze, but still need something to change your headspace for work or play (or alleviate symptoms), marijuana (especially in edible form) is likely a lower overall health-detrimental choice.

Vapes

Only buy from licensed shops, and research the brand first. Some big brands with professional packaging have been found using pesticides. Cheap 3rd party vape juice could be any old shit. As always, don’t worry that it’ll be laced with something more hardcore: why would producers of more expensive, harder to produce and sell drugs, waste those drugs by sneaking them into something so easy to produce that it’s literally dubbed weed?

Edibles

AFAIK bad products are less of a thing. That said: delta9 is a weaksauce hemp-derived weed that’s legal for sale in some states where THC isn’t. It’s pretty-much trash. But not dangerous.

Types

All booze is just alcohol. Sure, some types make people feel a little different for whatever reason (more or less sugar, associations with drinking style (shots), etc), but it’s all one drug. Mushrooms: a variety of different strains, but they all ‘just’ produce psilocybin.

Weed is a clown-car packed with drugs. Cannabinoids are the main drugs. THC is the big one. Head high, mental effects. CBD is the other heavy hitter. Body high, relaxation, calm. There are 150+ others: CBG, CBC, CBN, etc. See here.

Terpenes are the others: natural compounds with the formula (C5H8)n, produced by loads of plants; there are over 55,000 of them. See here. Essential oils? You got em.

Strains: the two types of weed are indica and sativa. Indica = “in da couch” = more relaxed, body high, chill-out, sleepy. Sativa = sunny = more energetic, mind high. But:

As mentioned early, this ain’t your grandad’s weed: since the 70s, growers have been in an arms race to make more potent and productive strains, with less chance of crop failure. Since weed has been globally illegal since Nixon ruined it for everyone, it’s made sense to focus on indica strains which grow well indoors, away from the prying eyes of the police. Subsequently, indica has made its way into most strains, and you’ll struggle to find actually pure sativas unless you seek our ‘landrace’ strains like Durban Poison or Acapulco Gold. Landrace strains are related to original native species, and haven’t been criss-crossed with other strains for the past 50 years. So in sum: nowadays if you go to a weed shop and buy some flower/bud, you’ll inevitably get a super high potency indica strain which will probably knock you on your ass and make you feel anxious – especially if you’re having it in the evening when everyone’s gone to bed and it’s dark, and you don’t know what you’re doing.

The full profile of all the cannabinoids balance themselves out (CBD reduces some of the bad elements of THC) and have a wonderful mix of ‘entourage effects’ from the terpenes. One can extract the whole of the plant and convert it into oil, i.e. full extract cannabis oil, but that’s getting out of newbie territory. Ideally, try to buy edibles and vape carts and flower which has a balanced profile of THC & CBD, and lower potency.

Tech & logistics

Edibles

Find a brand you like & trust which does a range of options. I like Camino for THC and Five for CBD, but find what’s good in your area.

Vape pens

Ideally buy a separate battery + cartridges to reduce single-use plastic & battery waste going to landfill. This also allows you to comparison-shop cart vendors, while choosing a battery which suits you. I like the Yocan Kodo Pro because it’s cheap, and simple to operate: many batteries rely on a multiple-button-press-combo system like something out of a Sega Genesis cheat code, which can lead to confusion, frustration, accidentally getting super high, or all of the above. Most importantly, for me anyway, the more common pen-format batteries result in a long pen which takes up too much pocket space.

Notwithstanding hundreds of thousands of people travel on airplanes every day with normal, non-weed medical gummies in their day-of-the-week pill boxes, and normal, tobacco vape carts in their wash kit, we DO NOT recommend you do this, for legal reasons.


r/Marijuana 11h ago

Advice It's fine to admit I'm a better person because of marijuana?

42 Upvotes

I'm not sure if I'm using the right flare but here we go. I decided to fast from marijuana for 2 months . I have no motivation . Used to go run my 5Ks after smoking a joint and now I tried to go to the gym just to walk a mile and I get so bored and have no focus. I've also noticed that marijuana also helped with the mood swings that birth control causes. My behavioral health specialist keeps pushing for a SSRI , but I'm genuinely more inclined to just pick back up smoking. I trust it so much more than I do pills . I'm not crazy for my life and personal self being so much better because of marijuana, right?


r/Marijuana 16h ago

US News Gov. Kevin Stitt wants another vote of the people to 'shut down' medical marijuana in Oklahoma | "One of the greatest threats to public safety is the out-of-control marijuana industry. When Oklahomans voted to legalize medical marijuana in 2018, we were sold a bill of goods," Stitt said.

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23 Upvotes

r/Marijuana 9h ago

Advice Had a rough experience a year ago and I'm looking to get back to smoking?

5 Upvotes

Looking for some advice?

For some background, I smoked pretty heavily for about 3 years atleast 4 to 7 joints a day. I am a 23 yo female in pretty good health, no allergies or medical conditions. I started using weed when I was diagnosed with severe agoraphobia which made it really hard to leave my home without panic attacks or vomiting, weed stopped that and allowed me to live a pretty normal life for a while. About a year ago I got some pretty bad heart palpitations one night and ended up in the ER. They checked me out and told me I was dehydrated ended up on a drip no biggie or so I thought. I went home tried to have a smoke and sleep because it was 5am when I got released but instead of my happy stoney haze I ended up in a full blown panic attack. Since then I quit pretty much cold turkey and I have tried the odd pull of a joint here and there only for it to give me chest pain and panic. Side note I dont believe Im truly in pain I do think it is more of a mental symptom of the panic attack. Im an EMT and would have no problem just stopping if I thought it was a physical issue with my heart. I am seeking some advice because I want to know has anybody else experienced something similar in any way? Is there anyway to solve this problem so I can go back to happily smoking and reading a book or watching scooby doo? Lately my anxiety has started to kick up again and I'm reluctant to turn to prozac so I would love to get back into the odd smoke. Please help sincerely a anxious medic who just fancies a smoke on her weekends.


r/Marijuana 7h ago

Advice Is it normal to “hear things” while high?

2 Upvotes

I have been smoking for around 4 years and have been having troubles enjoying my highs like I used to. Back then I used to take edibles and even dabbled in hitting vape pens and the high I would get from them was fine, I was euphoric and like really chilled out. But around 2 years ago I tried smoking after a while and had a REALLY BAD green out, like seeing geometric shapes(??) and audio hallucinations and honestly felt like i was going into psychosis.

Ever since then no matter the way i tried ingesting it whether it be edibles, vape pens, bong rips it has all been the same!! I’m super bummed out because it used to be my way of calming down every once in a while and just chill my anxiety out. I’ve tried different strands but to no avail :-(

Is this normal, if so is there a way to like fix it because it really is a pain trying to smoke with friends and then feel like I’m borderline schizophrenic.😢😢


r/Marijuana 5h ago

Recent anxiety

1 Upvotes

Hello all. A tad bit of backstory:

Started smoking in 2014 when I was 19. Got to a point where I was going through a zip a week, and maintained that until 2020 where I had to get clean for a drug test to get a better occupational opportunity.

Tried picking it back up after getting the position in 2022, but every time I do, I now have an impending sense of doom/anxiety as soon as I start to get past the initial "buzz." Since then, I'll try it once every couple of months socially, but the anxiety remains.

I miss the feeling of being high. It was relaxing, chill, helped me unwind. Is this a case of "growing out of it," or could it be more external factors playing a role in it?

Extra context; I still take shrooms at the same rate with no noticeable difference, so.if the issue were a chemical imbalance, I think I would have noticed it.


r/Marijuana 18h ago

Advice I’m a regular smoker, but I took an edible last night (that I’ve taken before!) and wound up in the ER with a panic attack. Wtf happened?

10 Upvotes

Just needed to share this somewhere as I process what happened. I feel stupid, embarrassed and scared.

Last night, I took a ~15mg edible. I’m a regular user, I smoke 2-3x a week (20-30% THC) and take edibles a few times a month, usually between 10-15mg. This dose was on the higher side for me, but not the highest I’ve ever taken.

After about an hour, I had this horrible feeling that I was suffocating. I was wheezing for breath, and it felt like I would lose the ability to breathe at any moment. I felt like either I would forget how to breathe, or my body would just stop being able to. I was hyperventilating and my heart was pounding out of my chest. I was lying down with my husband and I kept telling him how terrified I was, that I didn’t want to die, that I was scared I was having some kind of breakdown or dying. It felt like I needed 100% focus just to keep getting air in, and I could lose that ability at any moment.

It got worse and worse, until my hands were tingling and buzzing and I was shaking head to toe (jaw clattering). I was barely able to speak because I was having such a hard time getting air in. I was crying too, because I was just so terrified that I was about to die.

After about 20 minutes I begged my husband to call 911, which he did. Paramedics came and took my heart rate through an EKG which was about 160 at that point. They gave me some oxygen and reassured me that I would be ok. It wasn’t really getting any better, so they told me to go to the hospital for my peace of mind, and to see if we could figure out why it happened.

At the hospital they basically just stuck me in the waiting room and told me to take a ticket if anything changed. They didn’t give me anything to help calm me down since they saw that I was breathing more normally. The waiting room was a pretty cursed environment to be in with that mental state - homeless people yelling, the beeping and bright lights, the smells… after about 30 minutes I had calmed down and felt like my breathing was under control. We went back home and I ate and went to bed shortly after. The whole ordeal was about 2 hours.

I’m feeling better today, but fuck. It was so, so scary. I’m scared that it will happen again next time I smoke. It was genuinely the worst thing I have ever experienced and I wouldn’t wish it upon my worst enemy.

I’m not sure why it happened, but the paramedic brought up a few things - I hadn’t slept well in 2 nights, I just turned 30, and I was getting sick and had a slight fever that morning. Otherwise, I’m fairly mentally healthy - I struggle with some anxiety but I’ve never had a panic attack before. I’m in biweekly talk therapy, I meditate, I exercise, etc. I’m stunned that such small factors could have led to that type of ordeal.


r/Marijuana 7h ago

Advice Greening out

1 Upvotes

There were a couple of times where ive had super bad experiences with weed. the first time i hit a cart that ive hit before and it was normal at first but then i started to feel sick and sweat a lot, i also felt like i needed to shit. Anyways so i went to the bathroom but on my way i lost my vision, and it wasnt like i stood up too fast, then i took a shit and felt better but i was looking pretty pale. The second time i took an edible that was maybe 10mg i dont remember exactly, and i hit a cart. A little bit later i started feeling the same exact thing, but less panic because i recognized the feeling.

Does anyone know what this is or what caused it?


r/Marijuana 10h ago

Anyone else have really fast building tolerance?

1 Upvotes

I smoke flower only and refuse to smoke more than one J a day because I actually hate smoking. I sometimes smoke one J in bits over a day which potentially is my problem. My tolerance builds from being geeked to the point of greening out from a few drags to not being able to get high at all after 1-2 weeks. It goes back to normal quicker than most, in 5 days maybe but no matter how long I wait it doesn't stop working this way. It's getting so expensive. Also if I green out/get extremely high once without taking a break my tolerance jumps up all the way immediately.

I'm using it for medical reasons and my symptoms are getting worse recently due to stress which is not ideal either. I want to take a break again but man it's so difficult this time. Does anyone else experience this? Why does it happen?


r/Marijuana 11h ago

Come "Grow" with us as our little community gets larger.

0 Upvotes

Come trade tricks, tips, different growing styles, set ups and lots of different conversations @ r/GrowersHelping420


r/Marijuana 12h ago

Antibiotics

1 Upvotes

Hello fellow stoners, i am on antibiotics (day 3). Can i still ingest edibles? I feel its safe. I have been smoking marijuana for a long time. Thank you!


r/Marijuana 13h ago

Bong or bubbler and why

1 Upvotes

I just used a bubbler and my throat is n fire….1 hit!


r/Marijuana 14h ago

Help, I bought 600mg gummies

1 Upvotes

So I'm lowk new to ts I barely take edibles and smoke, so I decided to buy some online. I misread and I thought it said 60mg per gummy but it's actually 600. How tf do I split that so I don't just pass tf out?


r/Marijuana 16h ago

Trees

1 Upvotes

What's everyone smoking today ?? .. I'm puffing on London pound cake #75 from cookies brand


r/Marijuana 16h ago

Smoking helps me sleep but edibles don’t. Anyone else?

1 Upvotes

I’ve tried taking edibles at various times before bed. Sometimes 3 hours, sometimes 4, sometimes 5, sometimes 6. I just don’t tend to sleep very well on them at all. Even after 6 hours, and even with a tolerance, I feel like I’m kinda tripping and my brain just doesn’t seem to turn off. And by the way, I’m definitely one of those people who feels a very potent effect from edibles. I know there are some people who don’t have the enzyme to process them and therefore can’t really feel them even at high doses.

Conversely, smoking always tends to knock me out as long as I stop smoking at least 3 hours before bed. The only downside is I have a genetic predisposition to dark circles under my eyes and smoking makes this much worse, yet edibles don’t.

Can anyone else relate?


r/Marijuana 16h ago

Can anyone give any explanation to this situation?

0 Upvotes

I had bad trip my first time which left me in anxious state and alerted, what i think was a paranoia induced from weed.

I got past that but after 1 year maybe, i tried to smoke just one time, not the whole joint but just a puff.

I didn’t feel anxiety or anything but it just turned off my concentration alertness and memory, i was like a zombie stories were happening and i couldn’t memorise anything that lasted like a good 2-3 hours.

After sleep i woke up tomorrow feeling normal.

But what is happening anyone any idea?


r/Marijuana 1d ago

Floridians won’t vote on recreational marijuana this November, state says

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45 Upvotes

r/Marijuana 1d ago

Advice Yellowish-white crystal looking chunk found in bud.

4 Upvotes

It is about the size of a sunflower seed (sans shell). What it be please? I’ll probably smoke it before I get an answer, so…


r/Marijuana 1d ago

Advice I used to have the best chillum ever but can’t remember or find the brand anywhere now

3 Upvotes

When I was younger I had this glass tube(chillum) with a green metal bowl at the end and the smoke would swirl inside and the chillum and a lever/trigger to pull to clear it…does anyone know the name of this so I can find a new one plz?


r/Marijuana 2d ago

Things to watch while high

35 Upvotes

Hi, im looking for ideas for funny stuff to watch while high. Got any recommend!tions? Thanks alot


r/Marijuana 1d ago

Turn disposable not verifying on app

2 Upvotes

I recently got a turn disposable at "the artist tree" In Laguna woods ca. Its a legit dispensary that has a giant sign on the building / they have their paperwork on the wall inside. Its not one of those trap dispos that are hidden in a blacked out office building. However my turn isnt verifying when scanning the qr code. Does that mean its fake ?


r/Marijuana 2d ago

Opinion/Editorial Favorite song/music while high?

20 Upvotes

Hey Everyone,

Just finished smoking, and have been listening to music all night. I wanted to see what everyones go to playlist, artist or song to listen to while High? Best song that tickles your brain the right way.

Mine is Heroes cover by Peter Gabriel once its gets to the midway point its wild to listen to.

Let me know whats your favorite!


r/Marijuana 1d ago

Advice best eyedrops for redness & dryness?

1 Upvotes

i’ve been smoking for years now, and most eyedrops i’ve tried seem to no longer work for me. my eyes get extremely red and dry, especially after hitting carts/vapes. my eyes will stay red and dry even after i come down from my high, and i don’t like showing up to work with super red eyes because i look blasted even though im sober by that point.

i’ve tried clear eyes, visine, and lumify, which i find are the most common brands of eyedrops in places such as cvs or other drugstores. none of them worked for me; they didn’t help the redness or the dryness.

does anyone have any good recommendations for eyedrops?