The Straight Toke - THE Marijuana Blog

Hi Julius,

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I had been successfully (and without any problems) toking moderately once a day for about a year [...] Everything was going well, until eight months ago, when I suddenly started having panic attacks (on or off weed). Though the panic attacks eventually went away, a pressure in my head has been there ever since. I have been diagnosed with GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder). For some reason during this time not only can I not smoke (I get a panic attack basically every time) but I even get minor panic attacks if I drink alcohol in even moderate amount, take even baby doses of any SSRI prescribed to me, or even smoke tobacco! So let me explain where this is going..

hey, i was wondering, what is the best way to smoke out of a pipe?

I bought i pipe (like with a screen) not too long ago (because i was
sick of rolling joints) and i noticed that i dint know what was
better, either putting a flame on your "product" every single time or
trying to get it to glow and thus allowing you to only inhale with out
adding additional heat... Thanks for your time

ohhh and while im emailing you, i was wondering, is smoking weed from
a light bulb bad for you (like is there any chemicals in the light
bulb that could be harmful) and same for tin foil...

Ideally when smoking from a pipe, one should try to use only as much flame as is necessary to cause the marijuana to ignite. Once your weed is lit, it should stay burning/smoldering on its own. Of course if it's damp, this may not happen -- which is why it's important to dry and store your weed correctly.

I don't know if you've covered this or not, but I've been wondering about the whole cottonmouth phenomenon.

For the longest time I always assumed cottonmouth was directly related to the act of smoking, but then when I got more into edibles I discovered it can be just as bad if not worse. Is there something in cannabis that shuts off salivary glands?

Well I haven't covered it, but I don't see why I shouldn't. ;-)

Hey there,

Frequent reader of the blog. I just had a quick question for you, as
I'm having a hard time finding a straight answer on this. Is smoking
the resin (scraped from your pipe or bong) extremely unhealthy? Is it
worse for your health than smoking buds?

Relax, it hasn't happened yet.

Oh sure, there have been deaths where marijuana was blamed -- but in all of medical history, nobody has died from a marijuana overdose. Read that once more: in all of medical history, nobody has died from a marijuana overdose. It can't happen. Your body has a nice little self-limiting trick it uses: when you smoke too much, you pass out. Nothing dangerous, no risk of any problems -- you just won't wake up until your body's had a chance to clear some of that good old THC out of your system. (In the mean time, you'll likely have some rather intense dreams.)

so i scraped a bowl pretty clean yesterday but i'm still out of stuff so i was taking really long hits today to try and burn something. But the lighter (a bic) left this really fine resedue in the sides of my clean bowl; normally I wouldn't have noticed it. Is it unsafe to take really long and hot hits with normal lighters?

[...]

This is a question really want answered because I don't feel like butane is all that healthy and i really don't want those particles in my lungs.

Dear julius:

What should I mix my weed with?

Personally, I'd recommend using more weed. You won't even notice the taste! ;-)

Right. Bad jokes aside, there are a number of things that people choose to mix with their Cannabis. Here are a few of the better ones:

• Tobacco - one of the most popular herbs to smoke, tobacco's a common choice for a mixer. Rolling tobacco provides a smooth, consistent burn, and many people enjoy the resulting smoke. Personally, I'm not a fan of tobacco, but that's out of health concerns (slash paranoia). Adding rolling tobacco to a spliff can make it much easier to roll, especially when rolling with sticky or solid buds.

Hey Julius: Sometimes I read about someone being "treated for marijuana ingestion" or "treated for marijuana intoxication". What does that mean?

I've read this before, often in news articles discussing someone who's... well... smoked a lot of pot. I tried to find references in various medical textbooks as to the recommended treatment for "marijuana intoxication". Unfortunately, my search came up with very little. As it turns out, there's not really much "treatment" per se -- the usual course of action is something like this:

1. Calm the patient down if they are anxious/panicking.

Since "Dave" found The Straight Toke with the intent of finding out "if smoking out of aluminum foil bowls is bad for you", I intend to help him answer that question.

Short answer: pure aluminium? Probably not. (But read on.)

Long answer: "aluminium foil"? I wouldn't...

Julius does not endorse the use of any substance. The rules below are not an endorsement of drug use, but rather guidelines shared with the intent of helping those who choose to use do so safely.

Yesterday a friend of mine had a pretty poor trip on some mushrooms. He looked at them before (and afterwards) and they weren't spiked -- they were just a bit stronger than he expected. While everyone's fine and nothing bad came out of it, the experience has prompted me to share the rules of safe drug use: