The Straight Toke - THE Marijuana Blog

How do you know when a bowl is cashed? Is it when all the stuff has turned black, or when the smoke starts to smell like Newark, or something like that? (Jeez, I hope you’re not from Newark.)

It's usually pretty easy to tell when you've cashed your bowl. Here are some tell-tale signs:

1. It goes out and can't be re-lit.
2. It no longer smells like weed, but smells like ash.
3. You can't taste any weed in your hits, but can taste ash/soot.
4. You actually start to draw chunks of ash instead of smoke.

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. ;-)

1)Can you really just sprinkle any ol' weed on top of food and eat it? I know that eating it keeps the effects longer, but I don't want to waste any.
2)Also, am I getting ripped off for paying 70$ a quarter for various types of cannibus [sic] that are basically average?

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?

I'm 25 and I used to smoke when I was younger (16-18) but I developed anxiety/panic disorder and had to stop. Not sure if this was induced by my drinking/drugging or genetics or a little of both but I had to stop smoking because it makes me have panic attacks. Now that's I'm a successful adult I don't want to go back to being a pothead or anything but it would be cool to toke ever now and then without thinking I'm going to have a heart attack. Any suggestions? Or am I doomed to continue leading a substance-free life (8 years strong)?

When I wrote my primer on how to smoke weed for first time smokers, I got an e-mail from a fellow webmaster (he runs the Amsterdam Logue, a comprehensive Amsterdam travel guide) with the suggestion that I cover the common belief that "you don't get high the first time you smoke." So I shall.

Simply put: it's a myth. There is no reason that one's brain will not react to the cannabinoids present in marijuana the first time one smokes. Unlike some other substances (Kanna comes to mind), there is no 'sensitization' period necessary to 'prime' the appropriate receptors. Your brain will have more or less the same response to THC whether you're a lifelong pothead or a first time smoker.

Recently, I've noticed that a lot of visitors come to this blog from Google with search terms like "how to smoke pot" or "learn to smoke weed" -- so I figured that I'd write a quick primer on the subject.

First, know that you don't have to smoke cannabis in order for it to be effective. There are a number of alternate ingestion methods that do not require the inhalation of smoke. I've gone over these alternative ways to use pot in another post, but if you're short on time, here's a quick recap:

• Use a vaporizer

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.