How to select and eat a Cannabis Edible by Rhea Graham
The first thing you need to establish is, “why are you eating the edible?” Do you wish to get high? Looking for more energy? Sleep? Not all edibles are created equally as you will soon learn once you start making and eating them.
Terpenes “drive the high” so it is hard to say “an Indica will put you to sleep and a Sativa will have you scrubbing the walls” but that is what you will typically find. This may not be true if you are bipolar or have opposites effect. Often, hybrids are more subtle, especially the Indica dominate ones. They usually allow you to enjoy a lift before you go to sleep.
The act of eating the edible is important. You want to nibble on it; eat it very slowly, let it “run around your mouth awhile”. In doing this you will feel the effects and relief in minutes instead of an hour or more. What you eat and when you eat it in relation to the edible itself is of vital importance, too. If you eat “fat” (ice cream, yogurt, etc) half an hour before your THC edible, your liver will be busy metabolizing the fat and ignore the THC for the first pass through the liver. If you eat the edible on an empty stomach with “fat” the liver will metabolize the THC, altering your state of mind if the THC is activated.
Gastro paresis will affect how your body reacts to edibles. If you intestines aren’t pushing the edible through your system, you won’t have the effects. With this condition, you will really want to let the edible “run around in your mouth”. You will absorb the Cannabinoids through the mucus membrane in the mouth faster and without the degradation of stomach acid. I have had a patient tell me that they got “high” more than a day after eating an edible due to gastro paresis.
Making your own edibles is the very best way to know what you have. You can purchase the concentrate at a dispensary and easily dose a batch of edibles.