What Happens If Your Weed Experience Goes Very Wrong? Here's What You Should Do First.
Most people who indulge in weed, from occasional tokers to certified stoners, know that getting too high can be both hilarious and absolutely terrifying. Because the cannabis available today is often stronger than the pot of yesteryear — especially when it comes to edibles — it’s easy to consume a larger amount of THC (the main inebriating compound in the plant) than you mean to.
Those tiny gummies look so innocuous, but each one can contain dozens of milligrams of THC and, because they can take up to an hour to kick in, the temptation to eat more before you’re fully high can lead to ingesting a huge dose.
Simply put: You might end up facing extreme internal chaos.
While inhaling or swallowing too much weed probably won’t do you in, an overwhelming or bad high can impair your judgment in a risky way and make you feel like you’re in mortal danger. You can experience paranoia, anxiety or unshakable dread. You might even have physical reactions like a racing heart, a headache or nausea.
So what do we do if we find ourselves in a situation like this? Are there ways to feel less high, or less awful while we’re high, if we find we’re not enjoying ourselves?
That’s what we — Raj Punjabi and Noah Michelson, the hosts of HuffPost’s “Am I Doing It Wrong?” podcast — asked Krishna Andavolu, a journalist and longtime host of VICE’s Weediquette series, when he stopped by our studio to school us on all things weed.
Listen to the full episode by pressing play:
So what’s the first thing we should do? Look for someone who can help ground us.
“Having someone to talk to is huge — someone who’s been around the plant a bunch and can give you some good, sage advice about how to chill out,” Andavolu said.
Then, sitting or lying down on a couch, drinking some water, having a snack and watching a familiar, feel-good movie we love are all other good actions that can also help calm us down.
“And then there’s one thing that I’ve read about… which is take a peppercorn and chew on it,” he told us. “It has a [chemical compound in it called a] terpene that helps one of your cannabis receptors to, like, only enhance the part of THC that makes you sleepy. So it sort of tricks your brain into getting rid of all the anxiety.”
While there’s limited scientific data to back up this theory (as you can imagine, academic institutions haven’t rushed to research ways to improve our weed seshes), there appears to be no danger in trying it, and it’s been widely touted on online message boards as a helpful way to mitigate extreme highs.
While Michelson noted that he has just tried to “go to sleep” if his high becomes unbearable or scary, Andavolu reemphasized checking in with a friend if things feel really off.
“It’s worth having another person come by if you can because there are some parts [of a bad high] that are scary,” he said. “You’re like, wait, am I feeling this or am I just imagining this? It’s always good if you’re in a little bit of an emergency to have a buddy.”
Cases of death by weed overdose are rare or possibly even nonexistent — Andavolu joked, “There was a guy when I was reporting on this a lot who loved to say, ‘The only way that weed can kill you is if a ton of it falls on your head’” — but consuming too much THC can certainly feel life-threatening and put you in danger in other ways.
“You can get too stoned and make some terrible decisions,” Andavolu said. “You can get run over by a car if you’re not aware of where you’re at. You can have an unfortunate and terrible psychotic episode, and that could result in all kinds of harm that you can do to yourself.”
Though most emergency room doctors will probably tell folks experiencing a bad high there’s not much they can do for them beyond offering some of the advice Andavolu shared with us, there’s never any shame in seeking medical help if you think you may need it.
“You’re probably going to go in there and they’re probably going to tell you that you need to sleep it off, but at least you can have a professional look at you, and I think that that’s better,” he said, adding, “don’t play with your health.”
We also chatted about the joys of being stoned, how cannabis is being used to heal people, how to buy weed intentionally and responsibly, and much more.
Listen to the full episode above or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Need some help with something you’ve been doing wrong? Email us at AmIDoingItWrong@HuffPost.com, and we might investigate the topic in an upcoming episode.
