Back in the day, most people ate weed cookies or pot brownies. Now that cannabis is recreationally or medically legal in most of the country, new kinds of shelf-stable edibles are popping up. When weed gummies hit the market, everyone fell in love. If you love pot and you love candy, it’s hard to turn down weed gummy every now and then.
What are weed gummies?
Weed gummies are gummy candies that have been infused with THC, and sometimes other cannabinoids. These gummies often look and taste like your favorite candies. They’re sour or sweet. They come in fun shapes. Best of all, they offer advantages that many other mass-produced edibles don’t.
Why gummies are the best edibles
Weed gummies are something you can stock up on. They’re easier to dose precisely than other kinds of edibles, they taste good, and you can hang onto them for months.
They last a long time
Brownies and cookies aren’t going to last a very long time. If you don’t finish a whole bag, batch, or box within a few days of baking or opening them, you’re going to have to toss the rest out. Edibles aren’t an everyday high for most people, and if you aren’t sharing them with a large group, you’re going to wind up wasting a lot of weed snacks.
Gummies will stay fresh for months, especially if you store them in an airtight container in your fridge. If you only like to use edibles once or twice a month, a container of gummies will last up to half a year without going bad.
Dosing them is easier
Baking with cannabutter is fun, but it involves a lot of math and a lot of work. If you’re up to the task and you’d like to bring a batch of something homemade to a cannabis-friendly gathering, go for it. If you just want something for yourself and a friend, this probably isn’t the best way to go.
Prepared baked edibles aren’t necessarily easy to dose either. You might find that one cookie contains three times your preferred dose. You can break a circle into perfect thirds, but do you really want to go through all that effort? Gummies are usually lower doses. If you want to cut one in half, that’s a lot easier to do.
Gummies are a healthier option
It’s hard to make cannabutter when you’re a vegan. You can find premade vegan cannabutter, but then you need to be able to incorporate it into a recipe. Most weed edibles aren’t made with dietary restrictions in mind. If you’re gluten-free and non-dairy, you’re going to have some trouble finding a cookie that suits your needs.
Forget the trope of stoners stuffing their faces. A lot of people who use cannabis products live very healthy lifestyles. An organic vegan gummy made with real fruit has fewer calories and is better for your body than a giant floury brownie.
How do edibles work?
When you smoke weed, it enters your bloodstream through your lungs and begins to work immediately. When you eat weed, a lot of other things need to happen before the THC hits your system. You need to digest the food and your liver needs to process it. It’s always kind of a surprise when edibles kick in, which can happen anywhere between 45 minutes and 2 hours.
The edibles will continue to work until your body fully processes all of the THC, which can last anywhere from 4 to 12 hours depending on your liver and your metabolism. It’s a long ride. It’s so much longer than smoking.
This is the reason why edibles are so polarizing. Some people cannot even fathom the idea of being high for eight hours. Other people want nothing more than an all-day high to keep them feeling good while they hang out or tend to household chores.
How to use edibles
You should approach weed gummies differently from the way you approach weed, even if you’re very experienced with weed. Edibles are a great time, but they should be used with caution.
Being mindful of portion size
Here’s where edibles get tricky. Nobody buys a bag of gummy bears and says, “I think I’ll eat one now, and save the other 99 for different days.” It feels counterintuitive. A serving of candy is usually a lot more than one of something. With edibles, an appropriate serving for your personal tolerance can be as little as half of a single gummy. This really throws people off.
That’s the reason why so many people have some kind of insane story about their experience with edibles. It’s not necessarily the fault of the edible, but the fault of the person who didn’t understand and overindulged. Or the fault of the person who baked the pot brownies if they didn’t do their math correctly and undersold the THC content.
Finding the right amount of THC
Edibles and smoking are nowhere near similar. You can smoke an entire joint of a 30% indica and feel fine. You can take a 10 mg indica edible and feel brutally incapacitated. Your body processes the THC in two completely different ways. Never assume that you know how an edible will affect you until after you’ve tried it.
Try eating a third of a 10 mg gummy. Wait two hours and see how you feel. Be patient, because edibles are notoriously slow to kick in. If you have a slow metabolism or a sluggish digestive system, it’s not unusual to wait a while.
If you aren’t really getting anything from a third of a gummy, you can eat the rest of the gummy. You only need to try this once to get an idea of how a few milligrams of THC affects you when you eat it. Once you know what you’re doing, you can take your preferred dose every time.
Setting the stage for a great high
You’re going to be high for a long time, and there’s a chance that you might feel a little too high. Plan for both of those things. Make sure you have everything you need where you’re at or you can order food if you get hungry. You won’t be able to drive, and going out to get anything is going to be an awkward experience if you’re high on edibles.
Set up a comfy, dimly lit room where you can go if you start to feel too high. Queue up a movie you’ve seen a million times before. If you feel out of it, focusing on a familiar movie can distract you for about two hours until your high wears down. It won’t overstimulate you because you won’t have to process any new information.