No two stones are going to be the same. There’s a lot of different factors that determine how long a high will last. It all depends on your body chemistry, how you react to the plant and how you consume it. Generally, acute effects can range from 1-8 hours, and residual effects can last up to a day.
Let’s Break It Down
There are some smart scientists out there studying cannabis and how it interacts with the human body. It’s a complex chemical process that affects multiple functions and systems in your brain and body. But like anything you consume, your experience is going to boil down to a number of factors:
- Method of consumption (smoked or eaten)
- Amount and potency of cannabis
- Your tolerance level
- Your general weight and health
- How fast your metabolism is
- Your mental expectations of the experience
These factors can all vary greatly, even from day to day, smoke to smoke. So it’s tough to pin down a time frame for exactly how long a high will last.
Generally speaking, based on surveys, studies and personal testimonies – people who smoke cannabis can expect to feel the acute effects for 1 to 3 hours. If you smoke cannabis, it will hit you almost immediately, with the full effects hitting you about 15 minutes after smoking.
If you consume pot in edible form, that’s a much different experience. Your body processes it through your liver before it hits your bloodstream. It will take anywhere from half an hour to an hour to kick in, but the total length of the high will last 4-8 hours.
So to recap:
- Smoking: 1-3 hours
- Eating: 4-8 hours
All depending of course. Obviously if you’re new to cannabis, it will hit you harder that someone who’s built up a tolerance for it.
Personally, I’m a lightweight. That’s just how my individual body chemistry works. Even when I was smoking multiple times a day, I was high for hours each time. Which was nice in a way, because I never had to spend much money for a good stone.
The After Effects
When you consume cannabis the acute psychoactive effects will last for about the times listed above, but that doesn’t mean THC isn’t still hitting your system. THC latches onto fat cells. As those break down, THC gets redistributed into your system.
That doesn’t mean you’ll be high all over again, but it does mean you’ll feel some level of what we call “burn-out.”
This is the tired and groggy state after the initial high wears down. It’s the period when you get lazy, dry eyed and just generally unmotivated. You can still function, but you may not want to. This is where headaches can stem from.
Depending on the stain of cannabis, these effects can be more or less severe. Some strains drop you like a sack down a mine shaft, leaving you pretty useless, immobile and in need of serious sleep. Other strains are kinder. They let you down easy and don’t weight on you as much.
These effect can last for up to a day. A nap, some munchies and some water can help with recovery.
