For a brief time, I kept a spreadsheet of my monthly expenses. It had the usual entries: rent ($650), utilities ($80), and weed ($250). This was years ago, when rent was still in the triple digits and instead of buying my weed from a "budtender" named Chad, I bought it from the drag queen up the street. My expenses have certainly gone up since then, but my weed habit has remained stubbornly the same all these years: $250 a month, every month, forever.
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You don't have to be good at math to see that's a lot of money. I could have purchased a new double-wide by now, easy. Even worse, these days most of that money goes up in smoke—after years of smoking weed all day, every day, I've plateaued. I just can't get high anymore. My financial adviser would be appalled at the amount I spend with so little return. And if I stopped buying all this weed, I could probably even afford a financial adviser.
Something must change. I came to this conclusion recently while looking at real-estate listings and realizing that the only property I can afford is a storage unit in Bremerton. I should stop smoking, I thought for a second before closing Redfin and coming to my senses. You don't give up on something you love just like that. It wasn't time to quit smoking; it was time to start smoking smarter. But how to get more bang for my bong?
To find out, I went for a consultation at Ponder, a pot shop in the Central District. Located just down the street from Uncle Ike's, Ponder is smaller, friendlier, and less controversial than its neighbor up the hill. Plus, Ponder's happy hour beats most places in town. From noon to 4:20 p.m. every day, everything is 15 percent off. For this reason alone, they get a large part of my weed budget.
Budtender Dan Potter knows my pain. Potter, whose ginger hair was pulled back into a man bun, told me that the key to maintaining a buzz when you have a chronic habit is to alternate your delivery mechanisms—smoke flower one day and then go for hash or concentrate the next. That, I can do.
But then Potter offered another piece of advice: dabs.
That's what I was afraid of. Dabbing, a relatively new mode of ingesting cannabis, involves super-concentrated doses that have been extracted from the plant using solvents like butane or carbon dioxide. The resulting stuff, often called wax, shatter, or butane hash oil, looks kind of like honey gone bad, and it gets you really, really high. Potent flower may be up to 30 percent THC; dabs can be up to 90 percent and sometimes more.
Dabs—along with dance parties, hangovers, and all music—make me feel hopelessly old. Flower requires merely a match and a piece of rolling paper (or, if you don't have that, a pipe, bong, plastic bottle, aluminum can, apple, carrot, or page ripped from a Bible). Flower is simple. Dabs require an expensive piece of machinery called a dab rig, as well as a butane blowtorch to heat it.
My only prior attempt at dabbing was several years ago, before the price of legal weed dropped low enough to convert me to retail. At the time, about a year after recreational shops started to pop up, I bought weed from a thirtysomething dealer whose wardrobe hadn't been updated since high school. He wore massive wide-legged jeans that bled water four inches up his pant leg when it rained, and when he rolled up the sleeves of his hoodie, I saw arms covered in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle tattoos. Mr. Friendly, as he called himself, lived in a basement apartment on Capitol Hill with a pirate flag covering the bathroom doorway and black and white striped wallpaper. While he was happy to deliver, I preferred to go to him—that way I could leave.
After selling me a quarter ounce one day, Mr. Friendly offered me a dab and said that it was the only way he smoked anymore. Flower just didn't do it. While I generally made my exit after exactly long enough not to appear impolite, I knew better than to say no to drugs. Mr. Friendly rubbed his hands together and fired up the torch. This, I thought, is this closest I will ever come to doing meth. After the dab rig was hot, he dropped a grain-size ball of wax on the bowl—or nail, as it's called in dabbing—and I pressed my mouth to the pipe and inhaled. The smoke that moved from the nail to my lungs tasted strongly of chemicals. And as I coughed and sank back into his magenta pleather couch, Mr. Friendly took out his laptop and asked if I wanted to see pictures from his last road trip. I would have resisted, but I couldn't move.
Drug dealers in JNCO jeans are one thing I do not miss about the black market.
I told Potter, the budtender at Ponder, that my only dabbing experience had been less than ideal and also I was afraid that if I started dabbing, I'd never be able to go back to smoking regular old flower. Why make my tolerance problem even bigger?
He said that this is a legitimate concern, which is why alternating is key. Still, I wasn't ready to blow the entire Stranger weed budget on dabs, so I picked up some of Potter's other favorites: Lavender Hash from Soulshine, Sensi Star Hash Oil from Orgrow, Granddaddy Purple Vape Oil from Top Shelf, and 96 percent THC Distillate, also from Top Shelf. I would test them, rate them, and, hopefully, find a combination that actually works.
My experiment started with littering hash over bowls of 27-percent-THC sativa that I smoked through a Nirvana bong I inherited from a friend. Had I not been littering bowls with the kief trapped in my grinder for the past decade, the hash may have had some effect, but it seemed I was immune to this as well. The hash did nothing. My girlfriend, however, whose job doesn't allow her to go home on lunch breaks, smokes less weed than I do. And so one evening before dinner, I lined a bowl with hash and told her to enjoy. Fifteen minutes later, she was standing at the freezer, spooning strawberry ice cream into her mouth and suggesting we move into a Sears van. (Rating: )
I had more luck with the distillate, which came in a plastic syringe filled with 100 milligrams of golden THC syrup. At Ponder, I'd asked Potter if the syringe was a single dose, and he'd laughed. One hundred milligrams is about the amount that New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd infamously ingested before spinning out into an existential weed crisis. Potter said that a lot of people put distillate in edibles—throw a little bit in some brownie batter and bake it up. But why take on the extra calories?
I ate the distillate direct from the syringe. While the taste and mouthfeel was pleasant enough (a little piney, a little slick), the 30 milligram dose I'd started with was clearly not enough. After two hours, I could easily have operated heavy machinery, so I took the other 70 milligrams and tried again. That was more like it. I wouldn't say that I got scary stoned, which was my goal, but I did fall asleep with my hand in a bag of tortilla chips. Still, distillate isn't ideal for everyday use. For one, it's expensive. One hundred milligrams of Top Shelf distillate cost $25.50 at Ponder, which is fine if you require only a few milligrams to get stoned, but not if you have the tolerance of a lesser Marley brother. (Rating: )
Everyone loves a vape pen. They are easy and discreet, with no mess or fuss—you just insert your cannabis cartridge, press a button, inhale, and walk into your boss's office with no stink to give you away. But while the ease of vape pens cannot be matched, I've always found them less effective than plain old flower. I could suck on a vape pen all day and the only thing I'd get is a mouth sore. Sadly, the Granddaddy Purple I picked up at Ponder was no different. I might as well have been vaping air. Convenience is great, but getting high is better. (Rating: )
It was time, finally, for dabs. I didn't have a dab rig, but I do have a neighbor with one, and I asked him if I could come over for a lesson. He suggested we meet at 4:20 p.m. the next Saturday. Perfect.
When I got to his apartment, his dab rig was set out on a side table along with a butane torch, a jar of Q-tips, and a small glass of water for cleaning. My neighbor, who works at X-Tracted Labs in Sodo, brought out a shallow square box lined with about 20 small glass jars with green and blue caps. These were the dabs, each one-gram X-Tracted vial going for about $50 retail. The whole setup, he said, including dab rig, butane torch, and all the accessories, cost him between $400 and $500. So much for saving money.
The part that scares me the most about dabs is the torch. I've burned off my own eyebrows just from bong hits; a blowtorch would likely send me to a burn ward. Thankfully, my neighbor volunteered to do the hard part for me. First, he demonstrated. He fired up the torch, heated the nail, and set his iPhone timer for 45 seconds. Too hot and it'll burn the goods, he said, plus waiting a little while helps the heat dissipate so you get a more even hit. Right at 45 seconds, he took a small glob of wax, smeared it around the nail, and inhaled while turning a "carb cap" around the rig, which brings oxygen to the dab. Afterward, he cleaned the nail—also called a banger—with water and Q-tips. "Always start with a clean surface," he said. "It's like eating off a clean plate."
It was my turn. Nervous, I followed his instructions and spooned some wax onto the banger, spun the carb cap, and breathed in. After my experience dabbing with Mr. Friendly, I expected to be laid out coughing at the very first inhale, but the X-Tracted dab was different. It was smooth, sweet, and lemony, with no harshness at all. It felt better in my lungs than a regular old bong hit. And it got me really fucking high. After three dabs—two from X-Tracted, plus the Sensi Star from Ponder, I was, as the youth say, lit. I stumbled home with my earbuds hanging from my ears, attached to nothing, wondering where the music went. Later, still high, I had one of those realizations that seem profoundly true in the moment: I loved dabs. They are the essence of cannabis with everything else stripped away. I didn't need dumb old flower to get high. I needed a $500 dab rig and a blowtorch of my own. (Rating: )
I was looking up dab rigs online when my buzz started to wear off, so I took Dan Potter's advice, alternating with a little bit of hash, then a hit off the vape pen, then the last little bit of 96 percent THC distillate from my Top Shelf syringe. It worked. I was, finally, after all that, scary stoned. The key, I realized, is to take everything at once.
Or is it? No matter how much you ingest, drugs, by their very nature, wear off. You can't stay stoned forever, and, really, why would you want to? When I woke up the next day with only a few vague memories of the 24 hours before, I decided to do something radical: I would take a break. The best way to lower your tolerance, after all, is simple: Don't smoke so damn much. And so far, I kind of like it. My brain doesn't feel fuzzy, I can actually remember my dreams, and I have hardly any desire to eat Doritos dipped in Nutella. It's only been 15 minutes, but when you smoke as much as I do, I'm thinking sobriety may be the most intoxicating state of being of all.
Regular marijuana use can become a strain on the wallet. Thankfully, there are a variety of strategies that you can use in order to reduce the amount of money you spend on weed. Growing your own, consuming edibles instead of smoking, and switching to a vaporizer can all help you save some hard-earned cash.
The truth is that regular marijuana use can be an expensive habit. Most regular smokers simply respond to budget constraints by cutting back on the amount of weed they smoke. However, you don’t have to go without your favourite herb in order to save money. By getting a little creative, you will see that there are many other ways to save money on marijuana, while still being able to get high whenever you want to.
There are many obvious ways to stretch your stash, like holding onto roach joints and buying weed that is high in THC content. However, those willing to put in a little more effort will be handsomely rewarded. Here are just a few strategies you can use to save money on weed, without having to cut back or stop smoking.
One of the best ways to save money on weed is by simply growing your own. Growing your own weed is much more cost-effective than constantly purchasing it from suppliers and distributors. When it comes to growing, there are a range of options to fit your budget and climate. While commercial grow-ops can be incredibly sophisticated, growing for personal use won’t force you to break the bank or commit extensive amounts of time. Simple growing setups like grow boxes or closet grows can produce more than enough cannabis for personal use.
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One of the main benefits of growing your own marijuana is being able to make use of the whole plant. The stems and leaves of the cannabis plant can be fashioned into a wide array of different psychoactive and non-psychoactive products.
Many first-time growers are surprised by the amount of by-product left over after they cut and dry their buds. Stems and leaves are often an afterthought. However, they can be used to produce a variety of useful and beneficial marijuana products. Whether it's psychoactive products like THC capsules or cannabis-infused alcohol, or therapeutic products like topical creams, the stems and leaves of the cannabis plant can oftentimes be just as valuable as the buds. Here are some ideas that can help you make the most of your cannabis plants.
Cannabis-infused alcohol is actually very easy to make, and very fun to consume. Weed can be infused into food-safe, high-proof alcohol like vodka or everclear. Simply place the stems and alcohol into a mason jar. Let it sit for a week in a dark, cool place, shaking and mixing daily. The longer you let it sit, the more THC that will be infused into the alcohol. Don’t forget to run it through a filter before drinking so as to avoid swallowing any stems!
Bubble hash is a more potent, concentrated version of marijuana that is often produced in miniature bricks or squares. This delectable concentrate is a pleasure to smoke or vape. It is prepared by vigorously washing stems and trimmed leaves with ice water. The water is then strained through numerous filters, leaving behind bubble hash to be dried and smoked.
Because of its potency and convenience, cannabutter is an active ingredient in many commercially available edibles. It is a versatile ingredient that can be used in countless recipes for baked goods. To make cannabutter, simply grind up your stems, place them in a pan with your butter, and allow them to simmer together for roughly 45 minutes.
Topical marijuana products have begun to gain mainstream traction for their ability to soothe a variety of skin conditions. Topicals are absorbed through cannabinoid receptors in the skin, allowing them to work locally, and producing no psychoactive effect. Topical creams and salves are often used for skin problems such as inflammation, acne, blisters, and psoriasis. Check the web for easy, do-it-yourself topical recipes that can convert your leftover trim into topical solutions.
THC is an oil-soluble compound, meaning it can be extracted from the plant and mixed with carrier oils. Cannabis can be infused into oils like coconut oil and olive oil. These oils can be consumed on their own, placed into capsules, or can be mixed into recipes as an oil or butter substitute.
Trimmed sugar leaves have significantly less THC content than cannabis buds. However, this does not mean that they won’t get you high. You will just have to smoke or vape more of them to get there. Make sure to dry them out and grind them up before vaping or smoking.
Trimmed leaves can be converted into oils to be placed into capsules. These capsules are a convenient and discreet dosing method. They are typically odourless and can be easily carried and consumed without arousing suspicion. Capsules can also be made from ground-up, decarboxylated buds.
Edibles are a fantastic alternative to smoking weed. They will help you stretch your stash by producing a much longer high than you can get from smoking. The average edible high lasts between 4–6 hours, and sometimes longer. By comparison, smoking marijuana typically produces a high that only lasts 2–3 hours. Moreover, most people need to eat very little cannabis in order to get high. Even just a quarter gram of mid-range weed is enough for most people to experience a lengthy trip.
Consuming edibles is one of the most health-conscious ways of getting high. Apart from the ingestion of calories, there are practically no downsides to edibles. Most importantly, they will protect your lungs from the toxins and carcinogens found in smoke.
Edibles are delicious, versatile, and discreet. Converting your weed into cannaoil or cannabutter provides you with a great deal of flexibility and convenience. Weed-infused oil and butter can be mixed into a variety of recipes, and can even be eaten on their own.
One of the easiest ways to save money on marijuana is simply to buy more at once. Dealers and distributors love to give discounts for bulk purchases. Selling in bulk allows distributors to move product off their shelves quicker, cut down on storage costs, and process more product. Dispensaries would much rather get rid of 28 grams at once, rather than going through the painstaking process of selling 1 gram, 28 times. You can take advantage of this by buying your cannabis in bulk and saving some money per gram.
When buying in bulk, remember that proper storage is crucial to keeping marijuana fresh and potent. Make sure to keep your bud in an airtight container, stashed in a dark, cool place. Humidity should be carefully considered when storing marijuana. Too much humidity could lead to the growth of mould, whereas too little could dry your bud out over time.
Vaporizers are an incredibly efficient way of consuming cannabis. With vapes, you will only have to consume a fraction of the weed you normally would in order to get high. The major downside with vaporizers is the up-front cost. Most vaporizers are quite expensive to purchase, especially high-quality ones. However, the money you will save on weed in the long-term will make the purchase well worth it. Additionally, unlike smoked weed, vaped weed can be put to other uses after being vaporized.
Many people simply toss out their vaporized weed after getting high, yet vaporized weed can still be put to good use.
One way to make the most of your already-vaped bud is to bake it into edibles. Baking edibles with already-vaped weed is super convenient because vaporization decarboxylates weed. This means that the remaining THC in your vaped weed is already activated. As such, you don’t even need to place your vaped weed in the oven to make edibles with it. Vaped and decarbed weed can be utilised raw, or ground up and incorporated into other foods or liquids. Vaped bud can also be squeezed into capsules for more accurate and convenient dosing.
With a little work, vaped weed can be converted into cannaoil and cannabutter. This will allow you to prepare edibles that do not taste like vaped weed or plant matter in general. This may seem complicated, but the process is actually surprisingly simple. Apart from weed and oil/butter, all you will really need is a pan, an oven, and a stir stick.
Lastly, already-vaped weed can simply be smoked as if it were fresh. Keep in mind that your vaped bud will be significantly less potent than fresh bud. As such, many people prefer to mix it in a bowl with fresh weed. That way, you can get high while saving some money in the process.
Learning how to roll better joints, and how to light them properly, is something every regular smoker should take the time to do. Doing so can help you make the most of your joints by eliminating waste.
The sign of a good joint is a nice, slow burn that lets you fully enjoy all it has to offer. The most important way to make it do that is to ensure that your joint has good form. Making two more creases on each side of the main fold is a good way to give your joint some rolling flexibility. This will not only allow you to pack your weed in much easier, but it will also give you a better chance to roll the joint up evenly. Moreover, when you tuck your weed inside of the paper, make sure that it is evenly distributed. This will allow for slow, even burning.
A filter can be a great addition to any joint. It will prevent the weed from being pulled into your mouth while smoking, and subsequently being wasted when you spit it back out. Not only that, but filters make joints easier to handle and smoke.
Lighting a joint properly is crucial to getting a nice, even burn. Remember to twist the tip of your joint before lighting it. This will allow the paper to overlap, making it burn slower and allowing it to burn more evenly from the very start. When lighting, do not hold the joint in your mouth. Instead, hold it between your fingers, and roll it around slowly as the flame is being applied. When it is lit, inhale, and allow the burn to move up the joint naturally. Remember not to hold the flame too close to the joint while lighting. This will very likely lead to an uneven burn.
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One-hitter pipes are great for saving marijuana. This is because they help you to better manage and conserve your weed. These pipes can usually only hold 0.1–0.3g at once, depending on their size. Having to re-pack your bowl after every hit will force you to consider whether you really want or need one more. It is hard to smoke too much weed or to get too high using a one-hitter.
Moreover, the weed inside of a one-hitter is immediately used up when lit, and does not have the opportunity to continue burning. Unlike a joint, which continues to burn and release smoke into the air, a one-hitter will typically only produce enough smoke for inhalation.
If you are looking for a one-hitter pipe that can help you to better conserve your weed, consider Zamnesia’s Lock-N-Load One Hitter Chillum Pipe. It was explicitly designed for privacy and efficiency. This pipe features a twist cap capable of eliminating odour and improving portability, making it a better choice than most other one-hitter pipes on the market.
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