stem THC content debate rehashed (pun intended!)

ok, so many people here say smoking stems is pointless and will give you no more than a headache because they contain no THC.

i submit to you that i do not know from scientific evidence if they do or do not contain delta-9 THC, however, i believe science is merely one way of understanding this existence and there is much to be said for anecdotal evidence and firsthand experience. as they say, seeing is believing - and so is any other sense! feeling is believing as well, in this case.

i have eaten cookies made with butter which has had a good deal of stems sauteed in it. i got stoned!

i save my stems when i smoke, and theres never too much to save. but i save them anyway, and slowly over time the supply builds up. when i'm really low, i generally go through the stems with a safety pin or something and pick off the flakes of bud and leaf that are unable to be easily removed by hand. if i have a good amount of stems i can sometimes get about half a bowlpack this way, and it gets me stoned. but alas, this is not smoking purely stems.

now i have been broke for a while. and i haven't been smoking anything other than charity pot for about a week or so, and it had been a few days since i smoked.....gotten to the point where i dont even really care anymore, i'm just resigned to not smoking. however, i went from smoking bowl after bowl of mids or nugs and being able to walk straight and be around anyone but a cop comfortably, to not smoking at all. period. now, last night, though i dont any longer particularly "fiend" for it, i decided...what the fuck, i'm not smoking pot lately, not smoking cigarettes much lately either...might as well try smoking some of the better looking stems out of the stem bag! i tell you what, it took about two bongloads, but with my lowered tolerance, I DID GET STONED!

i'm a seasoned smoker, been using it consistantly for about four years now. i've smoked many different grades and types of marijuana, from shitty brown mexican brick weed with corners in it and hundreds of seeds to some of the finest, stickiest, most pungent seedless nugs with all sorts of different smells flavors and names. i've smoked resin, hash oil, eaten pot, eaten pot butter, and even tried smoking male bud and leaves (yuck! never again!)

and i can tell you, with no reservation, and with absolute certainty that last night when i was smoking stems I GOT STONED! it wasnt spectacular, and i wasnt stoned off my ass, but for the first time in a few days i was certainly high.

now, for all you naysayers, there are several possibilities to explain this: i could be mistaken (but thats your hang up, not mine - i know that i know what its like to be stoned, even if you dont KNOW that i know), stems could actually contain some small amounts of thc despite what many people say, or since the stems i smoked were the stems from within or near bud, it could have very tiny amounts of resin stuck to it, enough to offer a very slight buzz to a person with a low tolerance.

now personally, i think that stems may actually contain some thc, despite what most people want to say. i know that it isnt much, and i do not doubt for a second that some, perhaps even most, of the effect was probably due to residual resin from the bud and leaves near the portions of the stems i was smoking. however, when i had the stem cookies (we made SNICKERdoodles ) it was largely using stem from homegrown pot, including the portions far away from any bud or leaves (it was good pot, but not particularly high yielding, a friend's grow) and i can't believe that the effect we got from the cookies was simply due to residual resin sticking to the stems. it doesnt add up, because all three of us (all seasoned smokers) got pretty high from them.

now, i cannot convince you to disbelieve what your conventional wisdom which says that stems have no THC in them.....but i request everyone here perform an experiment to find out firsthand. save your stems for a month or two or three and when you have a good bit available stop smoking for about a week. then smoke that shit up. no, it doesnt taste good, and no it isn't a great high, but it DOES get me high.

now it really doesn't matter unless you're curious, and certainly i dont like smoking stems and if you can afford your pot all the time than it would be hard to do this experiment when instead you could just smoke bud. hell, i wouldnt smoke stems if i had bud, i dont blame you! but hey, if you dont believe me, give it a shot and see for yourself. i'm interested in hearing other people's opinions after they try this, because i've heard time and again "blah blah blah theres no THC in them, you can't get high off of stems!" but from experience i have to say this is wrong thinking. try it yourself, but if you're smoking them i'd say wait a few days without smoking to lower your tolerance, so you can more accurately judge if theres an effect or not. if you have a good amount (half an ounce or more) try simmering it in butter for about half an hour and then using the butter to make cookies. this way you dont really NEED to stop smoking and lower your tolerance, because you can easily ingest a large amount by eating rather than smoking.


give it a whirl, you nonbelievers! :H

 

I heard chewing on stems could give u a buzz and tried it i guess i was like sorta buzzin barely though so hey it probly does work

 

I've smoked stems on numerous occasions. The first time I did it was with some stems from a sack of dank(not sure of the strain). Anyway, after the bud was all gone I looked at some of the stems and noticed an abundance of trichromes. So me and my smoking buddy ground up the stems and rolled a small joint completely made up of stems. We we're both pretty stoned when the joint was finished. I noticed that it was a completely different high than bud gives me. I seemed to be much more lethargic for some reason and my mouth was MUCH drier than usual.

 

the buzz you get from smokin stems is probably from carbon monoxide, not from THC. and smoke you inhales will dissorient you, but stems have no THC of thier own. maybey some resin or crystal from the bud stuck to it, but the stem produces no THC.

 

man sorry but thats really numnum, you would be smoking poisonous levels of carbon monoxide if you were getting high off it, in fact your lungs probably couldnt take it.


whatever the skeptics say, it really doesnt matter how the thc get there, its there. at least in teh stems near the bud as nesta says.

personally when ive smoked stem though, i scraped off the skin. if theres thc, its not gonna be in the fibre on the inside. the skins have hair on them, which definately catch thc droplets. but as well as this you cant rule out the idea that thc is in the plant veins (or at least some cannabinoids are) and that this carries some cannabinoid down to the stem close to bud.

but thats usually the only stem you get.. well at least i get, it would seem conspicious if there was a stem longer than a bud

 

I've heard that people with a lot of stems (growers, mainly) can do extractions on them, or kinda rub them against a grate or cloth or something to get the shake, which is smokable like any other shake. I think smoking straight up stems usually doesn't get you high because of the low density of THC/cannabinoids in them. You'd have to smoke tons, and by that point you'd have inhaled so much burnt plant matter that you'd not be feeling too good, even if you did get high.

 

last night i smoked stems again. yeah, it took 4 bongloads, but i did get buzzed. trust me, it wasn't simply carbon monoxide - I KNOW WHAT THC FEELS LIKE, and i know the difference between being stoned and being dizzy from asphyxiation

yeah, i agree, theres almost definitely no THC from INSIDE the stem, but i dont usually go to the effort of peeling/scraping/otherwise preparing the stems.....i just hit it a few times until the outside is all black, and don't bother smoking until the stems are ashen powder. so a full bowlpack is still only going to last maybe 5-6 hits at MOST....more often more like 3-4

also, there was plenty of time between bowls and i could feel the effect accumulating. i was getting plenty of fresh air.

this works, and its NOT just placebo, and its not just carbon monoxide or any other form of asphyxiation.

who cares if the stems themselves do or do not PRODUCE THC themselves according to what scientific info we have on the matter? if it works, it works. whether or not they MAKE THC, they DO contain THC most of the time.

chewing shouldnt give you any buzz, really. after all, chewing BUD isn't a means of getting high, so why would chewing stems? if you eat them, that is a different story entirely. but not just chewing them....afaik

btw, for anyone trying this.....yes, you do have to smoke a lot, and yes, you should only really worry about getting the outside of the stems burned. either remove the skin and just smoke that, like has been suggested by someone else, or just smoke till the outside is all charred, like i suggested. both ways should work. you will need much more than you would for bud, so dont expect to smoke a bowl of middies stems with a friend and both get high, because that probably wont happen. and the better the pot, the better the stems will be, too.

take a rest between bowls, and dont smoke too fast. you need time to let it hit you properly so you can adequately judge the effect, and you ought to let yourself get plenty of fresh air so that you are assured that its not just a weak, shortlived effect from the undesired gases and other materials present in marijuana smoke.

 

i guarantee you you'll get stoned off of stems. well i dont guarantee it but whatever. anyways its so close to the bud that oftentimes the thc gets on it...like a thread i read somewhere about smoking leaves, and the only reason u could possibly get high (and a headache) off leaves is the thc that it comes in contact with from the bud. yeah ive smoked stems before. it works.