Pot brownies have always been a big part of cannabis culture and rightly so, because they can be pretty delicious. But you may have wondered about the best ways to consume cannabis and whether consuming the buds themselves, whether raw or "cooked", is good for you or effective at getting you high.
Cannabis buds are edible all by themselves, although eating it raw is not the preferred method of consumption for the vast majority of people.
Will Raw Cannabis Get You High?
Unfortunately, raw cannabis will not get you high and most people who use cannabis on a regular basis would consider eating it raw to be wasteful. There have been many newbies who have taken an entire nug, eaten it, and been sorely disappointed afterward. For cannabis to make you high, it has to be decarbed (decarboxylated) first to have any effects.
Raw cannabis contains THCA, which only turns into THC when it's heated. The heat can take place in an oven, a vaporizer, or one of these newfangled decarboxylator machines like the Ardent Nova, but take place it must if you want to feel more than just the regret of the taste of raw weed in your mouth.
In all reality, you would need to eat a substantial amount of high quality cannabis to get high through eating it raw.
Is Raw Cannabis Good For You?
Believe it or not, there are health benefits to simply eating raw cannabis. It has many of the same benefits as other leafy greens and also like other leafy greens, it may not be that palatable. Juicing is a popular method, but it requires fresh picked cannabis to get the best health results, not dried and cured bud that's meant to be smoked or turned into activated edibles. It's high in anti-oxidants and contains omega fatty acids, iron, calcium, vitamins B1, B2, B6, and more.
Can You Eat Decarbed Weed?
You can eat decarbed cannabis by itself and get high, but it's not going to taste very good. If you're just after the effects and don't care about the taste at all, this isn't a big deal. But why put yourself through having to wash down grainy plant material?
Something fairly simple that you can do to make eating decarbed weed a little easier to swallow is packing the decarbed material into size “00” pill capsules with a capsule machine. This is effective and makes it easy to carry around a few doses that are easily disposed of if necessary. Capsule filling tools are available for between $20 and $40 depending on how many capsules you want to fill at one time.
But even this has somewhat limited effects, because your body doesn't digest cannabis very easily. The activated THC in the decarbed material has to get into your bloodstream before you're going to feel anything. Your body doesn't process the plant material very easily, so not all of the THC in the plant material is going to be absorbed. This is why people make edibles such as cannabutter or cannabis tincture; the THC is extracted from the plant material by doing this and you get a stronger, longer lasting high.
One simple method for consuming decarbed weed in an efficient way is to make what are called “firecrackers”. This is one of the first edibles that people learn how to make and due to its simplicity, it remains in any regular user's repertoire of recipes. Even if you say you can't cook, you should be able to make these.
Firecrackers Recipe
Decarb your cannabis in the oven at 250°F for 30 minutes.
Spread peanut butter over some graham crackers and sprinkle your decarbed bud on top of one of them. Put the second graham cracker (also covered in peanut butter) on top to hold the bud in place. Make as many of these as you want.
Wrap your crackers tightly in aluminum foil with no rips or tears in it. This is important, because you want to make sure that none of the THC escapes into the air. Your crackers will be more edible this way.
Bake at 300°F for 20 minutes.
When they're done, let them cool off completely while they're still in the foil. Don't open them prematurely!
Start off only eating a small portion of one to begin with to see where your high lands. Wait at least 45 minutes before eating another portion of the same size to give it time to fully affect you.