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When the brownies are too powerful, the cookies were baked with too much care, or the tea was brewed with way too many “leaves” you might encounter a common occurrence in many peoples’ cannabis experiences: feeling nauseous after eating/drinking edibles. Greening out, getting zonked, or losing yourself as you drift into oblivion aren’t exactly the kinds of experiences we’re after when we drop edibles, but it happens to the best of us.
Getting too high from edibles isn’t only common, but it can be difficult to avoid if you’re not carefully dosing or if you aren’t very familiar with your tolerances to cannabinoids & terpenes. Edibles present a few obstacles to anyone who doesn’t have a close handle on how cannabis affects their minds and bodies. Edibles can provide some of the best relief & experiences that cannabis has to offer, but they also are known to cause a world of hurt, confusion, fatigue and sensory overload if they’re not managed properly.
We’re confident that we can safely guide you through the pros & cons of edibles because we truly believe that they’re one of the most rewarding ways to consume cannabis. Sure, edibles can cause you to feel nauseous after eating them, but it can take a long time to learn how to recover from edibles. Nevertheless, they’re so damn delicious, satisfying and effective once you’ve learned the ins-and-outs of edibles. Whether you cook your own edibles or buy them online, edibles are among the most beloved ways to get your cannabis fix.
We’ll discuss what these issues are, how you can avoid them, review how long it takes marijuana edibles to leave your system and guide you through how to recover from edibles so that you can spend less time dazed & confused and more time making memories.
Why You’re Feeling Nauseous After Eating Edibles
The first and most obvious point we need to go over is what causes you to begin feeling nauseous after eating edibles. It happens to even the most seasoned stoners – after eating an edible, instead of feeling that familiar high-feeling you start to have stomach aches, queasiness, and dizziness. Sometimes when you consume edibles you run the risk of literally biting off more than you can chew. Why do certain cannabis products make you feel nauseous after eating edibles? It all has to do with your tolerance to cannabinoids – especially THC.
THC, otherwise known as Tetrahydrocannabinol, is actually very good at reducing inflammation, pain, nausea and anxiety. However, when taken in higher concentrations that are beyond your body’s ability to absorb, THC can cause people to experience panic attacks, loss of consciousness, vomiting and loss of bodily function. THC isn’t the only cannabinoid that can cause a person to feel off-kilter, but it is the most common active compound that people struggle with when they consume cannabis edibles.
Because every person’s tolerances to cannabinoids can be unique, it’s difficult to predict how certain edibles doses will affect you. The only way to find out is to experiment with varying potencies. Dosing cannabis – especially edibles – can take some time to figure out your ideal ranges. We have several guides on edibles and how to dose edibles effectively, which you should check out after reading this article.
How do you know if you’re feeling nauseous after eating edibles? The symptoms of nauseous or cramping stomachs after eating marijuana edibles usually manifest as:
Dizziness, blurred vision, hallucinations
Increase heart-rate
Fainting
Stomach pain, cramping
Gas, bloating or gurgling stomach/bowels
Nausea, stomach spasms, vomiting and/or diarrhea
You won’t know if an edible is too much for your system until some time has passed after you’ve consumed them. This is because edibles have delayed activations – they must be digested before being absorbed into your bloodstream, and subsequently being processed by your endocannabinoid system (ECS). This makes falling victim to nausea after eating an edible even more of a common mistake. How many of us have dropped an edible and taken another shortly after in our impatience?
Beyond being a very common blunder of cannabis newbies, this also illustrates most peoples’ ignorance of how edibles can be used most effectively. Cannabis edibles are meant to provide intense psychoactive experiences or treat debilitating symptoms of serious ailments. For instance, people who have suffered from PTSD or other kinds of mental health trauma find high-potency edibles to provide a lot of relief against depression, anxiety or insomnia. Similarly, patients who suffer from chronic pain, seizures or other crippling physical conditions can benefit from edibles’ powerful, long-lasting effects.
Edibles aren’t just meant for people with higher tolerances or serious conditions, but if you find yourself continually struggling to overcome the intensity of effects from consuming edible cannabis, you might be better suited for faster, easier-to-absorb forms of cannabis like buds, vapes, oils, capsules or dabs.
If you ever start feeling nauseous after eating edibles, there are several tactics you can employ to overcome these ill effects. Next let’s explore timeframes for how long to recover from edibles, how long it takes edibles to leave your system before detailing how to recover from edibles whenever they strike too fast, too hard or last too long.
How Long Does It Take Edibles to Leave Your System?
How long it takes to recover from edibles and how long it takes edibles to leave your system can depend on a variety of factors. Just to name a few, edibles can be absorbed & processed according to: diet, fitness level, how recently you ate, how hydrated you are, your blood pressure/blood sugars, metabolism, how rested you are and your familiarity to cannabinoids, just to name a few.
The most prominent factor that will determine how long edibles stay in your system or how they affect your mind & body has to do with your tolerance to cannabis. Genetics can play a role in determining tolerance, but so can practice with a variety of cannabis strains, doses, concentrations and delivery methods. In short, your natural tolerances to THC, CBD and other phytocompounds can be manipulated over time by experimenting with a number of different kinds of cannabis products. Or, if you’re lucky, you might have a naturally high tolerance to potent cannabinoids concentrations.
Regardless of what side of the tolerance fence you’re coming from, learning how to recover from edibles isn’t as complicated as you might think. On the flip side, if you’re worried about testing positive for cannabinoids because of work, and you need to know how long does it take edibles to leave your system, you might be S.O.L. as they say. Cannabinoids are known to reside in your bloodstream for weeks at a time – 20-30 days is a safe average range to assume whenever you consume cannabis products.
If you’re just focusing on how long to recover from edibles in terms of overcoming their mind-altering effects, then you’re in luck. Although edibles can last 8-12 hours after they’ve been digested and absorbed through your gastrointestinal system, you can mitigate their effects or manage how you’re feeling by following a few simple steps:
EAT BEFORE
Just like with medications or supplements, whether you’ve eaten before ingesting cannabis edibles can impact your overall experiences. You don’t have to ingest an entire meal before eating more with edibles – oftentimes a protein bar, smoothie or healthy snack are enough to get your digestive system going. The point of eating before ingesting edibles is to kickstart your metabolism and gastrointestinal system, so that when the edibles hit your stomach they’re digested & absorbed at a more efficient pace. This might cause you to feel the effects of the edibles quicker, but it will undoubtedly improve on your ability to process the cannabinoids within much more effectively.
STAY HYDRATED
This shouldn’t be news to anyone – staying properly hydrated is a fundamental problem that affects millions of people around the world. You might say a majority of our health issues stem from lack of hydration, so just drinking water throughout the day really is the simplest, most effective way to ward off many injuries or illnesses. With regards to cannabis edibles, hydrating before, during and after being under the influences of cannabinoids can go long ways towards improving how high you get, how long it lasts, how strongly it kicks in, what kinds of hallucinations your experience and much more.
CBD EMERGENCY
When in doubt, just C, B and D! Cannabidiol – CBD – has the wonderful effect of counteracting the psychoactivity of THC when taken in certain quantities. Basically, if you ingest a larger ratio of CBD to THC (i.e. 50 mg CBD to 10 mg THC, or 5:1 ratio) you can expect to cut out some of the mind fog, hallucinations and other mind-altering effects of Tetrahydrocannabinol. For this reason, high-potency CBD has become extremely popular as an “oh sh*t!” option for edible cannabis users.
Now that we’ve discussed ways in which you can shorten the duration or ease the intensity of edibles’ effects in a proactive manner, let’s shift our focus to learning how to recover from edibles after a bad trip.
How to Recover From Edibles
After the edibles have kicked in and run their course, you might be feeling a number of things: fatigue, confusion, restlessness, difficulty focusing, hungry, thirsty or light headed. Hopefully you’re not experiencing nausea, but as it is quite common – and the subject of this article – we’ll assume if you’re reading it that you need help learning how to recover from edibles after bouts of vomiting, diarrhea or dizziness.
To combat these after effects of edibles, we’ve compiled a step-by-step process that everyone can follow, no matter how much or how little edibles they’ve ingested:
Step #1: Hydrate
Whenever you come out of the throes of a particularly potent pot trip, the first thing you should do is guzzle some water. Hydration, as we mentioned earlier, is key to staving off bad trips while high on edibles, so even if you did your due diligence and drank lots of water during your edibles experience it never hurts to brew a cup of tea or coffee, down some electrolytes or polish off a cold glass of water. Hydrating your body helps to flush your system, lubricates and nourishes your body, awakens your mind and can even aid in calming your frantic nerves/mind whenever you’re coming off of an edible-high.
Step #1: Replenish
Just like water revitalizes your entire body, some nutritious snacks or meals can help to boost you back to working form. If you’re feeling nauseous after eating edibles, chasing pot cookies with a salad, breakfast sandwich or leftovers might not sound enticing but it’s honestly one of the truest ways to overcome an edibles hangover. Reigniting your metabolism and forcing your body to process nutrients will replenish your depleted state of balance – not to mention satiate those insane cravings from the leftover munchies still flowing through your veins.
Step #1: Refresh
Speaking of rejuvenating your mind & body with nutrients, another way to hit the reset button after a night of cannabis-fueled fun is a long, hot bath or shower. Washing your face or even sitting in the sauna can do the trick too, but nothing beats the healing powers of a steamy shower or the soothing warmth of a bath. If you’re struggling to overcome the next-day nausea after a crazy night of being high on edibles, try some mint or lavender essential oils in the water/steam – it will make you feel as refreshed as a clean load of laundry.
Step #1: Activate
As long as you understand how long it takes edibles to leave your system and plan accordingly – i.e. don’t drive after coming to after a night full of edible fun – another beneficial thing you can do to get over your weed hangover is to get off your butt and get active. This might seem counterintuitive when all you want to do is lie down or curl up into a ball, but the more you can get your blood pumping and endorphins flowing the faster you’ll recover from edibles.
Step #1: Distract
Even if you do everything you can to physically rejuvenate yourself after a weed party, sometimes you just can’t make the weed hangover disappear soon enough. Time is the ultimate healer, but while you’re waiting to return to normal you’ll have to distract your mind from how your body is feeling. If you can focus, try reading a book in your comfiest chair or outside under a blue sky; if you can think, do some brain teasers or even sketch stuff from the night before; if you have the coordination, a video game or simple Netflix series usually does the trick in taking your mind off your stomach.
Step #1: Rest
When all else fails and you can’t shake the upset stomach post-edibles, nothing settles the battleground inside your gut & bowels quite like some rest. Power naps, sleeping in, snoozing in a hammock or getting some shuteye on the transit will undoubtedly make you feel better. Sleep is the ultimate healer. Even if you don’t get to sleep very long, you’ll definitely feel better after resting your tired eyes, frazzled brain and uncomfortable body. Rest is best, as they say, no matter the ailment, injury or illness.
