Hi everyone. I'm a regular pot smoker, I am on day 3 of recovery. I got a joint rolled, but do I smoke it? Let's say I smoke real slow so I don't cough and I don't exactly suck so it doesn't harm my scabs or whatever, and I just upped the water intake. Do you think it would be okay? My biggest fear is like infection or something?
This does not come from a judgmental standpoint (I'm a constant vape-er, former smoker, and medical marijuana user), but, AS A MEDICAL SCIENTIST, I must tell you that smoking marijuana can eventually kill you. Because of the smoke. When you burn marijuana, you inhale tar. Tar is a carcinogen.
FACT: marijuana smoke has 4x the amount of tar that cigarette smoke has.
To be fair to marijuana, cigarettes have a lot of other nasty chemicals, and nicotine itself (even if vaporized) is a known carcinogen. Cigarette smoke is, by FAR, much more carcinogenic than marijuana smoke, even taking into account it only has a quarter the amount of tar that marijuana smoke has.
To be fair to smokers, hamburgers and ANY grilled food or crisped/burned food (like toast) has carcinogens, and everyone eats these. Obviously the amount of carcinogens received from eating charred food is much less than what a person receives who regularly inhales smoke, and still much less than the total amount of carcinogens present in a cigarette. But even so. Everybody on Earth regularly takes in known carcinogens that nobody bothers anybody about.
Marijuana, in vaporizer form, is MUCH healthier for you than smoking it (even if using a bubbler or bong to filter the smoke). The reason? Because SMOKE is CARCINOGENIC. More so than crispy hamburgers, since a larger amount of it is going into the body (unless you are smoking an entire hamburger, or eating an entire hamburger that has been burned completely to carbon ash). In addition, smoke goes into our lungs, where it builds up tar, which can cause breathing problems like asthma and emphysema. TAR IS BAD FOR YOU, PERIOD. TAR COMES FROM INHALING SMOKE. ANY KIND OF SMOKE.
So, as a scientist, i urge all you smokers who are enjoying the many wonderful qualities that marijuana contains (health-promoting and otherwise) to also consider the quality of your own life. Make the healthier choice to use a vaporizer instead of smoking.
Back to the tonsillectomy discussion.... I'm getting my tonsils out on Friday and have decided to forego blasting the open wounds in my throat with vapor. Nicotine is an irritant, and some things contained in e-juices are also irritants, such as malic acid (a common flavor enhancer) and propylene glycol, which is usually the liquid "carrier" solution (unless you are smoking an all vegetable glycerin blend with absolutely nothing except THC present). I don't know if THC is an irritant, but they don't sell blends like this at a store (they add flavors and colors to the solutions to make it taste/look better), so you would have to make it yourself at home, which is time-consuming and I can't tell you for sure whether or not it's going to irritate your raw throat.
My personal plan for tonsillectomy recovery is to use a nicotine patch to keep the nicotine (which is an irritant by itself) off of my throat, and to use a marijuana tincture to drop under my tongue (or mix into beverages) to take advantage of the barf-stopping property of marijuana, but without having to inhale vapors past my raw open throat. You can look up how to make tinctures online if you can't find one at a dispensary. In lieu of a tincture, you could get the same effect by cooking marijuana into something you would be able to eat or drink. Someone above suggested brownies. I'm avoiding this because I don't want to struggle to swallow sticky brownies. I suggest as an alternative to brew a marijuana tea.
I don't want to accidentally cough and rip off a scab. I read some horror stories about people returning to the hospital to get a bleeding open scab suctioned for clots and re-cauterized without anesthesia. FACT: 1 in 100 people post-tonsillectomy will have to return to the hospital within 2 weeks because of bleeding that occurs when a scab cracks or falls off too soon. Since roughly the same number of children who had a tonsillectomy experience bleeding (FACT), we can conclude that there are a lot of factors involved in keeping your throat from bleeding (many of which you cannot control for). With that said, YOU CAN CONTROL THE THINGS YOU DO that would INCREASE YOUR RISK OF A BLEED. From testimonials I read online, some adults who experienced a bleed did something they knew they probably shouldn't have, such as eating a sharp food or over-exerting themselves. Or smoking.
Minimize your risk of bleeding after surgery the best you can! Every little bit of risk you add increases the chances you will experience a bleed! If bleeding and slower healing are more appealing to you than refraining from smoking or using a vaporizer for at least until your scabs come off (about 10 days), then that's your choice. It would really suck though if you didn't have a backup plan and you found out right away that you absolutely cannot handle the pain or control yourself from coughing when smoke or vapor hits your throat. Have a backup plan ready.
If you're choosing to add risk in one department, do yourself a BIG FAVOR and make sure to subtract risk in another. Get a humidifier to counteract some of the throat dryness you will experience.
And most of all, if people make an informed decision to choose a higher risk, don't give them grief! We all choose risk every time we get into a car or eat a hamburger.
That's my two cents. Peace out.
One thing I forgot to add: If you regularly smoke and you all-of-a-sudden completely quit smoking, your lungs will start sloughing off tarry mucus from their linings. How do your lungs do this? By forcing you to cough! You do NOT want to be in tonsillectomy recovery and unable to control coughing. This greatly increases your risk of a throat bleed (not to mention sounds incredibly painful).
My suggestion to regular smokers is to STOP SMOKING A COUPLE WEEKS BEFORE surgery. You don't have to quit whatever substance you were smoking, you just have to not SMOKE it. Use a vaporizer, a patch, brownies, whatever. Maybe use it as an opportunity to get used to whatever backup method you chose for when you are in recovery.
This applies to marijuana and cigarette smokers alike, because your lungs shedding mucus upon quitting smoking applies to every kind of smoke (even from herbal cigarettes), regardless of whether or not you are getting the same substance in a form other than smoke.
If you waited too long to quit smoking and you are in recovery and can't stop coughing, you have two options (assuming your cough isn't from a virus, in which case you just have to suck it up and you definitely should not add smoke on top of the mix). You can continue to cough, and risk a throat bleed, or you can attempt a puff or two of smoke every now and then to lessen the amount you are coughing, which also risks a throat bleed (smoke will dry out and irritate your throat, so personally I would only do this if I was coughing a LOT). This might get you to stop coughing so much (or it might make you cough more, because the smoke is going to irritate your throat badly). It's a lose-lose, and personally I would stick with the coughing and not smoke. Please, if you're reading this in advance of your surgery, don't wait until it's too late.
Frankly, smoking during tonsillectomy recovery (at least 10 days post-surgery) is never a good idea. I don't even recommend you smoke to stop coughing, I merely post this to bring to your attention that the only way to stop post-smoking cough is to smoke. I hope this convinces you to stop smoking a week or two before your surgery so you aren't in that boat.
In NO way, shape, or form is this statement HELPFUL or even FACTUAL, as you may believe so yourself. I'm bummed that all the responses on this thread have to be focused on informing you of our mistaken "facts"... do some research next time, just a suggestion before you decide to tell other people false information.
I am on night 6 of recovery and would love to hit an oil pen right now. Anyone have suggestions or prior experience with this? I need this pain to go away!! I'm also sooo hungry. Not like getting high will help hahah.
The plant matter in weed is partially toxic, won't kill but correct can damage the healing process. But what about vape for dabs? Is my question?
The silver lining, if you choose to see it, is it ends up becoming a 1-2 week T(olerance) break, so when you can spark again, you'll get blasted almost immediately.