If you’re wondering how to get higher from weed, you’re in luck. There are many foods, beverages, and techniques that can enhance your high and make it last longer.
Some of the items on this detailed list are merely placed here for educational purposes. It’s important to always listen to your body and be conservative when it comes to consuming cannabis. The last thing you want to do is get so high that you end up greening out.
Ways to Boost Your High and Make It Last Longer
1. Mangos
The first food item that can enhance your high is quite known within the world of cannabis, mangoes! While mangos don’t contain any psychoactive ingredients, they do have an abundance of the terpene Myrcene, which is a terpene found within certain cannabis strains.
Terpenes are compounds that are responsible for the “smell” of things. Myrcene, in particular, has an earthy, fruity, peppery, and clove-like odor to it and is also found in Hops (as in beer) and cannabis.
Myrcene is said to be the “sedative principle of hops” and has many beneficial properties.
Myrcene is found in roughly 20% of the terpene profile of most cannabis strains within the commercial market. It’s also estimated that roughly 40% of a random selection of strains from a dispensary shelf would contain myrcene as the dominant terpene.
It is said that Myrcene works in conjunction with THC and may allow the cannabinoid quicker passage through the blood-brain barrier.
While the research into this is grossly lacking, there is some anecdotal evidence to suggest that it may increase your high, inducing a deeper relaxed feeling while prolonging the high. Since Myrcene is typically associated with “sedative qualities,” you can expect this effect to translate to your high.
The problem with claiming that “mangoes can make you higher” is that “high” is a very subjective term. Some people have reported feeling an increased effect after eating Mangoes.
A way to test this for yourself is to roll two joints. Smoke the first joint without eating a mango and the second one after eating a mango (roughly 45 mins to an hour before smoking). Repeat this experiment with the same strain to see if it impacts your high.
As mentioned, some people swear by it, while others claim that it may be purely a suggestion. Perhaps, simply reading about it already warped your expectation to induce a different kind of high.
Nonetheless, whether it truly impacts your high for the better or does nothing at all; the upside would be that you would be eating a mango, and mangoes taste good!
2. Pair Coffee and Weed “Hippie Speedball”
Up until cannabis prohibition in the late 1930s, the “remedy” for too much cannabis in the official pharmacopeia was “coffee.”
This is because coffee and weed act as “opposites” in many ways, and both have a direct effect on the endocannabinoid system. Of course, some cannabis strains are “stimulants” as well – meaning that it’s an “upper.” Other cannabis strains have a heavier narcotic feeling.
Coffee, on the other hand, is entirely a stimulant and also provides a sense of clarity, concentration, focus, energy levels, etc. Coffee is also the most consumed drug on the planet – and considering that cannabis is [at the time of this writing] the most consumed illegal drug on the planet, they are a match made in heaven.
Many cannabis users consume coffee in conjunction with their “wake and bake” to counteract the grogginess of cannabis, giving them an energetic, euphoric high, ready to tackle the world.
When drinking too much coffee, you can also use cannabis to counteract the feeling of jitteriness. Needless to say, these two substances have been used in tandem for hundreds of years, and seeing how cannabis is only becoming more prevalent in our global climate, it seems that it will continue to be consumed together for hundreds of years to come.
3. Dark Chocolate
When you’re “Jonesing” for some munchies, chocolate has always been a stoner favorite. Even if you’re not smoking weed, chocolate can have a beneficial effect on your mind. This is because chocolate contains a neurotransmitter that is very similar in structure to THC – anandamide.
Anandamide is also commonly known as the “Bliss Molecule” as it empirically increases a sense of “happiness” and joy within the user.
In 1992, Ralph Mechoulam, the same person who discovered the endocannabinoid system, isolated THC & CBD, also discovered this endogenous cannabinoid.
Seeing that it binds with CB1 receptors, the same receptors that bind with THC – it’s not difficult to see that chocolate can affect your high.
In fact, if you were to eat a slab of dark chocolate roughly 1-hour prior to smoking cannabis, you’ll increase the levels of anandamide in your system. Once the THC hits the bloodstream, it will work in conjunction with THC, which should significantly increase the experienced effects of happiness, joy, and bliss.
Additionally, eating chocolate while high can prolong the effect as well, as you’d be implementing a “delayed release” of anandamide in your organism. This means that the first wave of THC would bind to the CB1 receptors, and as the effect wanes – the anandamide would also continue to bind to these receptors.
While the effects of anandamide are not as potent as that of THC, it does have a notable effect on your experience of joy, happiness, and pleasure.
While there isn’t a lot of research on how much it impacts your high, there is scientific evidence to suggest that chocolate can affect your high in a positive way.
4. Omega-3 Rich Foods (Fish, Nuts, Eggs, etc)
For the next section, we’ll be looking at foods that have a lot of Omega-3 Fatty Acids. Since cannabinoids bind to lipids (fat cells), having a healthier fat content in your body will help speed up the binding of cannabinoids in your body.
Omega 3 Fatty Acids also have plenty of other health benefits that can work in conjunction with cannabis.
Many of these benefits are also obtained from cannabis; thus, having an omega-3,6,9 rich diet will not only help you be able to retain more cannabinoids but also work with the cannabis to provide a plethora of health benefits.
The good news is there are many delicious foods high in Omega-3s that are the perfect munchies. If you’re wondering how to get higher when you consume weed, definitely consider adding some omega-3 rich foods to your diet.
5. Tea
The class of drink we’ll be talking about is tea. We’ll be talking specifically about black and green teas which contain catechins.
Catechins are compounds that are associated with a lot of health benefits.
While all of this is good, we’re mostly interested in how these catechins will affect our cannabis high. When drinking tea while consuming cannabis, you’ll likely notice a deeper sense of relaxation, decreased stress, and a boost in your experience of euphoria.
However, if you drink something like Valerian Root Tea, it will make you incredibly sleepy and maximize the narcotic feelings of heavier strains like Indicas with a large presence of myrcene.
6. Kombucha Fermented Drinks
Drinks like Kombucha and cannabis do work well together. Depending on the fermentation process, Kombucha can have trace elements of alcohol in it, but the most important factor comes down to the B vitamins and probiotics.
It’s got many similarities to Green Tea, something we’ve already covered above, but also is a source of probiotics, antioxidants, antibacterial, and so on.
Unlike regular alcohol, you don’t need to be as wary about mixing these two; however, homemade kombucha can have alcohol up to 3%. Thus, you’ll most likely experience a heavy sedative experience if you drink too much Kombucha and mix it with weed.
7. Switch Up Your Consumption Method
The easiest way to switch up your high is to switch up your consumption method. No, you don’t always have to smoke that doobie.
There are a dozen alternatives that will give you a different high. Let’s look at some of them:
- Bong: If you’ve been smoking joints all your life, it’s time to hit the bong. Get yourself a bong and learn the ways to blaze with it. It’ll get you higher and make you look like a true stoner. It’s also going to make a neat decoration in your apartment.
- Vaporizing: Use a vaporizer (i.e., dry herb vaporizer) to inhale the smoke that comes from burning dried cannabis flowers. You can get a small portable vaporizer that’ll fit in your pocket or one of those big desktop vaporizers that you’ll put on your desk and need a power supply for. You’ll inhale less harmful smoke and get a pleasant high. Not to mention the smoke will be insane.
- Cookies: Cookies are the most popular edibles, so you can either make them at home or purchase them at your local dispensary ready-made. These cookies won’t taste like the greatest cookies in the world, but most have decent flavor and can get you high. They’re great when you’re hanging out with friends.
- Gummies: We all loved gummies as kids, but now you can get weed gummies. They’ll get you super high because you’ll end up eating a lot of them, and they taste like regular gummies made from Jell-O. You can even make these at home with a few ingredients.
- Beverages: You can infuse marijuana in beverages like alcohol (i.e. vodka) using a simple recipe that involves stirring the mixture and extracting it, then letting it rest in a dark basement. If that’s too complicated, you can infuse it in milk or tea. Marijuana milk tastes great and will give you a solid high.
- Dabbing: If you’re all about the smoke, get yourself a Dab Rig (which looks similar to a bong), and you’ll fill up the room with smoke. You can also hit the dispensary and get concentrates like Live Resin and throw them in your Dab Pen (similar to a vape) to get a unique high.
If you really think about it, there’s a way to consume marijuana in every way imaginable. These are some of the most popular alternatives to smoking, so try out a few of them and see how you like them.
8. Switch Up Your Strain
It’s simple: You switch up your strain, you switch up your high.
All strains are different and contain unique cannabinoids, terpenes, and THC levels – producing a unique high. If you try out a different strain every day, you’ll feel a new high every day. Some strains will be more powerful, so watch out not to get too high for your tolerance levels.
If you’ve been smoking an Indica-based strain, it’s time to switch that up to Sativa. You can visit our strains for creativity or strains for productivity pages to get ideas about these strains. A lot of popular strains these days are hybrids between Indica and Sativa because growers have been modifying the plant.
The main difference in the high you’ll feel is due to the THC content. Some strains like Cookie Gelato and Royal Gorilla have THC content that can exceed 30%, giving you the ultimate high. Conversely, if you want to lower your high you can try strains like Harlequin with lower THC content that can give you a mellow (non-sedating) experience.
It depends on how you want to switch up your high. If you want to feel higher, get higher THC strains. If you want to feel less high or not high at all, then switch up to low THC strains.
9. Take a Tolerance Break
You’ve been smoking too damn much, man! It’s time to put the bong down and give your brain time to rewire itself. If you’re used to getting dopamine hits every time you get high, the effects will wear off. It’s similar to every other fun activity.
A “tolerance break” means you’re intentionally abstaining from the consumption of marijuana to make your body adjust to its lack of presence. Once your body adjusts to a lack of marijuana and you smoke again, the effects will be amazing.
Remember those first few times you were getting high and having the time of your life? You can feel that again if you abstain for a few weeks. Hell, I’ve tried abstaining for months at a time just to feel that juvenile euphoria hitting again.
This is only advice for elite stoners who can’t go without weed for a day. There are a few things you can do in the meantime to replace the lack of smoke. For example, you can start exercising and meditating or taking up new hobbies. If the lack of smoke is bothering you, start vaping so you can smell smoke without the effects of marijuana.
Once you no longer miss weed, that’s when you get back into it, and you’ll feel one of the most powerful highs of your life.
10. Try A Higher THC Strain / Lower CBD
There are two compounds that really affect your high (or lack thereof): THC and CBD. If you only pick strains based on their THC and CBD content, you can basically control your high.
This is imperative for new smokers who smoke at random with their buddies or purchase strains because the name sounds cool. Before you spend some money at the dispensary, research their product online and check out the THC content of the strain.
Some dispensaries will highlight their highest THC strains and you can pick these to get the ultimate high. If you can’t stand the psychoactive elements of weed, get a high CBD strain.
You’ll feel a minor high with a high CBD strain like Harlequin, but you’ll feel the relaxing properties of CBD. These strains are great for productivity when you need to get things done and don’t want to trip out.
When you experiment, start with a low dosage (duh!), and then slowly amp up your intake until you’re happy with the effects.
11. Use Warm Water in Your Bong/Dab Rig
Who knew the water you put in your Bong or Dab Rig could have an actual effect on your high? If you’ve been smoking for a while, you start to figure out little nuances like this. Most stoners put cold tap water in their bong, and this instantly affects their smoking experience.
Use warm water instead.
When you use warm water, the temperature of the water creates a smoother and more satisfying hit. Hot temperature also eliminates potential irritation or coughing that you get when you use cold water from the tap.
It’ll generate more smoke and soothe your throat and lungs, which is super important when you want to get a powerful high. Warm water will even affect the flavor of the cannabis by enhancing it, so your favorite strain will hit differently.
Moreover, THC is an oil, so when it gets cold, it becomes viscous (thick) and can stick to the sides of your bong instead of entering into your lungs, which is exactly where you want it! By preventing THC from sticking to your bong or rig you’ll be getting more cannabinoids and a more intense high.
Note: Avoid making the water too hot because this can have a negative effect too. Ideally, you want the temperature to be mildly-hot. Try to actually drink the water before you put it in your Dab Rig, and if it’s too hot, then make it milder.
Experiment with different water temperatures to find out which gives you the most satisfying high. We’re leaning on mild hot water from our experiences as it produces the best results with virtually all strains.
12. Hotboxing
Fill a room or car with smoke. Enjoy the vapor. The confined space will make it harder for the smoke to dissipate, giving you a more potent high, and intense experience.
Hotboxing sounds cooler than it is, and you’re basically saturating a space with smoke. The smoke will escape if you have a small window or door opening, so it’s usually practiced in a small room.
Most stoners have hotboxed at some point without realizing the extra effects it had on their high. We were all posted up at a parking lot with our buddies blazing and wondering why we were so high.
If you hotbox, you should always do it with friends; invite a friend over because you don’t want to be alone in a room full of smoke. It’s just not as fun!
I recommend hotboxing for an hour max to stay safe. After a while, you’ll start feeling irritated, and if you sit in an enclosed room for an entire day, this will affect your respiratory system (cough, cough!) and make your eyes hurt. This could have long-term consequences, so treat it like a one-time experiment.
The smell can be hard to get rid of once you’ve been hotboxing for a while. Read our article on getting the smell out of a car so you don’t get in trouble. If you’re renting and your landlord doesn’t like weed, you could also get in trouble, so watch out. If you’re someone wondering how to get higher from smoking weed, hotboxing is surely one of the simplest ways.
13. Moderation is Key: Smoke in Short Window
If you’re someone who smokes all day, every day, you’re probably noticing you don’t even feel like you’re getting high anymore. Rather than smoking in the morning, afternoon, evening, and before you go to bed, just smoke in a short window, like 2-3 hours. If you smoke in moderation, you can eliminate the need to take a tolerance break at all.
The human brain is a marvelous creation that adjusts to pressure. If you consistently pressure it to get high and release happy chemicals, it’ll build up a tolerance, so you have to increase your dosage to get high. This means that over time you’ll be consuming a lot more (and spending money!) to feel the same level of high as you did when you had lower tolerance.
A diminished experience is only a consequence of overdoing it. Here’s how to solve it: Review your smoking habits, cut back on your smoking time, and do it consistently.
If you’ve been smoking for 10 hours a day and taking short breaks in between, smoke 3 hours a day. After a few weeks, your tolerance levels will decrease, so you’ll be more like a weed newbie. You’ll then feel a more potent high in those 3 hours than you would in 10 hours with a high tolerance level.
To find the right balance, analyze your smoking habits and then listen to your body. You’ll know exactly what you need because we’re all built differently.
14. Beer
Now we’ve come to the section where you have to be careful about how you mix these two substances. Beer contains ethanol, the substance responsible for getting drunk.
Interestingly enough, cannabis and beer are related genetically, specifically beer made from Hops. Hops and cannabis are distant cousins and when you look at the two plants side-by-side, you can see why. Both have lush green leaves when they bud, they have cone-shapes, and the leaf has serrated edges.
Additionally, cannabis and hops are both dioecious, meaning that the males and the females are physically distinctive.
When taking a look at the terpene profile of the beer, we can also begin to see why it interacts so well with cannabis. Some of the more common terpenes we find in beer include myrcene, beta-caryophyllene, limonene, and alpha-pinene, to name a few.
If you notice, these are common terpenes found in cannabis as well. These undoubtedly have some synergy when used in combination, but more interestingly is the interaction between alcohol and cannabis.
Recent scientific studies also show that the simultaneous use of alcohol and cannabis may produce significantly higher blood concentrations of cannabis’s main psychoactive constituent, than cannabis use alone.
This is where it becomes incredibly important to understand how to mix these substances correctly in order to avoid any adverse effects. For the most part, if you are mixing these two substances, you want to do both in moderation.
However, the order in which you consume is also important. You have a higher risk of experiencing an adverse effect if you’re “drunk and then start smoking weed” versus “being high and drinking a beer.”
If you do decide to combine these substances, do so with extreme caution and be sure to drink some water in between drinks. Ideally, you would only want to drink one or two beers while smoking cannabis and avoid cannabis altogether if you’re drinking many beers.
Nonetheless, the combination of both substances will provide you with a deeper narcotic feeling, especially with the presence of myrcene in beer.
15. Sweet Potato
Putting the “pot” in potato, the sweet potato is a very healthy root vegetable. There are many different variants of this amazing food and, with it, many health benefits.
In one cup of sweet potato, you can find a lot of minerals, vitamins, and a great fiber source. It’s got Vitamin A, C, Manganese, Vitamin B6, Potassium, Pantothenic Acid, Copper, and antioxidants.
While all of this shows just how healthy the lowly sweet potato can be – what we’re interested in specifically is the presence of Vitamin B6.
B6 plays a significant role in protein, fat, and carbohydrate metabolism and helps create new red blood cells. Similarly important, B6 plays a significant role in mood regulation. This vitamin helps create neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine, and gamma-aminobutyric Acid.
Serotonin is a key hormone that stabilizes your mood, feelings of well-being, and happiness. Dopamine is another “feel good” chemical and acts directly on the pleasure and reward center of the brain.
These two chemicals also increase when smoking or consuming cannabis in any way. Thus, when you consume sweet potato at least one hour before ingesting cannabis – you would already have elevated levels of serotonin and dopamine in the brain.
Combine this with cannabis, and you may experience a marginally more potent “high.” It’s best to bake the sweet potato and not fry it in a pan because by frying it, you lose a lot of these properties. Simply cut the sweet potato into cubes, smear it with a bit of olive oil and bake it in the oven.
Not only can this be an excellent munchie, but it will also help improve your health and your high.
You can even infuse olive oil with cannabis which then can be used to infuse the sweet potato with psychoactive THC – taking your edible alchemy to new heights.
16. Smoothies With Coconut Milk
Smoothies are also something that can give you a “high” even without cannabis. If you use whole milk or coconut milk, you’re also providing more fats for the cannabis to combine. Thus, by drinking a smoothie before or during a smoke session, you’ll be able to capture more cannabinoids and have a vitamin boost simultaneously.
We could explore a host of different recipes, but for the sake of the length of this article, we’ll simply say that “smoothies in general” can provide you a “boost in your high.” Playing with the different combinations of fruits and vegetables – you can further modify your high according to the particular smoothie you are consuming.
17. Broccoli
As a kid, you may have hated broccoli, but as a cannabis consumer, this healthy green vegetable may help boost your high. This is because of another terpene commonly found in cannabis known as beta-caryophyllene.
This powerful terpene has also been shown to have a ton of benefits.
What beta-caryophyllene does to your cannabis high is “enhance” certain aspects, such as pain relief and anti-inflammation, as this is one of the few terpenes that can directly interact with your endocannabinoid system.
However, if you want to experience a greater sense of euphoria, this terpene might not be the optimal choice as it is said to “counteract the effects of THC.” In other words, it’s more closely related (in effect) to CBD as opposed to THC.
CBD is one of the other major cannabinoids found in cannabis that is a neuro controller and is said to balance out the effects of the psychoactive component, THC.
However, this is also something that can be beneficial if you’re trying to ween off things like tobacco or alcohol. In fact, incorporating more broccoli into your diet and using it in conjunction with CBD oils may provide you with a greater sense of relief, reduced anxiety, reduced pain, and so forth.
Thus, if you’re looking to get high, this is probably not the best food to use in conjunction with cannabis. However, if you’re trying to maximize the medical benefits of cannabis – this may be a stellar option to consider.
It turns out that your mother was right when she forced you to eat those greens. Little did she know that those greens also work wonderfully well with “the green.”
The Sticky Bottom Line:
While this list may be extensive, we’re only scratching the surface of foods, drinks, and herbs that alter your cannabis high. In essence, any food technically alters your high.
Even if you eat a hamburger, you’ll alter your high in one way or another. However, within the context of “altering your trip,” the items we have listed above have a significant effect, as opposed to the subtle effects of your typical foods.
Nonetheless, when you begin to understand the interaction of terpenes, cannabinoids, and other biological processes – and see how it interacts with your conscious awareness – you can begin to experiment with different options.
As we have mentioned several times over, it is critically important that when experimenting with different foods, beverages, and herbs, you do so with great caution.
While most of the things listed here will not create any serious issues for the vast majority of the readers, every organism is unique.
We hope that this WeedTokia deep dive provided you with the insights needed to begin viewing your body as an amazing piece of equipment that, when tweaked, can alter your perceptions of reality. Cannabis already provides a baseline of altered perception – and armed with the information you learned today, you can now tweak that experience to your liking.
If you are going to experiment, we would love to hear more about how it went. What did you like? What didn’t work as you expected? What did we leave out?
Feel free to comment on our social media pages or email us directly here at WeedTokia. If you’re interested in learning more about the depth of cannabis, go ahead and check out some other content we have here on the site.
Our mission here at Weedtokia is to provide actionable information with high relevance to our end users.
Thanks for sticking through all the way to the end, not many people take the time to read a large piece of content like this, and if you are reading this part, we’d like to say thanks!
Be safe when experimenting, and keep on toking!