Don’t Hold That Hit!
by Mark Mathew Braunstein
All drugs pose risks. And all smoke poses risks. Smoke up a drug, and you’ve stirred up some double trouble. While cannabis is a natural herb, intentionally inhaling its smoke is an unnatural act. Even as an herbal remedy that can benefit a long list of ailments, its smoke can compromise your health. Smoke in any quantity and from any source irritates the respiratory tract. No smoke and mirrors can fool your lungs. Even incense, which fools the nose, fouls the lungs.
Fortunately, there are many ways to make smoking less harmful. While health tips for cannabis smokers could fill an entire book, the number one safeguard is also the easiest. You don’t need to do anything more than what you’re already doing. In fact, you need to do something less. After you inhale the smoke or the vape, do not hold it in! It’s that simple! When you hold your breath, you put your health on hold. So, don’t hold that hit!
It’s no coincidence that, if you cough, it’s usually on that hold. So breathe naturally and normally, almost as though you were not smoking. Inhale and exhale casually, without fanfare or deliberation. Even tobacco smokers, who may sometimes inhale long and deep drags, seldom hold it in. If they always held their breath the way that most cannabis smokers do, tobacco smokers would all be dead. So take it easy and breathe easy.
When your shaman or mentor or friend first turned you on to pot, your cannabis coach probably instructed you to inhale deeply and to hold that toke. Such an unfamiliar and unnatural way of breathing may have contributed to your failure to get high on that first try or two. In 1992, while on the presidential campaign trail, Bill Clinton admitted that during his college years, “I experimented with marijuana … and didn't inhale.” While he was lying that he didn’t inhale, he more accurately could have claimed that he couldn’t inhale. Clinton might have failed because the forced technique of intentionally inhaling smoke and then holding it in was so unnatural and unknown to him. And unnatural and contrary to healthy human physiology for all of us, too.
Once you fill your lungs with smoke-filled air, holding your breath promotes no further absorption of the cannabinoids. Cannabinoids are quickly absorbed by the lungs. Tars are absorbed more slowly. Holding your breath only promotes more intake of tars, and therefore more irritation to your lungs. During the early 1990s, several scientific studies proved that “breathhold duration” does not affect the absorption of cannabinoids nor the consequent intensity of the high or of the relief for smokers.
If you remain skeptical, conduct some animal experiments, the animal being you. Measure two equal doses of your stash. Smoke one dose your usual way. Then wait two days to clear your head, and smoke the second dose without holding in your hits. Did you feel the same high or achieve the same relief? If so, Your Honor, I rest my case.
If some diehards cling to the practice of holding their hits, it is because they associate lightheadedness as part of their high. Holding your breath, with or without smoke, causes a reduction of oxygen reaching your brain. The havoc wreaked upon your brain cells is called hypoxia. Even without smoking, if you hold your breath long enough, the oxygen deprivation will make you feel giddy or dizzy. If they want to really knock themselves out, they can also hyperventilate. Hyperventilation, too, makes you feel lightheaded.
Some smokers firmly believe that, until they cough, they will not have inhaled enough smoke to make them high. They anticipate coughing as their signal that they have smoked enough. Actually, coughing signals that they have smoked too much. While coughing may expand the lungs, that is only because it has irritated them.
For a more healthful way of expanding lung capacity, try improved techniques of breathing. Singers, wind instrumentalists, free divers, and yogis practice it. You can read entire books devoted just to the subject of how to breathe. Or get off your butt and engage in some physical exercise, especially aerobics such as walking, swimming, rowing, biking, or running. Just about any activity except for staring into a cellphone or sitting around smoking a joint.