DISCLAIMER:

The views expressed here are our private concerns as a legal medical marijuana patient in California.  It is our intent to help other patients improve their lives.  We in no way express any views other than our own.  Temple Illuminatus does not endorse breaking any law or unhealthful practice, but allows a free forum for the sharing of ideas that may sometimes bear criticism.

We take all responsibility for our own advice.  We are Gharveyn, aka Grigori Rho, Greg Gourdian, and many other names.  Our given name is Roger Sanford Holler, as printed on our driver's license.

TOPIC TITLE:

How to Load a Better Bowl

Introduction:

We load bowls that are relatively small but can last several days, our pot consumption has reduced by at least half since we learned this technique but we feel the results have been more effective.  Remember, our goal is pain control with clarity of mind and as much functionality as our various medical issues can allow; getting a bit stoned sometimes is a side effect we call 'time to stop for awhile'.  This usually happens naturally because if we get too stoned we forget to smoke more anyways.

lol, enjoy!

Note:

If you own a vaporizer, then you are more advanced than the technology of this presentation.  But good vapes are expensive. This technique helps a bong be more like a vape.

#1   Mill your weed in a good aluminum grinder, the plastic and wood ones break too much.  Aluminum grinders are definitely worth the investment so long as you are smoking in a legal situation.  If you might lose your grinder to thieves or other situations then by all means keep them secure.

#2   Use a small bowl; the larger ones are usually more wasteful, especially if you share with folks who refuse to learn this technique.  Our bowl feels ideal to us and is 2.5 cm diameter at the top by 1.8 cm deep or nearly an inch wide by maybe 5/8 ths inches deep (outside measurements with walls maybe 2.25 mm thick).  We think the conical shape has an advantage over bowls that rise up in a curve.  Really, it looks like laboratory glassware so if you can't find one make yer own from a lab supplier's stock.

#3   Use a screen, it’s important to keep debris, resin or green stuff from clogging the stem, and helps control the burn better.

#4   Use a lid.  We made our lid with aluminum foil; it fits a little loosely but doesn't fall off too often.  The lid is important because you want to dampen the fire between hits quickly, this tends to build up a lot of resin but you smoke most of that as you go. The point is, by using a muffler (lid) you reduce burning but produce enough heat to vape part of what you are inhaling; you get less smoke with better effect. But there are other tricks to making this work more economically with less impact on your lungs which we will get to right away.

#5   Fill the bowl as tight as you can, being careful not to snap it off at the stem. But fill it only a bit over halfway if hash is legal in your state, county, or country of residence.  If your residence is not legal for hash skip to step #6, but if so, then fill just part way, (maybe 5 cm below the rim with the bowl we described above) then sprinkle a tiny amount of granulated hash which you rub around to distribute as evenly as you can across the top, pressing it in as you go.  A gram of hash can last us close to a year if it’s well ground into very tiny pieces nearly like sand.  We suggest the hash for several effects, such as it makes the bowl a little richer, but not rich enough to cough if you are careful.  You want to avoid coughing, its a part of some cultures to admire pot that makes you cough, but that part of the culture is a myth to benefit suppliers, many of whom are unaware it is a myth because they learned it from their culture unconsciously; its an expensive meme.  Remember, pack that shit in hard as you can, the harder the better.  A single bowl will last many days but needs only a bit less than a full grinder load to fill up well.  (Our grinder chamber is 3.5 cm in diameter by 6 millimeters deep.)

#6   Finish filling your bowl to about 15 mm below the rim, continuing to fill it in as firmly as you possibly can with your fingers.  You would rather not have resin accumulation from the bottom of your lid picking up pot out of your bowl so you need to ensure some clearance as well as an airway there. 

(If you do pick up pot with your lid just scrape it off and smoke it; resin only improves it.)

#7   Poke a 'chimney' hole down through the side most natural for you to hold your lighter to.  The hole should be very close to the wall all the way down, maybe .2 centimeters, or two millimeters away from the edge.  Use a pin, be sure you get through the screen, or resin, weed, or ash may clog it.  Most pins are just long enough for the bowl size we described above.  Wiggle the pin as you go down and back up in tiny circles to tear up the pot around the chimney hole a little to help you catch your first flame better.

#8   Draw the flame down the chimney hole with very a brief vigorous toke and take the flame away as soon as a little fire catches, then apply the lid while drawing lightly but steadily enough to just barely keep the flame alive.  You want to avoid setting much weed on top on fire.  Take as much smoke as you can tolerate without coughing and always allowing yourself some lung capacity to clear the bong by use of a shotgun hole or sometimes by removing the bowl stem in many of the glass bongs popular today.  You may want to carburate your toke by letting some air in with your lips as you draw, as this can be a powerful hit and sometimes the hash will expand on you if you used too much hash in step #5.

Repeat step #8 until your bowl is all smoked away, sometimes starting a new chimney hole or, as the burnt area grows larger, just calving away small chunks from the sides to burn slowly.  The point is to keep the flame down inside and burn as little weed on top of the bowl as possible because that is where most bowls of pot waste the most smoke.  A short sharp toke can pull the fire in deeply without setting too much on top ablaze, but temper that draw as soon as you know it’s lit inside and then smother the draw to control the fire and keep it low-burning, but hot enough to vape pot close to the edge of the chimney.  You'll be burning all of your weed, eventually, but with less smoke per toke, especially the sort of smoke that drifts away from the top.  The bowl enriches itself with lots more resins as it burns and those burn too, so it’s really a nice high-efficiency burn with very little waste.

Pot cultures have typically taught wasteful practices because it means more business for suppliers, while also teaching to over-share which gets people too wasted, and may even incapacitate some folks.  Something good is made up about coughing because the more you cough the more you waste; all the better for your suppliers' sales.  And being macho about how much you can smoke makes you smoke more than you need, possibly more than is really safe for you, but usually enough to put a larger dent in your cash.  It’s a precious culture to those who love it, but an expensive burden to those on a tight budget.

We are in lots of pain; we smoke every day.  We smoke frequently enough to mitigate the worst of the pain, but if you use pot for pain you should know that at some point you aren't getting better pain relief and should wait until you become more susceptible to the pain relief effects before continuing to smoke.  This is about pain relief, it feels great and may work wonders, but it can also leave your head clear enough to work in most jobs where operating heavy machinery is not involved.  We do not advise smoking enough to slow your reflexes but we know that can be difficult to avoid.  You learn as you go.

Our point is that we went from smoking a half ounce or more per month, to smoking a quarter ounce, saving us at least $100 a month.

Can you use an extra hundred a month?  We are sure you can... But your savings may be even more than ours depending on how much you are smoking now.

Enjoy!

And remember, this is free advice for legal marijuana customers, and does not represent the opinions or interests of Temple Illuminatus.  Temple Illuminatus discourages or removes any advice they deem outside the law or unhealthful to the welfare of its members.  We are grateful for their venue and wish to respect their rules.

Oh yeah, the 'we' we constantly use instead of a singular personal pronoun refers only to ourselves, a collective of people; in 1991 or so we were diagnosed with MPD or DID which are multiple personality or dissociative identity disorders, respectively.  We had a hiatus of 20 years in our marijuana and tobacco usage.  We came out of the MPD closet using NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) to reinforce our collective identity by changing to plural personal pronouns and such... We function better this way in our opinions.  We are sorry if this plural reference is confusing, if we mean ourselves together with any other individual or group we will try to always be explicit in that usage.

Oh yes, our twenty year hiatus was from 1987 to 2007 or 2008.  In 2007 we retired from IBM due to an injury that made commuting too painful and due to periods of crying from pain and frustration with the narcotics our doctors gave us.  So we never worked at IBM on any drugs not prescribed by or used as directed by our doctors. We came out as multiple and began using 'we' in 2007, our last year with IBM; we were met with tolerance or support by staff and customers and with warm, friendly, helpful support from our manager.

Thank you all!

love, Grigory Rho Gharveyn, etc, et al...