The Top Five Signs You’re Smoking Too Much Pot

Here at HIGH TIMES, we love marijuana more than just about anybody. But it is possible to overdo anything, including marijuana. We’re not here to judge or scold, but if you find yourself in any of these scenarios, perhaps it is time to take a break and re-evaluate your recreational marijuana usage:

You’re blowing off your responsibilities.

Being a responsible cannabis consumer means your personal use of marijuana doesn’t negatively affect fulfilling your responsibilities at work, at school, and as a parent, roommate, and spouse. When you repeatedly call in sick, skip school, or disappoint someone who was counting on you because you would rather get high, you’re not just sandbagging your own life, you’re contributing to the negative stereotypes about pot smokers that impact all of us and our ability to fight for legalization.

You can’t shake that wheezing cough.

While marijuana smoking isn’t the deadly dangerous gateway to heroin the drug warriors say it is, it is the inhalation of smoke. You’re not likely to risk lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease like a cigarette smoker, but frequent, heavy marijuana use by smoking can lead to an irritated throat and lungs. Consider switching to vaporization or using edibles until your lungs can recover.

You’re scraping resin from your bowl to smoke.

We’ve all been there – out of weed and none to be found – so we take a pocket knife to the pipes and bongs and scrape up as much resin as possible to smoke. Unfortunately, what remains in resin after a bud has been smoked is mostly all the bad stuff like tar and almost none of the good stuff like THC. You might feel like you’re getting high, but you’re really just asphyxiating on noxious smoke.

You’re not getting high anymore.

Marijuana is like most drugs in the sense that continued increasing use can lead to a tolerance to the drug’s effects. You used to get looped on a puff from a joint, then it took a few puffs, then a whole joint, and now you’re not really “high” unless you rip a dab or two. That’s fine, if you want to spend money like a sailor on shore leave, but if you want to save some cash, just ease up a bit. Even taking just a day or week break from cannabis can reset your internal cannabinoid receptors to better appreciate smaller amounts.

You’re forgetting to smoke pot.

Have you ever been so high you were sitting there with a bong in one hand and weed on the table and you’ve completely forgotten that you were about to get high? Time for a break, dude.