Myth or True, Holding Cannabis smoke in before exhaling?

Well if you all use vaporizers, no one has to worry about tar and plant matter getting into his/her lungs. but yeah, holding it in DEFINITELY makes me much higher than inhaling and immediately exhaling.

There is really a quite scientific way to look at this without all the speculation.

The way the THC in the smoke diffuses into your lungs is a based on simple diffusion principles.

When any gasious substance or gas-particle suspension (smoke) is allowed to diffuse into a material (such as lung tissue), The rate at which it diffuses follows an inverse relationship with an assymptote at 100% absorption. The rate of diffusion (the derivaive of this relationship) is linear and negative sloping, but (important) NEVER 0. It looks similar to this:

http://www.karlscalculus.org/l10_2a.gif

replace the vertical axis with the %thc absorbed, and the horizontal axis with time.

for example: somewhere around 60% of the thc may be absorbed into your lungs in the first second, 20% in the 2nd second, 10% in the third, 4% in the fourth, 3% in the fifth, 2% in the sixth, and so on. The increments get smaller and it will reach 100% total as time reaches infinity.

This may either make no sense or complete sense depending on your inclination in math/physics.

To summarize all of this simply:

-The total volume of THC inhaled in smoke is never 100% absorbed by your lungs no matter how long you hold it in for
-Yes, the longer you hold in smoke, the more THC will be absorbed, regardless of how long.
-The longer you hold it in, the less is absorbed per unit of time. The benefit of holding in the smoke deminishes the longer you hold it in for (but never becomes 0!)

If you want further information and are familiar with differential equations, i suggest reading about Fick's second law of non-steady state diffusion.

This is a good place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fick's_law_of_diffusion

So ya like Ive been doing, hold in for 3-4 secs then exhale.

i thought that the oxegyn deprivation to your brain from holding it in longer also helps get you high... is this true?

i like to hold it in for like 20-40 seconds or more

I'll do an experiment to help you guys figure this out. Me and a friend will pack a bowl, only he'll smoke it and we'll use a cardboard tube to shotgun it into my mouth and I will only smoke what he shotguns to me. If I get high, that means that there is still THC left and it's worth it to hold it in. If not, I'll just smoke a bowl and get high anyway! I'll be back within 24 hours with the results . . .

im waiting lol jk

But just to be sure, I don't exhale at all.

:p

5-8 seconds is considered ideal. More time always means more THC, but beyond that it's not enough to be worth the effort.

Exhaling immediately is definitely a waste. Not all of the smoke has had a chance to hit the avioli in your lungs, so not all of the THC is out. Coughing also causes the avioli to expand, which helps the THC hit you harder - while this doesn't actually increase the amount of THC in your system, many people find that it helps boost the subjective effects of the high.