What the heck is a dab?

I had an interesting experience this month. Actually two different experiences with the same thing – dabs! If you are new to cannabis medicine you may not have come across dabs before, though you have probably heard the term. So, what is a “dab?”

Dabs aren’t any one thing, exactly. As I see it dabs are more a method of ingestion than what you are ingesting, but it always involves a cannabis concentrate. It could be in form of oil, wax or shatter, but definitely, and always, a concentrate made from whole plant cannabis, (see the next post on concentrates). Dab is both verb and noun! On to dabbing.

Well, dabs have a reputation as the fast track to a high, which is why I haven’t searched them out myself, but I have met a good number of patients recently that rely on dabs as their serious go-to medicine. Dabs are fast to use (if you have the equipment, I’ll explain that later), and are fast acting, almost immediate, which is a big plus when using dabs for battling a number of maladies, from anxiety to chronic pain to spasticity. They last a long time and are much easier on the lungs than smoking if you are using a dab rig instead of dropping it onto a bowl of bud. Rigs can range from a glass dish and glass straw, to elaborate glass pieces of art with more twists and curves than a trumpet. They may accept water to filter the heat. A small butane torch is used on non-electric devices, so now you may have a use for that kitchen torch you bought to make the creme brûlée that you never made. As for my dabbing experience? Well, I’ve tried it twice, and that hardly makes me an expert, but I’ll share with you anyway.

The first time a friend brought this giant bong-looking thing that was more than a foot tall to a cannabis patient meeting at my house. He had a carry case and all. He also had some BHO shatter that looked like amber taffy. His has a metal nail that plugged into an outlet. When it was hot enough he dropped a dab of the shatter about the size of a quarter of a green pea onto the metal nail. I was ready to suck down the vapor as soon as it was set onto the hot metal surface, and I drew a fast toke and that was all it took. There wasn’t a lot of flavor, which happens with BHO because it doesn’t always retain the nifty terpenes as in buds or other concentrates. I felt the big sativa rush very quickly, but a few minutes later I was definitely too high for my liking, finding it hard to concentrate and feeling my heartbeat in my head and ears. I didn’t have to lie down, but I was uncomfortable and a little anxious for about 20 minutes. Then I came down a bit and was then just pleasantly high, AND I was pain free. This shatter was homemade, but by an experienced lab person. I don’t know the genetics, but it was a very high TCH count of 70% or more.

The second time was at another friends home and the shatter was made from a CBD rich strain of bud called Canna-Tsu. This is a cross of Cannatonic and Sour Tsunami and was an entirely different experience. Cannatonic has a reputation in medical cannabis circles as being a heavy hitter for neuropathic pain and any kind of inflammation. There was an immediate high, but it was mellow, more of just a pleasant happy feeling with no anxiousness, AND I was pain free for the rest of the evening. Win-win, for sure. This shatter had a pleasant flavor too, and was still obviously full of terpenes. I don’t know the lab results of this shatter, but I can tell from the effect that it was fairly high in CBD which will tame any extreme THC psychotic effects, and it did.

Chances are I won’t run out any buy any of these products anytime soon, but I was very pleased to have encountered them through friends in order to have the dab experience. The high price of the concentrates paired with the need to invest in equipment to use them is enough to keep me away, but I can certainly understand why folks with very serious pain, neuropathy, or muscle spasms, would invest in this form of medicine. It works and is a sure thing. My BIG lesson in all of this was dabs are not to be feared, even by a lightweight like me. There’s a dab product out there for just about every need, they are just hard to come by because there isn’t much choice of dabs by strain yet in New Mexico.

You don’t have to have a nail-rigged borosilicate (like pyrex), glass bong thing to do dabs, but it is the preferred method. I will post later this week about methods of delivery, but first you newbies may need to know a little bit more about these concentrates that everyone is dabbing. That’s what’s coming up next on CannaGramma. Thanks for reading!

Photos provided by Herbal Edibles, Albuquerque, NM