Compounding Tinctures

 We have spent some time with our first tincture of Purple Dead Nettle (PDN) and the results are very good. These remedies are no any sort of panacea for swelling and pain, but they do take the edge off and allow use of the joints effected by swelling. I am now walking up and down stairs as any normal person might. This is a big thing. 

Yesterday it occurred to me that we would be making a THC tincture of the Kona Pineapple Kush this Fall to see if we can shorten the uptake of THC. Edibles take hours to get into the blood stream and smoking the stuff, though immediately effective, has many down-sides. There is a danger in this delay. Often times, people who are less than experienced with eating THC will overdose by taking in too much because of this delay in effect. Ingesting smoke from the plant has no wait time, but it is dangerous in other ways. I had throat cancer a while back and if I get enough smoke to cough I will have a serious sore throat for hours afterward. Reducing the wait time using tincture is a good idea if it give the effect of smoking THC without the wait time of edible THC.  The upshot of this is that we had some flower a friend gave us that was in excess of their needs, so we stuffed a jar which we had Peppermint/PDN tincture with the flowers and let it sit for one day. 

The preliminary result after one day of extraction (into a previously made batch of PDN tincture which we were not likely going to use) was an immediate uptake of THC from a half teaspoon of tincture taken sublingually.  And the flavor was better too. I am about a half hour into the experience and sitting on the couch until I can be sure of myself. So far the high isn't debilitating, but it is noticeable. I can think, write, and speak normally. My pain levels are nearly zero with the swelling in my injured knee reduced to near zero (the usual effect of PDN tincture). I can still tell that there is an injury in the knee which makes me walk a bit more carefully, but I am no longer limping at all and I can rise from a seated position with the effort it usually takes a large old man to rise. I need no assistance or support, and there is no longer a stabilization time. So far so much better. I am working the knee to get muscles tone back to normal.

Again . . .  These are not drugs with FDA approvals and double blind chemical trials, but they are beneficial to me as remedies. In this case I will be testing this compounded tincture every few days to see when the maximum extraction of THC is reached. The rule of thumb is to steep a tincture for six to eight weeks, this newly compounded batch of one-half pint is only one day old and the high is nearly immediate.

I eat a cookie made with Cannabis Coconut oil extraction every night as pain relief for sleeping. It is a low dose oil which is recreational if you eat two cookies, but only slightly so for one. I don't eat the stuff during daylight hours unless I plan on sitting around a bit. Eating these cookies every night for many years it seems safe and effective as far as I can tell. But the wait time for ingesting THC and getting the benefit is an hour and a half. The tincture is less than two minutes. I still haven't completed this first test of the compound, but so far, so good.