Why is it so hard for medical cannabis patients to get high?

Once upon a time, I was a one-hit wonder. Just one inhale would render a dull day into one that was endlessly entertaining. My mind would move so quickly, I was just bedazzled by all the strange and wonderful ideas that were running through it. Everything was enhanced—food, music, art; everything good was better. Just one lil’ puff of cannabis did all this, leaving me too stoned to function, but in a world of delights.

Then I became very sick, so sick I couldn’t even leave the house anymore. I grew dependent on cannabis full-time to curtail extreme physical symptoms. After a few months of progressively getting sicker, I found that not only was “too high” no longer a thing, but that I couldn’t even get high at all. Like many fellow medicators, cannabis now takes the edge off of my symptoms, but that’s about it. There are so many missing elements.

Like many other medical users, if I didn’t have my varied recreational experiences behind me, if I thought this was all there was to partaking in cannabis, I wouldn’t understand the appeal of non-medical use.

Tolerance is obviously a huge factor, as med users often medicate all day, everyday, but so do recreational stoners—most of whom do not talk about not being able to get high. This world has too many healthy wake ’n’ bakers for this conundrum to simply be about tolerance.