Changa and Essentil oils

[Anicca]

Is anybody around using essential oils to add rich smell to their changa?

I recently tried make changa with IPA that was infused with Lavender leaves (my thanks go to Olympus Mon for inspiration). What I did not like about it was that changa ened up being "gooey", and it took a lot of time to fully dry. Im not sure why, perhaps I used too much Lavender and IPA pulled a lot of stuff out of it.

Then I tried the same procedure using clear IPA, and adding some organic Lavender essential oils, and results were good - clean evap and great smells. So I'm thinking about using other oils as well, for example Palo Santo or Cedar wood. But before getting serious about it, I wanted to check does anyone have any experience with it. And is there any reason why not to do it?

Thanks!

 

[Chan]

Hi Anicca, I have some experience. First I should say that I vape my enhanced leaf, and don't smoke/burn it. This might be significant because I am not dealing with the byproducts of combustion, some of which might well be toxic... Obviously, many herbs have been used for smoking down the years, so that's a good list to start from. Woods, on the other hand, such as cedar and palo santo, have not generally been used in smoking blends as far as I am aware, so more caution is advised there. Palo Santo (as incense) in particular is known for intensifying purges, so I'd be very careful about inhaling that in any quantity...!

The shortest, safest answer is to start with food-grade, organic, wild-crafted oils from edible things. I add one drop each lemon and chamomile-Roman oils to my blend just before I vape it, and that's plenty, and very pleasant.

These oils can be expensive! If you see a range where all the oils are priced at $1.99, irrespective of source, AVOID, as they're most likely synthetic.

Here's a list of oils to be avoided, there are many versions of such lists around.

Be aware that some oils can also exert potent effects on enzymes, not so much MAO, but CYP450, which is complex and can definitely interact with many other substances you might consider co-ingesting...

Good luck.

 

[ultraviolence]

I like to use tea leaves and fruit leaves in my blends. Strawberry leaves are nice, mullein gives a nice citrus, mint is nice, just play around with different herbs, most are smokeable.

 

[Anicca]

Hi Anicca, I have some experience. First I should say that I vape my enhanced leaf, and don't smoke/burn it. This might be significant because I am not dealing with the byproducts of combustion, some of which might well be toxic... Obviously, many herbs have been used for smoking down the years, so that's a good list to start from. Woods, on the other hand, such as cedar and palo santo, have not generally been used in smoking blends as far as I am aware, so more caution is advised there. Palo Santo (as incense) in particular is known for intensifying purges, so I'd be very careful about inhaling that in any quantity...!

The shortest, safest answer is to start with food-grade, organic, wild-crafted oils from edible things. I add one drop each lemon and chamomile-Roman oils to my blend just before I vape it, and that's plenty, and very pleasant.

These oils can be expensive! If you see a range where all the oils are priced at $1.99, irrespective of source, AVOID, as they're most likely synthetic.

Here's a list of oils to be avoided, there are many versions of such lists around.

Be aware that some oils can also exert potent effects on enzymes, not so much MAO, but CYP450, which is complex and can definitely interact with many other substances you might consider co-ingesting...

Good luck.

Thanks a lot for sharing your experiences, I appreciate it.
I also think it's important to use high quality oils of known origin, otherwise you can not be sure what you're ingesting.

From my existing experiments, I have learned that 10 drops of Lavender essential oil was too much for 0.6g of changa. Next time I'll go with 1 drop per 100mg...

 

[oliveverte]

Hi guys!

My friend made his own changa for the first time and had read about ways to improve the taste of the smoke by using herbs like mint. He soaked a bunch of mint leaves for 4 days in acetone and also added between 5 to 10 drops of mint essential oil to it.

When he smoked the changa, he got the entheogenic effect for sure but a couple or more hours after that, he started becoming cold from inside and his body couldn't help but shake. He had to drink hot tea many times and take a hot bath to warm up, which took a few hours.

Now he made quite a bit of changa and doesn't want to throw it away.

Do you know if there's any way to remove the mint essential oil from the changa once it's infused?