Dosing by sight

[Mt.B]

SWIM’s had a bit of a search around trying to find a thread on dosing by sight. If there is one that someone can remember and link to here, SWIM would greatly appreciate it. SWIM doesn’t have access to scales that can weigh that type of resolution. Ultimately SWIM’d love it if someone could take a macro picture of a couple of doses lined up next to a ruler. Or if you have scales with that resolution and no spice, table salt would be fine too or would it?. Or is this just a silly idea as 30mg is just too small and any difference between 30-50mg is hard to discern by eye?
What do experienced people do? Dose by sight or scales?

 

[Pandora]

Hello,

In my opinion dosing by sight is rather sketchy until one has a lot of DMT experience. Your extraction might be fluffier or looser than mine (or have more plant oils or be more full spectrum) so a picture could be very very deceiving. Who knows. Anyway, a general guideline regarding eyeballing doses is to start with nothing larger than a match head - you know a wooden match - the size of the red part. Did that go well? Want more? Redose same amount. Feeling welcomed still? Want to go deeper? Try a small pea - a VERY small pea, then scrape a little bit away from that . . . .

I respectfully recommend you proceed with caution and procure an inexpensive mg scale (you can get cheap jeweler's models from Amazon and other vendors) ASAP.

 

[gibran2]

I know that the weight of a volume of DMT can vary by at least a factor of three. Dense, chalky DMT powder weighs at least three times as much as an equal volume of light, fluffy, sparkly crystals.

Solid DMT is slightly more dense than water, and a milligram of water has a volume of one cubic millimeter. 30mg of water has a volume that would fill a cube 3.1mm on a side.

(Buy a milligram scale.)

 

[landfishd]

I almost never use a scale as I frequently share with friends not at home and I don't travel with one. like others have said the weight can vary. I know that before I did a re-x my spice had what appeared to be 3x the volume.

The first couple of times using it I did weigh and took note of what it lookrd like, but I think its hard to take in more than whats needed anyway as long as your intentions are to break on through. Id say definitely try and get a cheap mg scale haven'nt you spent a few $$ on the extraction already?

 

[gibran2]

I suppose that the importance of weighing a dose is related to smoking method. If you take many small puffs, then it’s easy to gauge when you’ve reached your desired level. If you take a full dose in a single inhalation (as I do), then it is much more important to have a properly weighed dose.

A sub-breakthrough dose for me is about 20mg. A moderate breakthrough is about 24mg. The deepest, most difficult breakthrough I’ve ever had was about 28mg. So depending on your sensitivity, a few milligrams can make a huge difference.

 

[Guagua]

^ bloody ell!

would you advise still weighing when smoking changa? possibly 10x caapi changa too.

 

[gibran2]

^ bloody ell!

would you advise still weighing when smoking changa? possibly 10x caapi changa too.

Changa allows for a more leisurely rate of consumption, so measuring a dose isn’t as important. In fact, because of the MAOI effects, one can smoke changa very slowly and still have a nice buildup of effects.

 

[MySmelf]

Yeah, dosing by sight is tricky. I use a small jewelers spoon. It's a little smaller than the nail on my pinky finger, if I trim my nail as close as possible then ripped the whole thing off and used it like a spoon.

I always weigh a spoon full of each batch of spice with a milligram scale before I use it for dosing. One spoon full can range from 15mg to 55mg IME.

So.. I would recommend getting a scale!

 

[dumbstruck]

I hear one can make extremely accurate (down to points of a mg if desired) balance with a wee bit of effort for barely any money. One would need an accurate counterbalance weight, so they might have to buy a 50 mg weight or something. Using a nickel (5g) and just placing it significantly closer would probably also work, but you would have to calculate out where to put it. Or trial and error it, probably simpler.

But making up one of these would kinda be fun, and should be accurate to within a mg or two with a reasonably small amount of effort. I kinda want to make one up myself for fun. Here is a guide on how to do it -- it's the first one I found with a search. But it contains a little diagram for one to print and cut out to use and is seemingly organized well into steps. You should be able to find plenty of adequate guides all over the place.

Alternatively one might be able to find one of those wee little physical mail scales that are accurate down to 5 mg or so. Not sure on this, but if you find one please post it or PM me it because it sounds cool.

edit: Oh, you know, you could make a permanent balance. You know just attach a 30 or 50 mg weight on the end of a stick (ruler makes sense) attached to a vertical pivot stick. Then with a little tray you can just add on until it balances / moves a bit below and be reasonably sure you are within a few mg (assuming you are ~4-5" away from the pivot, it should be accurate). So one wouldn't need to worry about decalibration or resetting weights or anything nearly as much.

But with a bit of effort you could have a single 50 mg weight (that can be moved to various places to counterbalance) attached to a balance that would let you accurately weigh within 2-3 mg. Consistently! So a bit of effort might be fun and rewarding!

 

[Mt.B]

Thanks everyone for your valuable input. SWIM went and bought a .001g digital scale today.

 

[Guagua]

can i ask you Mt.B where they purchased the scale and how much it was? SWIM is using his friends scale that is supposed to be a .01g scale so i guess that when it reads 0.03 its around 30 - 40 mg... however, i have a sneaking suspicion its not a tall accurate with such small amounts. hes getting very different results each time he hits the gvg. at the moment it seems like there are to many variables, technique, dosage, and even the thought that the spice may be wanting to give a different perspective on itself.

 

[Global]

can i ask you Mt.B where they purchased the scale and how much it was? SWIM is using his friends scale that is supposed to be a .01g scale so i guess that when it reads 0.03 its around 30 - 40 mg... however, i have a sneaking suspicion its not a tall accurate with such small amounts. hes getting very different results each time he hits the gvg. at the moment it seems like there are to many variables, technique, dosage, and even the thought that the spice may be wanting to give a different perspective on itself.

I use a .0X scale and it seems to be relatively accurate on the amount. If not you probably would wanna recalibrate it. The reasons why you are getting very different results every time has a lot to do with all of those things you listed: technique, dosage, along with the fact that spice can produce very different effects each time with the same amount of the same spice from the same batch. A lot can have to do with technique and what not, but then also part of spice's beauty is the fact that it can be totally unpredictable. If you're trying to figure out whether a certain dose will produce a certain kind of experience, then you may find tendencies or similarities among these equal-dose experiences, but trying to lump them into a category and saying "oh yeah, 20mg is gonna take me here...", well you'd just have to try long enough to find out you'd be dead wrong.

 

[Mt.B]

can i ask you Mt.B where they purchased the scale and how much it was?

Twoz an ebay purchase. There's a huge range in $$. SWIM spent $50 on theirs.

 

[Guagua]

can i ask you Mt.B where they purchased the scale and how much it was? SWIM is using his friends scale that is supposed to be a .01g scale so i guess that when it reads 0.03 its around 30 - 40 mg... however, i have a sneaking suspicion its not a tall accurate with such small amounts. hes getting very different results each time he hits the gvg. at the moment it seems like there are to many variables, technique, dosage, and even the thought that the spice may be wanting to give a different perspective on itself.

I use a .0X scale and it seems to be relatively accurate on the amount. If not you probably would wanna recalibrate it. The reasons why you are getting very different results every time has a lot to do with all of those things you listed: technique, dosage, along with the fact that spice can produce very different effects each time with the same amount of the same spice from the same batch. A lot can have to do with technique and what not, but then also part of spice's beauty is the fact that it can be totally unpredictable. If you're trying to figure out whether a certain dose will produce a certain kind of experience, then you may find tendencies or similarities among these equal-dose experiences, but trying to lump them into a category and saying "oh yeah, 20mg is gonna take me here...", well you'd just have to try long enough to find out you'd be dead wrong.

hahah i know what your saying here. and im under no illusion or trying to reach a certain outcome but the change from hitting infused leaf in a bong to hitting spice on a bed of mint in a gvg is so different it can leave me wondering, was that right? wasn't quite the sense of blasting off last time. could it be too smooth?! hah. Still i understand its all part of a spicy learning curve and im enjoying the ride

 

[Global]

Oh, yeah. I can agree with that. I find my changa experiences to be regularly different in a certain way from the GVG freebase experiences such as being somewhat smoother in some ways like you mentioned as well as being more detailed and intricate like fine interwoven lace of brilliant colors of light

 

[dumbstruck]

The $15 USD (including shipping) bee-ay scale is equivalent to the majority of the ones being sold for $200 or less that are NEW. One can find a ~$200 dollar USED scale on ebay (old lab scales) that weigh down to 10 micrograms (0.01mg) very accurately. I want me one of these punks. You can see the difference on the readout of your scale as a car drives past the road a few hundred feet away! Amazing!

However the 0.001g, garbage bee-ay scale is satisfactory. One just can't add 6 mg and expect it to do its' job. One has to weigh the gemcup, remove it, add the powder to the gemcup, then reweigh the both together and subtract the weight of the gemcup. Sounds a little complex, but this is because it can measure a 2 mg difference very well when measuring a few grams (say 3.555g), but not a 2 mg difference weighing only 0.005g. But with proper use I never get more than a +-2 mg with it, and that is satisfactory for most chems without even needing to weigh multiple doses and then use liquid measurement or the like. Should be much better than a 10mg accuracy one, even if it's a little chinese piece of crap. Usually there is a range of 4 mg total I will get when placing the gem cup, and I just do four or five weighs and average them to get the "real" weight. I've never had to recalibrate, and it has always stayed within just a few mg of the 10g calibration weight it came with.