How To Light A Joint Or Take A Rip

When someone hands you a pipe, the first thing you want to do is find the carb. If you don’t know what the carb is, it’s that hole next to the bowl that leads into the pipe chamber. Place your thumb (or index finger) over the carb as you light the bowl with your other hand. If it makes you feel more comfortable you can ask someone to light the bowl for you. I promise that the person next to you will be more than happy to help, even if they jokingly give you shit about it. Remember, they started exactly where you are, nobody is born a pro stoner.

As you’re lighting the bowl, inhale the smoke coming through the pipe slowly. For your first hit make sure that you are not inhaling too deeply, otherwise you will end up coughing too much. Once you stop lighting the bowl, release your thumb from the carb and inhale the smoke from the pipe into your lungs. Hold it in and then exhale. When lighting a pipe, try not to torch the entire bowl, just try to light the outside edges or ‘corner’ (don’t ask me why a circular bowl has a corner) but don’t feel bad if you do torch it, cornering the bowl takes practice. Try to leave some greens for the next person

Lighting a joint can be a little tricky the first time you do it. It’s not quite the same as lighting a cigarette. Light the tip of the joint while puffing to get a ‘cherry’ going. A really nice joint will have a rolled end that after lighting will spread the flames evenly around the entire joint. If that doesn’t light evenly, you’ll want to relight it and rotate it as you light it to make sure that it burns evenly. This will help prevent what is commonly referred to as “canoeing,” where the joint burns only on one side.

Inhale as you drag off the joint, just as you would a cigarette. Some newbies make the mistake of holding the smoke in their mouth and then swallowing it. This will cause you to lose smoke and you won’t catch a buzz. Stoner etiquette dictates that you take two puffs, then pass the joint along, aka the “puff puff pass” rule. As the joint gets toward the end you should take one puff and then pass it, especially in larger circles.

If you do it correctly, hitting a bong for the first time is an amazing experience. The key to hitting from a bong smoothly the first time, is not going too big. When someone hands you a bong, the first thing you’ll want to do is find the carb if there is one (similar to what you’d find on a pipe). Most bongs don’t have a carb, like glass bongs, but some of the plastic ones do. If you are smoking from a bong without a carb it likely is a slide-bong, meaning that you’ll clear the chamber with clean smoke after removing the bowl after lighting it. To start you’ll want to take the smoke in as you are lighting the bowl, and stop lighting the bowl once the chamber is filled with smoke. Once your bowl is full of milky smoke, pull the bowl out (or release the carb) and inhale the smoke. Hold the smoke in for up to three seconds, if you can, without coughing, then exhale.

Polite stoners clear the chamber completely before passing to the next person, otherwise the next person’s hit will taste stale and gross. You will cough your first time smoking out of a bong. If you can’t completely clear the chamber in one go, take in what you can, then clear the chamber after you’ve taken your hit. This is why it is important to know how much smoke your lungs can handle. Look at the size of the hits everyone else is taking and take smaller hits if you feel that you can’t handle as much. It’s better to take too small of a hit than take one that is too large and end up coughing or getting sick.

Don’t worry about people judging you on the size of your hits. Everyone has to start somewhere and soon you’ll be smoking them all under the table