DOSE:	3 g	smoked	Yerba Mate
		smoked	Tobacco

BODY WEIGHT:

140 lb

I am a college student, and the profession that I’ve chosen (combined with depleting interest in the substances, but that’s a story for another day) has driven me to give up the use of any illicit psychoactives just shy of two years ago. That being said though, when I did use cannabis, amphetamines, and a few other select substances, it was for the most part a binge every other weekend. I do not have an addictive personality, and I never found it hard limiting my substance intake. My withdrawal from the psychoactive community was fairly easy, though not completely without regrets. Though I have myself withdrawn from this community, my morals and beliefs about substance use remain generally unchanged from my attitudes during the years that I partook.

Today I find myself pretty content without cannabis or anything else really. I settle for two cups of coffee a day, the occasional cup of yerba mate, and an odd smoke of tobacco.

I’ve read a group of reports on smoking yerba mate, and it couldn’t help but to be brought to my attention that this group fails to be a good representative sample of the population. The experiences were generally all described to be mild weed highs, but that being said, every one of the experimenters was a current cannabis user, and the scientist in me couldn’t help but wonder if that had acted as an extraneous variable, in other words, would the outcomes be different for someone who currently did not use cannabis, and wasn’t smoking mate with a desire of obtaining something similar to a weed high? What would smoking mate do to someone who does not currently use cannabis? I feel the need to have an experiment of my own, and provide a little diversity to the results group. The following shall be my own little experiment, typed out as the experiment goes underway. All times are PM.

1:19 – I hollow out two small, un-filtered, flavoured cigars (same size & weight as a standard cigarette). I leave just shy of an inch of tobacco left to act as a filter, and I pick the stems out of my portion of mate before filling and packing the cigars. The smell of flavoured tobacco and mate has settled within the room, and I have high (but cautious) hopes as to how the smoke will taste. The mate is incredibly dry, so I’ll moisten the cigars for a slower burn.

1:42 – Out to smoke one or both of my cigars, depending on the effects and what my little boy’s throat and lungs can handle. I’m preventing myself from having any hopes or biases as to what the effect will be, in hope that this will provide the smallest amount of placebo effect possible… though I can’t help but to let a little bit of cautious optimism squeak by the radar.

2:00 – I prepared, and went out for a walk in the woods. I sparked up my first cigar, the smoke was mild, and the taste was disappointingly boring and one dimensional, it really didn’t taste like anything specific. I smoked the first cigar with a combination of shorter cigarette draws, and some other ones held in the lungs for as long as I could. During these longer hauls, I noticed that my heart would start racing, but this wasn’t accompanied with any stimulation. I smoked the rest, and tossed it out. I continued on my walk in the woods, and only a slight head rush was felt, but I feel this can be directly attributed to smoke inhalation, and would’ve happened no matter what I had smoked.

2:15 – I waited about 10 minutes in between cigars, and the second one was smoked similar to the first. Nothing. Seriously, I can firmly say that at that point I felt absolutely nothing besides a little oxygen withdrawal which brought on a slight headache. I had that “I just smoked something” feeling, but nothing else.

2:48 – I’m home now, and just as I was thinking I should’ve smoked more, its coming on. Not very strong, but it is. It feels almost identical to what I would be feeling had I drank a medium strength cup of mate; a very mild and non-jittery type of stimulation. I’m going to do some homework, and report any changes when they happen.

3:19 – Well, I am pretty confident in saying that next to nothing happened in the end. The familiar stimulation I experienced was definite, but I’m sceptical to believe it was anything significant, because it only lasted about 10 minutes, and disappeared when I wasn’t paying attention.

To conclude, maybe something would’ve happened if I’d smoked more. Here’s the thing; to get a noticeable dose of mate when I drink it I have to make tea out of 30 grams or so of tea. I woul still need a relatively large amount of mate to get the same effects as I would from the tea, and my ~3 grams likely doesn’t meet the required amount for the effects to be felt. I would have smoked more, but my non-smoking lungs won the battle against my curiosity to explore a little deeper.

Exp Year: 2011	ExpID: 93537
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 18
Published: Jun 16, 2020	Views: 1,051
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Yerba Mate (282) : Preparation / Recipes (30), Combinations (3), Unknown Context (20)