TL;DR:
How long do edible highs last? It depends on how your body processes cannabinoids, but edibles are known for producing longer-lasting and more gradual effects than smoking or vaping. This guide explains typical timelines, what affects duration, and how to avoid taking too much too soon.
- Edible highs usually take 30 minutes to 2 hours to kick in because cannabinoids are absorbed through digestion.
- Peak effects often occur around 2–4 hours after consumption, with noticeable effects lasting 6 hours or more.
- Some users experience mild lingering effects for up to 12 hours, especially with higher doses.
- Factors like metabolism, dose size, tolerance, body weight, and whether you’ve eaten recently all influence duration.
- Because effects build slowly and last longer, it’s important to wait at least 2 hours before considering an additional dose to avoid overconsumption.
Cannabinoid edibles are known for providing a different experience than smoking or vaping. The elevated mood and other effects tend to be pretty similar. However, the length of the experience and other factors are anything but.
So, how long do edible highs last? What makes them different from smoking and vaping cannabinoids?
Let’s take a closer look at basic facts about edibles. Then, we’ll focus on how long cannabinoid edibles tend to last in our systems.
Understanding Edibles: Basic Facts & Important Info
The term “edible” usually refers to a food item containing one or more cannabinoids. Cannabinoids are chemicals found in cannabis and hemp plants. These chemicals interact with the body’s natural endocannabinoid system, producing certain effects.
In nearly all cases, the cannabinoids in edibles are psychoactive. That means eating an edible causes effects like a changed sense of perception and a feeling of increased creativity.
Edibles are absorbed through the digestive system, as Eating Well explains. This is in contrast to smoking and vaping, where cannabinoids pass through the lungs and into the bloodstream.
Pre-packaged edibles are most commonly small, bite-sized, and sweet or sugary items. Gummy candies are the most popular, although chocolates, hard candies, baked goods, and many other items are available. Homemade edibles can be just about anything, from sweets to entire meals that incorporate cannabinoid butter and oil.
How are Edibles Made?
The major steps in making edibles include:
- Extracting cannabinoids from their original source. All of the edibles Delta 8 Resellers offers contain cannabinoids from hemp plants. That means they are federally legal and available in most states.
- If necessary, heating (technically, carboxylating) the cannabinoids to activate them, making them produce their desired effects.
- Combining the cannabinoids with a liquid fat, i.e. butter or cooking oil. This makes it easy to add cannabinoids to a wide range of recipes, whether at home or on the scale of commercial production.
- Measuring the concentration of cannabinoids in this mixture to ensure accurate labeling of products and produce consistent doses.
- Making the actual edible by following a recipe and cooking or baking.
- For high-quality brands, sending the finished product to an independent lab for third-party testing. The results of that testing offer users information about the quality, potency, and purity of those products.
What Makes Edibles Unique?
Compared to most other methods of consuming cannabinoids, the delayed onset and long-lasting effects of edibles stand out. So does their potency. Most other methods of consuming cannabinoids lead to fast-acting effects and a shorter overall duration.
We’ll take a closer look at how long edibles last in your system in the next section. For now, here’s a quick rundown of what happens when you eat edibles:
- Once you eat an edible, it travels through your digestive tract and begins to be metabolized by your liver.
- The effects slowly begin to kick in. Generally, it takes about 30 minutes to 2 hours to notice those effects.
- Edible highs gradually build and last for a long time. It’s normal for an edible high to last for several hours.
- The effects slowly taper off, ending many hours after the edible was consumed.
How Long Do the Effects of Edibles Last After They’re Eaten?
One of the major attractions of edibles is their long-lasting effects. So, exactly how long do edible effects last?
We noted that edibles generally take 30 minutes to 2 hours to kick in. Additionally, their effects peak after a few hours and last for several hours before gradually fading. Is it possible to be more specific about the timeline for eating edibles and feeling their effects?
The truth is that many factors can influence how long it takes for an edible to start working and how long it lasts in your body. For that reason, there is no single timeline that applies to everyone and every edible.
Factors that can influence the timeline of an experience with edibles include:
- Your natural metabolism. Metabolism can vary to a noticeable degree from person to person. That affects how long it takes to start feeling the effects of an edible, as well as the length of the total experience.
- If you’ve eaten recently. Eating an edible on a full stomach can mean a longer wait for the effects to kick in. The opposite is true when eating an edible on an empty stomach.
- The size of the dose. As Healthline explains, a higher dose or stronger concentration of cannabinoids can lead to a faster onset of edible effects.
- Healthline also notes that other individual characteristics, such as weight and sex, influence this timeline.
Don’t Overdo it With Edibles
If you’re not used to eating edibles, and especially if you haven’t read the rest of this guide, you might be tempted to eat additional doses because the effects don’t seem to be kicking in.
Remember, you normally need to wait up to 2 hours to notice the active ingredients affecting you. In some cases, you may need to wait even longer.
Additionally, the potency of those effects will gradually increase over several hours. What you start to feel is not the peak of the effects — they’ll continue to grow in potency for a few more hours. It will take even more time for the effects to completely wear off.
Our advice is to remember these important facts and resist the temptation to overdo it with edibles. It’s easy to think, “This isn’t working, I should take another dose,” and end up with an experience that’s too intense or causes unwanted side effects.
If you’re entirely new to edibles, start with somewhere between 1/2 and a full single dose. It’s very easy to adjust your dose upward, but basically impossible to reduce your dose after you’ve eaten multiple edibles. Learn more in our guide to edible dosing.
FAQs About Edibles
How long do edible highs usually last?
How long the high from an edible lasts depends on many factors, from the dose to personal tolerance and metabolism. However, a good estimate is that the strongest effects are felt roughly three hours after you take them, and noticeable effects can last for six hours or more. Some people feel slight, lingering effects of edibles for 12 hours or longer after taking the dose.
Will an edible wear off in 8 hours?
An edible’s effects will likely wear off or only be slightly noticeable eight hours after you take a standard dose. However, if you take an especially large dose, have a full stomach when you take your dose, or have an especially slow metabolism, you may feel longer-lasting effects. While not common, you may still be experiencing a high eight hours after eating an edible.
Why do I still feel high 3 days after edibles?
If you’ve taken an especially large dose of edibles and have a low tolerance, you may continue to experience a high for significantly longer than the standard timeline of roughly six hours. At the three-day point, it’s more likely that you’re experiencing a “weed hangover.” This is a situation where you’re reacting to the cannabinoids wearing off, as opposed to continuing to feel the effects of the cannabinoids themselves.
The Best Edibles from the Best Brands
Delta 8 Resellers partners with the industry’s best brands to bring you exceptional edibles. Every product we offer is derived from hemp plants, making them federally legal and legal in most states.
Whenever available, we share the results of independent third-party lab testing for our products on the individual product pages. Don’t just take our word for it — check out the quality, potency, and purity of our edibles for yourself!
Shop our full range of edibles!
