Contact high is awesome and mystifying

I haven't been smoking because I'm meaning to be looking for a job. It's been about a month. But I have been kinda high a few times while hanging out with high friends or my high sister.

Contact high always blows my mind. It's like magic. I guess it has to do with group psychology (even though it often seems so metaphysical); and mob mentality sorta things. It does seem stronger when you are in a group.

My girlfriend who doesn't smoke and has only tried it once has gotten contact high even before she tried it -- which is sorta crazy -- but all the hormones that get us stoned are naturally occurring in the brain.

I was wondering though -- do you think you could get contact high without even knowing that the people around you are high?

 

I always thought it was effects of grooving on the second hand...

 

I work retail and sometimes people will come in reeking of pot. It's really easy for me to get a contact high from just the scent off their clothes. Maybe certain people have less of a tolerance to it. IDK. It's been a while since I last smoked. But I used to smoke all the time. Maybe my body wants to be high lol.

 

they're not hormones and there is zero THC found in any species of mammal or reptile

but there is a hormone that has effects on group bonding

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin



personally i think "contact high" is just suggestibility

 

no such thing as contact high that way. you are just feeling good kicking with your friends and they are releaxed and you are relaxed in a good mood. you can feel relaxed and chill kicking with sober people who are relaxed and chill also.

 

You don't get the effects from the THC itself. It's the way your brain reacts to the reception of the substance and the hormones that it triggers. Including oxytocin, but mostly dopamine.

The same goes for nicotine, alcohol, hamburgers.

 

If someone is eating a hamburger and I'm not, I'm just plain angry. But that might be because I cook burgers for a living...

 

oxytocin is a hormone but dopamine is a neurotransmitter

THC does increase dopamine levels but that is a "side effect", the actual intoxication is directly from THC binding to your natural cannabinoid receptors and causing them to send altered signals

there is likely some physical dialogue between people who are close together, on the chemical level, but I think most of it is psychological; being at a party with friends where everyone is drunk and high, you are bound to loosen up yourself even if sober . . . but same would happen with a bunch of sober people having a great conversation or something.

 

Everything I've ever known about contact highs is that you don't smoke it yourself, but are around others while they are and you get high that way. But, if you're really getting a contact high that way, it could prove troublesome on drug tests. If you're just feeling groovy around your friends who happen to be high but you weren't with them when they were toking, you're not experiencing a contact high.

 

I'm not just talking about feeling good; euphoria and the permasmile, but also getting the extreme giddiness, the light-headed/dizziness, and even some of the physical ineptitude (RockBand was a bitch)

Well, I stand corrected there.

It may be mostly psychological, as I suggested in the OP, but it's uncanny either way.
But even if it is psychological, the brain would be mimicking the effects of THC in some way, no? Such as by increasing dopamine and other feel-good hormones/transmitters.

 

What I like is when your friends are smoking a blunt in the room your in, and you thought you opened the window. Being high is totally different when you don't think you're high