How To French Inhale In 4 Easy Steps

Smoke tricks can be show-stoppers when enjoying that sweet sticky-icky. Here’s how to do a french inhale and blow smoke-cessful Os.

Robyn Greens

Smoke tricks show a level of sophistication and control that many people don’t have. Just because you don’t have certain tricks up your sleeve doesn’t mean you can’t learn them.

The french inhale is a smoking trick where you exhale smoke from the mouth while simultaneously inhaling the smoke through your nose.

Just prepare; you’ll be smoking a lot of weed when learning your way around smoke tricks. If you’ve ever wondered how to french inhale or smoke the infamous Os, you’ve come to the right place.

This article presents what’s a french inhale, how to french smoke, and why it got so popular in the first place.

How To Blow Os

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A classic, this trick takes a few hits to figure out, but once you do, you’ll be doing it every time you smoke.

The most important step to achieving any of the tricks listed is to control your smoke intake/knowing how much you can handle.

There is nothing worse than trying to pull off a cool trick and coughing your lungs out while your buddies give you a hard time. Once you have inhaled a good amount of smoke, follow these steps to achieve perfect O’s.

Exhale your smoke to the point where it becomes thick—perfect O material. Once you have that light smoke out of your lungs, create the “O” shape with your mouth while holding the smoke in your lungs.
While your mouth is in an “O” shape, position your tongue in the middle of your mouth.
Exhale the thick smoke in short bursts, almost as if you are coughing ever so slightly. This should create chronic Os to dazzle anyone. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again! It’s all about control.

PRO TIP – If you and your lady friend are ever having a session together, pull out this awesome trick and cut the O downwards with your finger in the air, through the perfectly formed smoke O. This will create a smoke heart. Now go get ’em, Romeo.

How To French Inhale Weed: 4 Simple Steps

The main difference between blowing Os and french inhaling is you don’t have to inhale weed into your lungs this time around…yet.

Instead, hold the smoke in your mouth and don’t inhale or exhale.

Once you’re holding the smoke in your mouth, puff it up for a few seconds and swish it around so it becomes denser.
Next, slightly open your mouth and inhale through your nose simultaneously. This will suck up the smoke as it comes out of your mouth and into your lungs, making it look like a reverse waterfall.
Do not try to exhale the smoke through your mouth; simply open your mouth and let the airflow from your nose-inhale do the trick.
Finally, you can exhale like a normal smoker and let the smoke escape through your mouth (or nose).

If you want to learn a little more about the history of french inhaling and if this method gets you higher, read on for your answers.

The History Of French Inhaling

Photo by Jill Burrow

As society slowly leaned into accepting cannabis culture, consumers were pulling out neat tricks left and right. Some of these tricks were often performed at smoke trick contests that date back to early 2012.

The history behind the french inhale is pretty unclear. This particular trick is also called the Irish Waterfall. Some say this name comes from the English believing they are superior to the Irish, so the Irish Waterfall looks like an upside waterfall rather than a regular one.

It was around this time in 2012 when we heard songs like “French Inhale (feat. Mike Posner)” by Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa, two cannabis-consuming legends.

Since then, french inhaling swept smokers and became quite the aesthetic, especially on pages like Tumblr and Pinterest. It was so “in” to have a thigh gap, huge eyebrows, tattoos, and french inhale with a joint or cigarette.

Does The French Inhale Get You Higher?

It’s easy to think that french inhaling gets you higher because it’s traveling up the nose, but that’s not the case.

French inhaling does not have an effect on the potency of your weed or the effects your weed provides.

Inhaling through your nose or through your mouth will still result in smoke-filled lungs and THC in the bloodstream.

At times, french inhaling makes us cough more. It can also make us sneeze. Many of us know that coughing after a hit gets you higher, and the same goes for sneezing.

Thus, if you’ve french inhaled and feel the need to cough or sneeze, let it out and ride the high.

Is French Inhaling Bad For You?

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Unfortunately, smoke is smoke, so there’s no good or bad way to consume it. That said, you might be interested in knowing that french inhaling might be a bit better than regular inhalation through the mouth.

The key takeaway is that inhaling through the nose will process smoke particles and compounds differently than the mouth does.

Cannabinoids like THC and CBD are absorbed through mucous membranes in our mouths and later in the throat and lungs. However, smoke particles drift into the throat and lungs much easier through the mouth than through the nose.

With french inhaling, your nose (and nose hairs) actually filter out any contaminants and excess particles that don’t make their way into your throat and lungs.

So, those pointy little nose hairs that you keep weed-whacking might be helping your throat and lungs in the long run.