Have you ever been smoking joint after joint and wondered if you can even get any higher? Or have you eaten some edibles before, sat on the couch and wondered “holy shit, I can’t get higher!”, and five minutes later realized that you are a lot higher than you were five minutes ago?

That’s because answering the question of whether or not there is a plateau for highness is like answering the question, how long is a piece of string? Well, it depends, mostly on the person’s tolerance.

A good first step to answering this question is understanding how THC works in the body. Unlike alcohol, it takes more time for THC to dissipate in the body, which means you do not need to smoke as much as you drink to achieve the cumulative effect. Unless you have a method for tracking the THC in your  blood, it´s very hard to measure how much THC you have accumulated in your blood.

However, this might not even be the actual factor that is related to how high you are, and whether or not you will get higher. THC works by binding to cannabinoid receptors in the brain. These receptors have a limit as to how much THC they can actually hold. So, naturally, if you are smoking bong after bong, the container in your brain for cannabinoids is filling up fast.

If you are quite a frequent smoker, it’s likely that there are already some cannabinoids still in the brain even before you have started a session. This is the cumulative effect of marijuana in the brain. It is said that THC begins to dissipate in the blood and in the brain receptors about 6 hours after use, but the rate of dissipation is slow. It’s not like you can have a brain full of THC forever (although that would be nice), but if you are a frequent smoker, they are definitely not all emptied out by the time you start your next session.

Unless you have a device for measuring the volume of receptors being activated, then you don’t ever really know if you have reached that plateau. But there are things you can look out for that might be a sign. The first one is, you just smoked another joint and you are not any higher than you were before it. It might be time to call it a night.

It’s also a common experience that when people keep smoking beyond this point, they experience more discomfort the more they smoke, although they are not necessarily higher. If you find that after a certain point, smoking just makes you feel a little uncomfortable, it’s likely you’ve reached that limit.

It’s more important to pay attention to your own body and the effects marijuana has on your body to realize whether or not you’ve reached that limit. For those who don’t smoke much at all, they might be able to continue getting higher and higher all night long.

Of course, another way to test your tolerance or the level at which you plateau is to go to town on an ounce of weed and see what happens. But this is asking for trouble! A lot of people report having really awful experiences after smoking too much weed. Things can get very, very uncomfortable.

On the other hand, there has never been a single reported death from overdosing on marijuana. There are rumors that you have to ingest your entire body weight in buds in order to properly overdose. So there’s no need to be afraid, because sweet Mary Jane will not kill you. But she might kick your ass if you get too greedy!