This seems to be a common dichotomy when it comes to eating, rather than smoking, cannabis. People who can smoke a bowl and go about their day will find that when they eat a weed candy (or two—is it even working?), they feel like their hands are about to detach from their body. Though cannabis is safer than many other drugs, edibles feel scary to some people because of the heightened delusional symptoms they seem to induce. Famously, the writer Maureen Dowd took a nibble of a pot chocolate and “became convinced that I had died and no one was telling me.” Indeed, in Colorado, edibles are responsible for a disproportionate share of emergency-room visits, relative to their sales.

The refrain you’ll hear from a more seasoned stoner is that people like Maureen and me simply ate too much. We should have had just a little, then waited, then only had more once the initial high wore off. That may be true. But some marijuana researchers (few though they might be, given restrictions on the drug) told me that something else might be happening, too. Edibles and smoked weed are processed into different substances in the body, and they say this allows the two to affect the mind in totally different ways.