Getting high safely in a post-covid world
"Covid affects more than just your lungs..."
-Anonymous
We all know that COVID-19 is a highly transferable, dangerous disease that primarily affects the lungs. Here is two things you might not know about it, and how you can keep yourself safe while smoking.
You might not know that…
- Covid affects more than just your lungs. It has long-lasting effects on the heart. Imaging tests on patients taken months after recovery from COVID-19 have shown lasting damage to the heart muscle, even in people who experienced only mild COVID-19 symptoms. This may increase the risk of heart failure or other heart complications in the future. It also has negative effects on the brain - Even in young people, COVID-19 can cause strokes, seizures, and Guillain-Barre syndrome — a condition that causes temporary paralysis. COVID-19 may also increase the risk of developing Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease.
- COVID-19 can make blood cells more likely to clump up and form clots. While large clots can cause heart attacks and strokes, much of the heart damage caused by COVID-19 is believed to stem from very small clots that block tiny blood vessels (capillaries) in the heart muscle. Other parts of the body affected by blood clots include the lungs, legs, liver and kidneys. COVID-19 can also weaken blood vessels and cause them to leak, which contributes to potentially long-lasting problems with the liver and kidneys.
How to keep yourself safe while smoking:
The only way to ensure that you remain safe when partying with others is to not share anything with anyone that is not outside of your ‘family’. Don’t share the same bong with others in your smoking session. Although this sounds like sacrilege, sharing a bong, a vape, or a joint gives any virus the easiest path for transmission.
If you are going to have a lot of people over to party, the best way to stay safe (outside of testing everyone at the door, which is a buzzkill and isn’t 100% foolproof) is to have multiple bongs, blunts, joints, vapes, etc. so that everyone doesn’t have to share.
Jeff K
4/6/2021