Can you smoke your leftover weed stems? What can you even do with them? Here’s what you should know.

It’s happened to the best of us. It’s late at night and we’ve totally underestimated the amount of marijuana at our disposal. We aren’t in a position to buy more at the moment. We look through our ashtray and our weed baggie and there’s nothing useful in sight. Then we spot the stems. Should we smoke them? Can we smoke them?

Sadly, it appears that weed stems are different from the usual bud you smoke. For starters, they don’t contain much THC, rendering them useless if you’re looking to get high. They also taste bad and woody, because there’s no plant in them, and they’re associated with a batch of negative side effects like headaches, sore throats and coughing fits, according to Healthline.

Still, just because you can’t smoke cannabis stems doesn’t mean you can’t find something useful to do with them. A lot of people find inventive ways of incorporating these parts of cannabis, using them to brew teas, to make tinctures, topicals and to even make stem butter. While there’s not much THC in stems, they are still a part of the cannabis plant, having many of the mysterious health benefits that experts and cannabis users love.

Before re-purposing your stems for any reason, it’s important to decarboxylate them, activating however small amount there is of THC and other cannabinoids. Once you’re done with this part of the process, you can infuse the stems into whatever you want.

Cannabis stems aren’t likely to get you high, but they could provide therapeutic and relaxing effects for you. There’s anecdotal evidence of cannabis stem teas treating nausea, anxiety, chronic pain, and more, all the while eliminating the unpredictable psychoactive effects of cannabis drinks. We even have a recipe for it.