Found the world's best bong cleaning solution... And it's a terpene. And it makes you sober.

I work as a supervisor at a retail store and manage the "household" department and as such come across a lot of different cleaning solutions and similar chemicals as items are phased in and out to see how they sell. In addition to household cleaners, I am responsible for air fresheners, such as glade.

A few days ago I came across this:

When I spritzed it it smelled very reminiscent of lemon haze without the herby undertones, and less like an actual orange. Surprised, I turned it around to look at the ingredients:



It contains only two ingredients!
The first is natural limonene. The same limonene naturally found in marijuana, especially citrus-esque strains. This limonene is likely extracted from the discarded peels of oranges used to make orange juice.

The second is concentrated orange oil, likely to give it a more orange-y scent.

Out of curiosity I bought it.

For science, I sprayed a little in a shot glass, prepped myself a dab of some green crack shatter, quickly dunked the dab in the limonene/orange oil (a lot of it got scooped up with it since my tool is spoon-shaped), and hit it in a cone-shaped banger. And didn't get high.

Wut. The same shatter had gotten me rickety-wreck-wreck-wrecked the day before.

Waited about 5 minutes to see if it was just taking longer than usual. The only thing I noticed was a slightly elevated heart rate, and I felt like I was having one of those niacin rushes you get from 5-hour energies.

Huh. I was not high. In the slightest.

As an experiment, about four hours later I tried again, this time without the limonene. I felt the effects in seconds.

I then followed the dab by pouring a single drop (about .1 ml) of the limonene in another (cold) banger, and slowly heated it with a low flame until it started to bubble and hit it. Within about 30 seconds I felt dramatically more sober. Holy shit I found the stoner's holy grail.

To be sure this wasn't just some weird thing that only affected me and that I wasn't crazy I had my girlfriend try the second method when she got home but didn't tell her why, with the promise that it wasn't some illegal drug and that I would explain afterward. When I asked her how she felt she told me she went from stoned to much more sober, keep in mind she knew nothing about my earlier experiments.

A tiny bit of the limonene condensed inside my bong, (a clear pyrex double-matrix I use exclusively for oil and wax concentrates), it sat on the top of the water the same way olive oil normally floats. My bong has had a yellow coating of oil as the result of months of use, I normally use ethanol (vodka! or sometimes Everclear) to clean my bong and kill any bacteria. The clear limonene quickly turned brown, and normal use over just one day between me and my girlfriend managed to clean the bong just from the bubbling of the matrices. I used a syringe normally used to give babies liquid oral medicine to suck out the now brown but still transparent liquid, and just for shiggles dabbed it.

Apparently the oil had dissolved a lot of the residue from hundreds of previous dabs, and was still in liquid form. That hit sent me to the fucking moon.

I later put a drop of it in my bong on purpose, and over the next few days my bong became spotlessly clean just from normal use. In addition to keeping the bong clean, it also seems to clean out all of the particulates from the bong water. I poured the water into a glass, you can quite clearly see the brown ring of the concentrate-infused limonene oil:



For even more science I tried sublingualing the oil, since limonene "Improves absorption of other terpenes and chemicals by way of the skin, mucous membranes, and digestive tract" (leafly) I figured it would work well since I'm using limonene as a solvent, and I was pretty sure most of the oil in the bong was already decarboxylated since it had already been vaporized by a banger. I was right, and it does get you hella high, the high feels a little off though.

I made a lot of assumptions with the mechanics as to why a lot of this stuff worked from my knowledge of organic chemistry. If anybody has knowledge about this or corrections where I said something that wasn't quite right, feel free to let me know. I would be greatly appreciative of other people willing to independently verify the de-intoxicating effects of limonene when vaporized since me and my girlfriend are a rather small sample size. Let me know if you try it!

Thanks!
-Mr. StoneAndBone

 

Looking at the MSDS for the Zep Citrus Cleaner it does include citrus terpenes as well as many other solvents, glad to see I'm not just crazy here and other people/companies have caught on.

 

If you are looking for something to clean/keep your bong clean: Food Grade Delta-Limonene
I just ordered it on Amazon due to the impressive results of the spray bottle I bought, it's only a quarter gallon, but only one drop (0.05 - 0.1 ml) is enough to passively keep my bong clean, which means a $30 bottle contains ~1000 doses.

Another note about limonene is that it has the tendency to dissolve plastics and possibly some other. The retail store I work at has a pharmacy connected, and they frequently receive temperature sensitive substances. They usually come in giant foam shipping coolers like this:

I occasionally grab them before they get tossed in the dumpster since they seal almost airtight (great for when the landlord makes his monthly visit, or it was until I started smoking with him haha), are lightweight, disposable since they are virtually free, and you can stab dab tools into the tops of them so you don't lose them.

I made the mistake of spraying a little of the limonene above one, and apparently a drop landed on the top of it. It ate a pea-sized hole in it.

I then sprayed a bit on the foam cooler and watched in stoned wonder as it dissolved before my eyes.
The aftermath of me playing with it is on the bottom left and right corners of the cooler below:

(The MLP tin is my ash can heheh)

Tl;DR I would strongly caution against using limonene in acrylic or other plastic pieces due to the fact that it might cause damage.

 

Actually tried that, albeit with lab grade ethanol (98% with molecular sieves to bring it to 100% as a dry reagent) the problem is that only some terpenes, cannabinoids, and flavinoids are soluble in water and the internal residue ends up pitted but not dissolved. (BTW Voss brand glass water bottles are great storage containers because they are glass and airtight for $2 and you get a drink on top of that.) Here's the vodka "reclaim."

I probably should have been a little more clear: This is a pump bottle, not a spray bottle, and as such contains no aerosols. I am deathly afraid of aerosols, especially when near an open flame lol. Since CFC's were banned aerosols have included many untested chemicals that I wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole.

Pure orange oil is cheap due to the fact that it is obtained from the food-safe bi-product of orange juice since it is extracted from orange peels that would otherwise be turned into very acidic compost. You can watch a video detailing the process by an organic chemist by the name of NileRed on YouTube here. It's dirt cheap.

It is extracted via steam distillation, so no solvents other than water are necessary, and since orange oils, including limonene, are immiscible in water the steam only serves to transfer heat to the orange peels. In cold-pressed orange oils, the is no solvent either as the peels are pressed and the oils and water allowed to separate before the limonene is removed from the collection basin and further processed. Additionally, limonene is surprisingly stable at room temperature when stored away from light, so it doesn't need preservatives and in fact is used as a natural preservative in some foods.

I'm so sorry about your doggy man, I really hope you can figure something out.

-Mr. StoneAndBone