system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: The process in which THC is broken down in your system.

I'm curious to what the actual process is. From ingesting, to how it travels through your body and ultimately passing.
gpt
THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) is one of the main cannabinoids in cannabis. You don't have to ingest it, you can inhale it, but either way it ends up in your blood (by being absorbed by either your intestines or your lungs). The main difference is that it takes about 1-2 hours to absorb something through your intestines, but only about 5 minutes to absorb something through your lungs.

The blood carries the THC around your body, where it gets absorbed by all your fatty tissues like body fat, liver and obviously the brain (where it has the effects most people use it for). The THC can stay in these fatty tissues for well over a day, slowly being released back into the blood (important for anyone trying to pass a drug test, sometimes it can take a week or more for it to all be gone from your body).

Anyway, it's the liver that does the job of breaking the THC down. The THC gets broken down from its most potent form (usually Δ^9 -THC) to less potent form (11-hydroxy-Δ^9 -THC) and then to the inactive form (nor-9-carboxy-Δ^9 -THC). It's mostly the second form that ends up in the feces, and the last form that ends up in the urine. So about 65% of it exits your body via feces and the rest by urine. Most of the THC byproducts will be out of your system within 4 hours of it hitting your bloodstream, but to fully get rid of it all will take much longer (as mentioned above).

One final side note, if you're a breastfeeding mother, there's another way the THC can exit your body - via breast milk. This also means that you can feed cows on cannabis and have them produce THC-laden milk, which gives me a business idea....