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Here are nine reasons to consider taking a break from cannabis while your tolerance to cannabinoids ebbs.
Cannabis is a great tool and medicine. It is legal in the state of Missouri to have access to medical marijuana. However, you must have a marijuana card. Schedule an online appointment to get you marijuana card today! While cannabis is a great tool, our bodies are designed to build up a tolerance to the effects. In 1976, researchers pointed out that humans build up both behavioral tolerances and dispositional tolerances to cannabis.
In other words, humans are able to function normally once they build a tolerance to cannabis while their metabolic processing of cannabinoids becomes more efficient. Therefore, over time, cannabis may produce a less noticeable effect on the consumer.
Here are nine signs it’s time to consider taking a tolerance break from cannabis:
1. Smoking flower no longer provides the ‘high’ you’re looking for.
You may have heard that people don’t feel anything the first time they consume cannabis. Whether that’s true or not has yet to be proven. However, it has been proven that frequent consumers develop a tolerance to the high that they get from cannabis.
In 2008, researchers published a paper in Neuropsychopharmacology that outlined this phenomenon. The authors noted that “frequent users showed blunted responses” to many of the impacts of cannabis. They went on further to explain that the data “suggest that frequent users of cannabis are either inherently blunted in their response to, and/or develop tolerance to the psychotomimetic, perceptual altering, amnestic, endocrine, and other effects of cannabinoids.”
If you notice that your body has developed a tolerance to cannabis in some way, take one to four weeks off and your system should reset.
2. You haven’t had a dream for a long time and you’d like to have one.
Research across the board has shown that cannabis consumption impacts sleep in a variety of ways. In fact, many cannabis consumers report positive effects on their sleep, but this may also be due to things like decreased pain during times of consumption.
Many consumers, however, report some less-than-desirable impacts on their sleep. For example, an article published in 2008 pointed out that consumption of THC leads to a reduction of REM sleep. This may lead to many consecutive dreamless nights.
If you’re the kind of person who would like to experience your dreams and find that your cannabis consumption has robbed you of that chance, consider taking a tolerance break from THC for just a few days. According to the research from 2017, the presence of strange dreams is associated with cannabis withdrawal syndrome, so you won’t have to wait long.
If you’d like to continue taking CBD during your tolerance break, research from 2018 showed that this cannabinoid has no impact on the sleep-wake cycle.
3. You’ve been tracking your budget and it’s spiked in the past month or two.
Cannabinoids are powerful. When consumers first start with cannabis, they’ll notice that they don’t need much product to achieve the results they desire. As noted, however, tolerances develop. The physical tolerances might not present enough of a problem for some to consider taking a break.
However, when the budget spikes, almost everyone takes notice.
If your consumption has gotten to the point that your bottom line is taking an unreasonable hit, it’s a necessity that you take a tolerance break.
4. It’s October and you’re a fan of Joe Rogan.
Joe Rogan is one of the most influential voices in the world today. If you aren’t familiar with him, his podcast is where Elon Musk famously took a hit from a joint for the world to see from outerspace.
Joe Rogan is a staunch advocate of letting people decide what to do with their bodies, especially when it comes to plant medicine. He frequently smokes cannabis and drinks alcohol during his shows.
However, every October, Rogan and his friends partake in Sober October and you’re welcome to join along.
There is only one drug allowed during the entire month: caffeine.
After a month of not smoking, your tolerance is sure to have plummeted back to its base level.
5. You only appreciate a dab.
Many cannabis consumers get started with products that are the most familiar and easiest to consume. That’s why beginners are often smoking joints, eating edibles, or using topicals. Those products are representative of markets that already existed before the cannabis industry blossomed.
As they become more familiar, people start to explore the extracts and find them mesmerized by the spinning contraptions and recycling vapor inside dab rigs. Eventually, many people move on to dabs.
The experience has many attractive benefits:
● No need to burn plant material
● Fewer hits are necessary
● They look cool
However, continuously using these highly potent products can drive less potent products into irrelevancy.
If you’ve found that your endocannabinoid system only responds appropriately to dabs, it might be time to take a tolerance break from cannabis.
6. You’re feeling less creative.
There’s a lot of debate around creativity and cannabis consumption.
It appears largely subjective.
However, if you’ve been using cannabis to fuel your creativity, yet you’ve found your creativity to be lacking, consider taking a break from cannabis to see how your mind and creative spirit respond.
7. You’re getting too high.
Your tolerance has built up over time and the only products that you enjoy are the highest quality dabs and the highest strength edibles. As a result, you often find yourself over-consuming and getting way too high.
If you’re experiencing a situation like this, take a few weeks off to let your body recover. You don’t want to end up being one of the rare cases of cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome (CHS), in which your body starts to reject your cannabis consumption and creates an overwhelming feeling of nauseousness that can last for weeks. According to research from 2019, only repeated hot showers seem to help victims of CHS.
8. You haven’t been outside in a while.
Are you having no fun doing anything but consuming cannabis? Did you use to have fun doing things other than consuming cannabis? Have you been wondering when November is going to end, only to discover that it’s January?
If you haven’t been outside in a while, consider taking a tolerance break to find motivation in other things other than cannabis. It can be a great tool, but it shouldn’t be the only thing that’s working for you.
9. You don’t know your own name.
Not only did you just discover what month it is, you’ve now forgotten your own name.
That was probably the monster dab you just took.
If you can recite your name, you’re fine. If you can’t, it’s time for a tolerance break.
Have you found this list helpful, or at least, entertaining? If so, please share it with your friends so they know that it’s time to take a tolerance break from cannabis with you!