Weed Tolerance Break
Few things are both feared and revered in the world of cannabis like the weed tolerance break. One mention of it to a fellow cannabis user, and the response is usually a solemn, “Good luck.” There are a lot of cases, though, where envy accompanies the pity, knowing how glorious the return to cannabis is. The weed tolerance break truly is a peculiar event in cannabis culture. There are myriad reasons why someone takes a weed tolerance break, and how long should a tolerance break be can vary just as widely, and how often should you take a tolerance break all depends on what you want out of it.
As we frequently write and advocate for the regular use of medical marijuana, in many forms and for many reasons, it’s important to understand what effects regular use has on the body, mind, and emotions. For regular users of cannabis, a tolerance break disrupts a part of their daily life, even if they’re not a daily user. It is also important to know the benefits and side effects, what to expect when you decide to take that break. Some other questions we will explore are how long should a tolerance break be and how often should you take a tolerance break?
What Is Weed Tolerance
Cannabis use is like weightlifting. Not only are they fun, they both have immense health benefits. My favorite exercise is the deadlift. Doing both will also develop a tolerance to their respective systems. For instance, the deadlift is a full-body exercise consisting of lifting a very heavy object (usually a barbell and weights) off the ground and then setting it back down. That’s a simplified explanation of what’s happening throughout your central nervous system, your muscle fibers, and your joints. Following your first session you’ll be sore in ways you could never have imagined, but you’ll look forward to putting a little more weight on that heavy object and trying to lift it off the ground more times. Eventually, your body develops a tolerance to the exercise, and you add more and more weight and repetitions to your deadlift. Though your CNS is still taxed from the workout, and your muscle fibers have sufficiently broken down to be rebuilt stronger, you don’t get that same soreness as when you were first getting used to working out. This is exactly like the Endocannabinoid System (ECS) with regular medical marijuana use.
The first time you smoked weed, you probably laughed uncontrollably for 90 minutes because your friend accidentally said beanut putter. You also probably did something embarrassing yourself, but despite that, you felt good, and you wanted to try it again. With more regular cannabis consumption, you still had laugh attacks when you watched the best of Chris Farley on SNL, you just don’t happen to be uncontrollably bellowing with laughter. There are fewer and fewer times where you take mental trip back to the time you were 16 and totally didn’t pick up on the hints your crush was laying on thick while you were in the hot tub and instead you chose to dunk her head underwater and then bite the bubbles as if that was funny and would impress her. It wasn’t and it didn’t. With more use you develop a tolerance, and so does your ECS.
Weed Tolerance Break
How Long Should A Tolerance Break Be
Why Take A Weed Tolerance Break
With more frequent and regular cannabis use you can probably just go about your day with weed just being a part of it. Your ECS has been down-regulated. This is a fancy way of saying it’s less responsive to the effects of cannabis on the receptors in the brain. So maybe you’re too comfortable with a wake and bake every day, or you want to save some money from buying more and more weed to get your desired effects, or you have a job interview coming up, or perhaps you’ve felt a bit foggy and unmotivated lately. Whatever your reason why, here are some side effects and some benefits you’ll probably experience when you take a weed tolerance break.
The Good
Saying sayonara to that sweet succulent herb might be voluntary, and it might not, but either way there’s some very positive things that can come from a T-break. To start, it’s like hitting a giant Reset button on your ECS. That means up-regulating your brain’s receptors, which will help restore the natural regulation of things like mood, appetite, sleep, and pain. There are a few differing theories and estimates for how long should a tolerance break be, and how long it takes for a full up-regulating, but generally speaking the longer you go without cannabis the more your receptors restore. Will a 2 day tolerance break do anything? A few days is a welcome tolerance break, and anywhere up to a month or more can be recommended for a full ECS recovery. This “reset” is going to lead to an increased sensitivity when you return to Mary Jane’s sweet embrace, so you may want to tread lightly when you return. Or maybe you took your t-break exactly because you were looking to return to the times when you got comfortably uncomfortably high, so then we would recommend these indica strains: Animal Face, Northern Lights, 9Lb Hammer, Oregon Noble, Animal Larry, or Florida Keys.
The Bad
Not only do you not get to smoke that sweet succulent flower, but there are going to be a few somewhat-unwanted or unexpected symptoms and effects from taking a break. Most of these symptoms are temporary, and a lot of them are probably the reason you began smoking. To start, and speaking from experience, irritability is the first thing I notice about myself at the onset of a t-break. It could be a song that I used to sing along to now forces me to change stations, or just being asked how my day was can incite a fuming rant about it not being hot enough or cold enough outside.
Another very probable symptom people experience during a tolerance break is increased stress and anxiety. Chances are, you started smoking cannabis to help with stress and anxiety, so it really makes sense that these effects arise with a t-break. If those are serious symptoms, you may want to consult your doctor before going cold turkey.
Likewise, insomnia and loss of appetite are very common when taking a tolerance break. For the same reason as above, you may have begun your marijuana journey to get some help sleeping or to help induce appetite, so this is a natural symptom of giving it up for a bit.
One last effect, not considered a physical side effect but important nonetheless, is the loss of social connections. If it’s something you like to do with your friends, it will be very difficult to watch movies with your friends as they are all partaking in blunts and gravity bongs. If it’s not a tolerance break for a drug test, or some sort of other necessary break from smoking, the temptation may be too high and you’re better off staying home and being safe from the devil’s lettuce.
The Ugly
Will a 2 day tolerance break do anything? How long should a tolerance break be? How often should you take a tolerance break? I wince as I type it out, but the unfortunate truth is the longer the better, up until a certain point. Some people conflate the amount of time it takes to take a clean drug test with a complete up-regulation of the ECS. They are similar in that a break of a few days is not going to completely clean you or reset your system, but they do not have the same timeframe. While passing a urine test may require up to 90 days, an ECS reset could take 2 weeks or a month, but possibly more. Factors like how often and how much you smoke or consume play a part in both scenarios. The light at the end of the tunnel, the real reason why we enjoy a tolerance break, is to get super duper high when we come back to cannabis. Like put your air pods in, put on the newest episode of Comedy Bang! Bang! and sink into your Lazy-Boy and laugh yourself silly.
What To Take Away From A Weed Tolerance Break
How often should you take a tolerance break? That really depends on what you want to get out of it. Maybe you just want to prove to yourself that you are not forming a habit, so you take a week off every month, or maybe you are getting married in a month, and you think you could lose a few pounds, so it’s just a one-time break so you’ll stop those late-night munchie attacks. Consider what you’re looking for, or your consumption could be lacking, and plan your tolerance break accordingly! If you have any tips, tricks, or suggestions about a weed tolerance break, Releaf Medical would love to hear about it, so send us a message!
