Welcome back to the red bench – it’s Tuesday and I’ve got cannabis tolerance on my mind…

Tolerance – the body’s natural ability to become accustomed to any drug or experience.

Because I’ve been smoking the herb for many years, my body has developed a tolerance to cannabis. I have to take a few more hits than the average smoker to get that delightful stoned feeling. That’s cannabis tolerance in action.

In your brain you have CB1 receptors and they love THC, but only up to a point. Your body naturally produces cannabinoids, including THC, and these receptors are one of your brain’s ways of making use of that natural goodness. Smoking the herb bombards the receptors with large doses of THC, and after a few days of regular use these receptors get filled up to the point that they just won’t take in any more THC. This is all a natural process – the way the system is built.

In spite of this being a natural process, I’ve read many articles over the years about marijuana tolerance, and they often treat it like this is a problem. Well, I don’t consider it a problem, so today I’d like to take a different approach and tell you why I believe tolerance is a useful and helpful thing.

The Current Model, My Reality And The Facts Of Life

The current view on cannabis tolerance is that high tolerance is a problem that you might encounter as a pot smoker, and you should do your best to avoid it. The way to avoid it is to keep your intake low and take breaks regularly to reset your mind and body. Even better, only smoke occasionally and avoid getting a high tolerance entirely. Sounds like good advice, I guess, for the purely recreational user.

But this view on tolerance, in my opinion, comes out of a mindset that frowns on the regular and daily use of the herb. I remember the drug information I got back in high school saying that if you smoked a joint or more a month you were a “heavy user”. The information was biased from an anti-drug viewpoint and any indulgence in marijuana was considered a problem. Pure misinformation.

Here’s the reality I deal with – I use cannabis as a medicine as well as a recreational herb. I use it everyday, and I do not believe that is a problem. It does not negatively impact my life, in fact – it’s an enhancement in nearly every way, including my mental health and well-being. For those of us that deal with chronic medical conditions, daily use of the herb is not a strange thing – it’s a normal fact of life.

Another fact of life is that smoking herb daily will, absolutely, build up a tolerance in your body to the high. It will take you more hits to get to that place that just a hit or two used to take you. The munchies become less common as does the need to giggle like crazy when you’ve had just a couple tokes of a joint. What we call tolerance is just the body getting used to the experience of being high.

Because I use cannabis as a medicine, and on a daily basis, I don’t want to be blasted every time I take a couple hits. I need to function. I have stuff to get done – you know what I mean?

But I also need the benefits I get from smoking the herb, because this is the most effective medicine for my condition. To do this I need to have a high tolerance, my body has to be good and used to the herb. Completely saturated, as it were. So high tolerance allows me to easily function while my body is processing fresh doses of THC and other cannabinoids without disrupting my life. I consider this a major plus!

The Downside

The major downside of building up your tolerance is that you are going to burn through your herb a lot faster. That can be tough on the wallet. In the future I foresee the prices of herb dropping to the point where a high tolerance won’t be such a financial burden, but those days are still far down the road…

Also, I find that every new strain I try hits me really strongly during the first sesh or two, but by the end of an eighth it seems to diminish in strength. That’s the tolerance effect. My body has now become accustomed to the cannabinoid profile of that particular strain.

If I want to get a fresh, high experience I have to have a sesh with a different strain. Mixing up your strains is the best way to keep the smoking experience fresh when your tolerance is high, but this does require you to keep several kinds of herb on hand at any time. Financially, this can be tough unless you grow your own herb or have great connections to inexpensive herb.

Making High Tolerance Work

So I’ve come to the conclusion that having a high tolerance is a natural thing if you’ve been smoking regularly for years. It’s just the way it is. The only thing an individual smoker has to decide is if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I’m a “glass half-full” kind of guy, so I definitely take the approach that this is a good thing… and if it’s a good thing, how do I make it work for me?

I switch up strains, I have mindful seshes, I take breaks every so often and I don’t expect the herb to blow me away every time. Sometimes I have to smoke two bowls when an average smoker would get by with just a couple hits. I certainly don’t mind smoking more delicious herb – that’s not a burden! 😉

The Reset

I used to believe that quitting smoking for a couple days would completely reset the system but I don’t anymore. There is no way to make the body un-experience all those years of smoking with just a couple day reset. The body has a memory and it doesn’t forget. Not to mention those CB1 receptors – they get filled back up real quick after a break.

The longest I’ve ever gone without smoking the herb is five hundred days, and within a week my tolerance was back to where it was before the break. I’ve found that the best a break does is reset me for a day or two. That being said – I still take a break every so often, when medically possible – so I can have a fresh perspective, even if it’s brief.

The Wrap Up

Tolerance to the herb is something that is going to happen if you smoke regularly, so I suggest embracing it and making it work for you.

Have a cannabis-positive day, and until later, best of health.

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