Microdosing: Everybody’s Doing It
Not only are alcohol, caffeine, and cannabis are all drugs, they are all also biphasic substances. A biphasic substance is one that has quite different effects on your body at different blood-concentration levels.
Alcohol, although classified as a depressant, actually acts as a stimulant until it reaches a certain threshold, at which point it reverses into sedation. Caffeine, at low doses, causes alertness and mental focus, but at higher levels can cause anxiety, heart palpitations, and jitters (good to know, CBD might be able to counter-balance some of that anxiety the next time you OD on caffeine).
At low doses,CBDcan actually have a mild stimulating effect, and does more to benefit anxiety-reduction. At higher doses, it's more sedative, but may be less useful for reducing anxiety.
THC is less black-and-white because various strains have different effects, various delivery methods have different effects, and all human bodies have unique chemistry that can result in varying psychoactive effects. All of these factors can work in harmony to give you perfectly blissful relief, or can create an unpleasant storm of anxiety and paranoia that is unfortunately inescapable until it wears off.
The reason this happens is that when you oversaturate your system with too much of a cannabinoid, the receptors that normally are activated by CBD or THC will be turned off by your body. They will only turn back on once everything is back in balance. If you are very regularly over-saturating your receptors (aka are high all the time, or smoking strains with very high THC %), more of them might stay "off" or your body can actually reduce the amount of them, which is what we call "developing a tolerance" for the substance, causing you to have to smoke more to get the same physical effects.
If this happens, a "tolerance break" might be necessary, to allow your system time to recover and reset. A few days could be enough to see a difference, although a week or two is preferred to really give your body the benefits. After the break, you should be able to feel stronger effects with significantly less quantity or THC %.
I just still don't get why Weed Culture makes it seem like everyone who smokes weed is consuming massive quantities of it, when it's very clear that doing so is counter-productive to receiving the many benefits of it. Sure, it's clearly just another example of like, toxic masculine bro-culture, but like... don't bro's want help with their anxiety too???
I'm becoming more interested in tinctures though, because it's the only application method that has such a high level of control over dosage, and the effects set in relatively quickly (slightly longer than smoking, much quicker than edibles). Especially after learning about this biphasic effect, I think it's probably the best method to use if you really want to nail down a micro-dosing regimen for specific symptoms relief, or if you've had a bad experience with cannabis but are now realizing maybe you just consumed way too much. The only catch is that it'll take a bit of time and effort to figure out what works best for your body.
