Smoking weed is a great way to unwind and has many benefits, but most stoners underestimate the importance of taking a tolerance break for your health.
If you’re unfamiliar with the term, a tolerance break is when you take a long break from consuming any cannabis products. The idea is that as a stoner you’ll eventually reach a point where you’re smoking excessive amounts of weed to get to your preferred high. Depending on how much you smoke, this process could take weeks, months, even a year. Whatever the case may be, you’ll eventually reach the point where you need to take a break.
Reinvigorating Your Sleep Cycle
If you’re like me and typically smoke in the evenings before bed, your mind won’t be getting good quality rest. Yes, weed is beneficial to those that struggle with things like insomnia or chronic pain, those kinds of circumstances where without it you wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway. Sleep can effectively be broken down into two separate stages, with the first stage being NREM and the second being REM sleep. Both of these stages have cycles that serve different purposes in the process of allowing your mind and body to rest.
When you consume cannabis, alcohol, or any other psychoactive substance; your sleep cycle will be altered. Most importantly, you’ll lose valuable REM sleep. This is the cycle where you experience dreams. REM sleep is where your body processes memories and emotional experiences, essentially prepping your brain for the next day. Smoking weed before you sleep will prolong your NREM sleep, but it will also prohibit REM sleep. This is why you usually don’t dream when you’ve gone to bed high.
Taking a tolerance break is important for sleep as your body will try and make up for all of the lost REM sleep. This means that when you take a prolonged break of sobriety, you will dream a lot. The only bad thing is you tend to wake up right after you’ve been dreaming. So you’ll experience restless sleeping as your body undergoes this catch-up routine.
Mental And Physical Recovery
Cannabis can be particularly taxing on your body over long periods of time, especially if you smoke it. A tolerance break provides an opportunity for your lungs to get some much-needed rest. On top of that, you’ll gradually lose that mental fogginess that accompanies frequent cannabis use. A good way to retain some of the benefits of cannabis while you take your tolerance break is to use CBD products instead. Since CBD isn’t psychoactive, it won’t have any effect on your break.
Form Better Habits by taking a tolerance break
Unfortunately, weed has the tendency to make you lazy. Take the window of sobriety and use it for the better. Hit the gym, eat healthier, set goals for yourself. You can never go wrong investing in self-improvement. If you need a guide to help you ditch your bad habits, click here.
You’ll Save Money with a tolerance break
Aside from better quality rest, this is the best side-effect of going sober. Weed can easily turn into a large investment every time you hit your local dispensary. Don’t be afraid to do your wallet a favor and take a break when you feel like you’re spending too much money to get high. Besides, once you decide to start consuming cannabis products again, you’ll need less to get high. If that isn’t a good enough reason, I don’t know what is!
How long is your average tolerance break? Let us know in the comments below! Follow us @Cannalifenet for more cannabis-related content.