How does cannabis tolerance work?

Feel like cannabis is not working as it used to? You may be dealing with a high tolerance. After some time consuming weed on a regular basis, it might happen that, even if you increase the dosage, it has virtually no effect on you. This is down to an increase in your organism's THC tolerance.

Weed tolerance is unique in that it works differently from other substances that also affect the brain. While your genetic predisposition can heavily affect your cannabis tolerance, there’s no clear correlation, for example, between your weight and marijuana tolerance, like it happens with alcohol.

A major difference with alcohol is the speed at which your body adapts to THC. As the effects of THC are mediated through our endocannabinoid system, whose main function is to maintain homeostasis and balance, our body has different ways to go back to its optimal condition.

THC binds to the CB2 receptors in our endocannabinoid system triggering a psychoactive feel as well as affecting our stress, appetite, pain, and sleep.

As a self-regulating system, our body will impose measures to limit those effects if exposed to it frequently (or for prolonged periods of time). Our brain does this by weakening and retracting our CB1 receptors, making the overall experience way less intense. This means that the same amount of THC won’t affect CB1 receptors in the same way, which will cushion the effects. This is what happens when you experience "tolerance”.

How long does it take to reset your tolerance?

The human body works incredibly quickly to build tolerance. But the speed of our brain’s moderation is a double-edged sword for the brain will also “reset” the receptors to previous levels of sensitivity, even moving retracted receptors back to the cell’s surface. One night’s sleep will considerably reset your tolerance, so it's important to remember that the first exposure to THC will also be the most sensitive.

If you’re a regular cannabis user, your baseline tolerance will start to reset less and less effectively. Our body is rather resistant and flexible, which is how some people can increase their tolerance so they need several 10mg doses to feel the effects of THC. Heavy smokers of extracts often say that, after a long while, flowers become virtually ineffective (not something average consumers should worry about).

How to deal with cannabis tolerance

There are different ways we can play with it. For example, if you’re planning to have multiple doses in a day, remember that you’ll be more sensitive to the effects of THC during the first one of them, so keep your first dose small and increase it in the following ones. This practice also helps in the long-term, as you’ll “spend” less THC to get the same effect and you’ll keep your tolerance lower.

You may have also heard some veterans talk about something called T-break or tolerance break. Every night’s sleep resets your tolerance to some level, but up to 4 weeks could be necessary to fully return to your baseline sensitivity if you’re a regular marijuana consumer. Investigations in this regard have proved cannabinoid receptors to need just a couple of days to recover from cannabis tolerance: after only 48 hours from the start of the break, the effects will already be noticeable. However, it’s important to remember that our organism will carry on with this process during 3-4 weeks more until the THC levels in our organism have been fully restored.