Do you think CBD is cheating on a weed break?

[The Network]

Before you give your knee-jerk "no, of course not!" let me explain my situation.

I like weed, it's fun, but sometimes when I start to lean just a little heavy on the use (say a gram or two a week, I know it SOUNDS low, but generally during normal times it takes a month to go through that) I get moderate anxiety and insanely intense boredom/depression several hours after I come down, sometimes it just lasts a few hours sometimes it lasts a day or two. Sometimes if I spend an entire week high almost all day each day, I start to feel vaguely psychotic in a hard-to-describe way, it's nothing that's going to make me jump off a bridge or go stab a bunch of people on a bus or anything crazy but I start getting crazy thoughts and my senses all seem significantly dulled even after I've come down.

Now enter CBD. Thankfully Oregon has East Fork Cultivars (not a shill lol) which is a company that loves focusing on high CBD nearly no THC weed, although they make some of everything now and then. So I can and do get weed that analyzes at 1% THC or less, with 14-16% CBD.

CBD is great for me, my anxiety, depression, and worries all go away. It's almost like a benzo but no real high. It makes me wonder if, during my current 2 week break from weed (THC's psychotic/depressant day after effects on myself not just the general category of weed), it would be a bad or generally non-positive thing to use CBD potentially quite heavily. I feel like it's exchanging one vice/very minor dependence for another. I feel like I shouldn't be relying on any substance to make me feel normal/OK. The thing is though CBD is fairly well predicted to be even less harmful than THC, as far as mental effects go... probably no mental dependency, no exacerbation of schizophrenia/depression/etc.

Not sure. What do you think? Should I allow myself to think of CBD as a fallback for any time I feel bad?

Side note: this probably insane overthinking of a simple question is what my THC comedowns are like and you can see why I'm taking a short break...

 

[john420-420]

I wouldn't even say it's a break tbh, more of just straying away from high thc strains really and focusing more on the CBD. If getting high made me feel like that I wouldn't touch it tbh (not CBD, the high thc stuff). I'm going to be experimenting soon with CBD myself over the time I'm changing epilepsy medication to prevent out from happening during the change. I've been skeptical about buying it in the UK for a long time now but seems there's some good places to get it from now though. You guys in some parts of the US are very lucky lol.

 

[Amml]

IMO I would do a complete break (also CBD) until you feel like you're back to baseline. I'm also quite sensitive to THC and can fully relate to the symptoms you describe after smoking more weed than usual. I also tried to use CBD as "substitute" for THC and it didn't have the same effects when I was having "withdrawals" compared to taking CBD when I was only using THC occasionally.

I'm writing withdrawals in quotation marks because it's not really comparable to other drugs, but in the first days quitting after being high for a few days in a row I have some quite intense craving together with concentration and memory problems, lack of appetite, sleeping problems, etc. that usually take about 4-5 days to disappear when I have smoked e.g. all weekend long.

I found out that for me it's just the best to smoke/vape/eat weed max. 3-4x a month (yeah I'm really sensitive :D) and to stay clean (so also no CBD) in between. It's another thing if you use CBD only, with this I had good experiences, but as said it's not good for masking THC "withdrawals".

 

[Mycophile]

I don't want to hijack this thread, but it seems like from what most people are saying that completely pure CBD with no THC won't really have any noticeable effects unless you are taking it to relieve a certain condition like anxiety, chronic pain, seizures, etc...would most of you agree that this is true and that you need to mix it with THC to get really pronounced mental and physical effects?

My brother and I tried two brands of pure CBD and we didn't feel anything at all.

My brother tried to use it for his insomnia and it didn't help, while I didn't use it for any reason, just to see whether or not I could feel it.

I'm not surprised I couldn't feel it cause I wasn't using it to treat anything, but I was surprised my brother didn't feel it cause he has insomnia.

But then someone else here said that in general it won't work even for insomnia if it has ZERO THC in it and that usually you'll need a small amount in there to get those effects.

What do you guys think?

 

[The Network]

No it's definitely not true. CBD is psychoactive. It just doesn't give you what most people would consider a high. It definitely has other psychoactive effects like reducing anxiety among other things.

 

[Moxious]

Strictly in terms of the tolerance break, to some degree you are doing a positive thing by ingesting CBD, as it has, iirc, a neutral antagonist effect on the CB1 receptor. Theoretically your brain should respond to this by upregulating CB1 receptors, which would give you a greater effect from THC later on.

This is supposedly one of the reasons tolerance to full-spectrum weed increases more slowly than that of synthetic cannabinoids, even when adjusted for potency. The CBD has a mediating effect on tolerance when consumed together with THC.

This does depend on the balance of chemicals in the strain though if you are using flower rather than pure CBD/THC. A high-CBD strain would still probably increase your tolerance because there is still the ~1-2% THC in there.

 

[Amml]

This is supposedly one of the reasons tolerance to full-spectrum weed increases more slowly than that of synthetic cannabinoids, even when adjusted for potency. The CBD has a mediating effect on tolerance when consumed together with THC.

When you look at the most modern strains, they are all nearly CBD free. As far as I know nearly all synthetic cannabinoids are full-agonists at the CB1, while THC is a partial-agonist. Also the CB1 and CB2 receptors are not the only targets of THC, and when you think of the sometimes entire different structure of synthetic cannabinoids compared to hemp-derived cannabinoids, it?s very possible that they do not or differently bind to these other kind of targets.
I think this is more likely the reason why synthetic cannabinoids work different than natural (hemp derived) and have increased and possibly life threatening side effects when overdosed.

 

[The Network]

Eh, a LOT of strains analyzed to be legally sold in Oregon show at least like .3% CBD, which isn't nothing.

 

[Moxious]

I don't think precisely describing what makes synthetic cannabinoids harmful is relevant to the present discussion. There are many potential reasons the effects could be different, and we're talking about two entire classes of chemicals, rather than just two chemicals alone which we could have more specific things to say about.

I only brought them up in regards to tolerance, and I said specifically when adjusted for potency. I'm just trying to draw the distinction between the tolerance curve for agonist + neutral antagonist vs agonist alone. I can take synths back out of the picture, didn't mean to derail the conversation. If we compare how tolerance increases when just ingesting THC, it should increase faster than the same amount of THC taken along with CBD. The ratio of the two should mediate the effect. That said other cannabinoids present in flower are possibly also involved to some degree.

Like TN said, I actually don't know of any strains that have been lab tested and show 0.00% CBD. To get no CBD at all I'd think you'd have to be using some kind of extract/isolate.

 

[The Network]

Some will say LOQ which just means it wasn't enough for the not-super-sophisticated-anyway lab equipment to test. You'll see isolates that should be nearly 100% test as like 80%.

 

[Amml]

Sorry with CBD-free I actually meant really low in CBD. I'm not sure if this <1% CBD really make a change, unless maybe consumed in large amounts?