Welcome to CBD With Bre, a blog series where I, as a self-proclaimed CBD noob, recount my experiences getting into the world of CBD. While I have a fair amount of experience on the research and science side of things, as I’m learning, it’s quite different when applied off of the page.

Of course, just as a quick disclaimer, this post is for informational purposes only and not meant to endorse any particular company or products. It’s just here to reflect and discuss my personal experiences.

As an introduction to this series, I wanted to recount some of my experiences and thoughts after my first month of (somewhat) consistent CBD use. While these experiences might be quite a bit different than yours, perhaps it’ll help shed some light into the industry at large, and help fellow noobs get a little more comfortable with the occasionally daunting world of CBD.

Context and Background:

As with any experiment, context is important. This last month (September 2021, at the time of writing this), was a bit of a doozy for me. I began my third year of university off at a new school, which is a bit more prestigious than my last one. I only note this because it’s led to a fairly large increase in both my anxiety and sleep troubles. I’m also pretty bad at being consistent with things, so I’m still working out a CBD schedule and dosage that works best for me.

The Experiment:

Since I’ve done so much research around CBD and its potential benefits, I started off with a bit of a list of things I wanted to assess in terms of how regular CBD usage impacts me personally. The top of my list, as I mentioned earlier, are things like managing symptoms of anxiety and insomnia. I’ve also felt pretty unbalanced for a while, experiencing things like low energy levels and skin issues, and I was interested in seeing if CBD would make a difference.

The main intention of the experiment was to get my hands on LoFi’s 1500mg Full Spectrum CBD oil, but since it was sold out at all the stores, I ended up picking up a bottle of Distillate derived CBD oil instead. The observations I made are based around roughly a month of usage for that particular product.

My Observations:

To keep things simple, I’ve made a short list of my initial thoughts and observations:

1. I’m fairly bad at taking things consistently, but this hasn’t seemed to make a huge impact on any sort of effects I feel like I’m getting. I’ll have to experiment with more consistent usage in the future to really know for sure though.
2. If I take CBD before bed, I find that I wake up a lot less often in the night. If I do, I’m able to fall asleep again faster. However, sometimes I would feel super drowsy the next day anyway, which kind of defeated the purpose. After lowering the dose and taking CBD a few hours before sleeping instead, most of the drowsiness seems to have gone away.
3. Dosage can be harder to calculate in person than on paper, especially when the labelling on a product is less clear than you would like.
4. It’s important to pay attention to what you’re buying. Since LoFi’s 1500mg oil was sold out at all the shops, I picked up a different kind of CBD to try. I didn’t realize until later that it was derived from Distillate and not Full Spectrum like I had been wanting, so that could make an impact.
5. I’ve definitely found signs that CBD might help reduce my anxiety and put me in a better mood when I start spiralling into stress. That said, I’d like to test this theory more consistently over time before I can say anything for sure.
6. I’ve also noticed that I’ve been feeling more balanced overall. I’m feeling a lot less bloated, my skin’s been starting to clear up a little, and my energy has started to level out during the day. However, there are a lot of factors that could be contributing to this, so I want to see how it goes in the future.
7. CBD, or at least the kind I was able to purchase, kind of tastes like oolong tea and not nearly as bad as what I was fearing. I was picturing some sort of ‘oil of oregano’ concoction my mom used to feed me whenever I started feeling sick, so I’m a bit relieved it’s not at all like that and is, in fact, very consumable.
8. As an extra note here, I was finally able to get a bottle of LoFi’s 1500mg CBD Oil, and it’s quite different than the oil I was originally trying. It’s darker and stronger flavoured because it’s Full Spectrum and has a higher potency, but I haven’t had any problems with drowsiness when using it for sleep.

TL;DR

So far, I’ve been learning a lot about the dos and don’ts of CBD usage. Namely, know what you’re buying and learn how to calculate dosages properly. While I can’t necessarily say that CBD’s solved all my problems, it’s definitely having some sort of noticeable impact on things like anxiety, sleep problems, and overall feelings of health. I look forward to continuing to experiment and seeing where this takes me in the future.