In recent years, more and more people have been turning to CBD as a cure for a wide range of ailments, but since it comes from the cannabis plant – AKA marijuana – some people might be worried about the kind of side effects it may have.

So to help you understand what CBD is and how it works – and to put your mind at ease if you want to try it – in this post, we answer the question, how does CBD make you feel?

What is CBD?

Before we even start talking about the effects of CBD, let’s take a step back and answer a more basic question – what is it?

CBD stands for cannabidiol, a compound found in the cannabis plant along with THC (tetrahydrocannabinol, the main psychoactive compound in marijuana) and over 100 other related cannabinoids.

While THC has long been sought after as a recreational drug, the medicinal properties of CBD are now being realized, which has seen its use expand hugely in the treatment of a wide range of conditions.

As a result, CBD medicine has become a hot topic as increasing numbers of people are waking up to the seemingly near-magical properties of this amazing natural compound.

How does CBD make you feel? – the short answer

In a moment, we’ll talk about how CBD works and why it has such wide-ranging benefits – but let’s start with a short answer to the question of how it makes you feel.

Regardless of how you administer it, whether through vaping  (which we’ll talk about more specifically later) CBD oils or any other method, very broadly, CBD tends to bring on a feeling of relaxation and general wellbeing.

It makes you feel more comfortable and more mellow, it reduces feelings of anxiety, it helps improve overall mood and it can also help reduce chronic pain.

Sometimes we wake up in a great mood full of energy and enthusiasm while on other days, we wake up feeling slow, lethargic and blue – and a good way to sum up the effects of CBD is to say that it leaves you feeling very much like the first of the two.

There’s a bit more to it than just this, as we’ll see in a moment, but the best way to visualize the effects of CBD is that it brings increased feelings of relaxation, calm, wellness and well-being.

Does CBD make you feel high?

When most people come to CBD for the first time, one of their main frames of reference is likely to be THC, the main psychoactive compound in marijuana that gets you “high” – regardless of whether they’ve experienced THC themselves before.

Consequently, one of the first questions many people will have before trying CBD for the first time is, will CBD get you high? And the answer to this is, no, it won’t.

When you smoke a joint or otherwise ingest recreational marijuana, after a few minutes, you may start to experience effects such as slight dizziness, feelings of calm and relaxation, mellowness, lethargy and so on.

Sometimes, undesirable effects including paranoia, short-term memory loss and nausea can also occur.

These effects are well documented, but the experience of using CBD is very different.

With CBD, the effects are far more subtle. There will be no dizziness, lethargy or the general, unmistakable feeling of being “stoned”.

A few of the positive effects are shared – such as feeling calm or mellow – but with CBD, these effects are much more subtle.

Importantly, there is also no mental impairment with CBD, so after using CBD products, you can still perform actions like driving without any issues.

So in short, CBD doesn’t get you high, and the effects are very different from those experienced when smoking marijuana.

How does CBD work?

So how does CDB work? Let’s have a look at some of the science behind it.

Most people will have heard about the central nervous system (CNS), but our bodies also contain another system called the endocannabinoid system (ECS) that works in conjunction with the CNS.

The ECS is still not yet fully understood, but it appears to regulate certain physiological and cognitive processes by interacting with the CNS as well as with the peripheral nervous system.

It does this by altering the way receptors react to the signals they receive, and since receptors are found throughout the body, the endocannabinoid system affects all bodily functions.

One way to think about what it does is to say that the endocannabinoid system “turns down” or turns off the effect a signal may have on a receptor.

For example, if a receptor receives a signal that tells us to wake up, the endocannabinoid system modulates the signal to make sure it isn’t too powerful.

On the other hand, if a signal is received to tell us to go to sleep, the endocannabinoid system attenuates the signal to make sure we don’t suddenly fall asleep where we’re standing.

An “adaptogen”

Of course, this is a vast oversimplification of what’s really going on, but it can help us understand why the effects of CBD are so wide-ranging and why its effects can sometimes appear contradictory.

When our bodies are functioning perfectly, everything is in balance, so, for example, we wake up when it’s time to be alert and then become drowsy and fall asleep when it’s time to go to bed.

However, when the messages in our body misfire or get out of sync, the signals can become too strong or inappropriate, leading to things like daytime drowsiness or nighttime insomnia.

This is where CBD comes in, because by toning down or regulating these messages, it can – for example – help reduce drowsiness during the day while also helping us sleep well at night.

If you feel anxious, CBD reduces your anxiety, and if you suffer from pain, it tones down the pain.

Essentially, it helps bring balance back to the endocannabinoid system, which is why it’s regarded as what’s known as an “adaptogen” – a medicine that is able to adapt to our body’s needs and produce the required result.

This is why CBD has such wide-ranging effects and can help with such a wide range of issues including anxiety, drowsiness, lack of concentration, insomnia, pain and more.

Interestingly, CBD even seems to have the effect of reducing or nullifying the effects of THC, so if you smoke a strain of marijuana with a high level of CBD alongside its THC content, you won’t feel so paranoid and you won’t experience memory loss – but you also won’t get so high.

How long does it take to feel the effects of CBD?

If you are familiar with any other types of adaptogen medicine – such as ginseng, lingzhi (reishi) mushrooms or lion’s mane mushrooms, you may know that their effects are not felt immediately but rather tend to build up with time.

However, with CBD, things are a little different since you may begin to feel some of the effects almost immediately, depending on the ingestion method.

One of the most common ways to ingest CBD is to place a few drops of oil beneath the tongue and allow it to be absorbed before swallowing the remainder of the oil.

With this method, feelings of calm and mellowness can be felt very quickly and may start to become noticeable within only around 15 minutes or so.

The same is true of vaping CBD or smoking CBD flowers, and the feeling of mellowness and general well-being can come on even quicker – although, again, it is much more subtle than the powerful wave of mellowness and other effects that can be felt from smoking marijuana.

However, certain other methods such as edibles are processed differently in the body and may take 30-45 minutes to become noticeable.

At the same time, the full effects and benefits of CBD are more subtle, and an overall sense of general well-being and improvement in mood and outlook may come on more gradually over the course of several weeks of continued CBD use.

How is vaping CBD different from any other method of ingestion?

So far, we’ve been talking about CBD in general, but what about vaping? How is it different from other methods?

In general, there are two main differences between vaping (or smoking) CBD and using other ingestion methods.

The first is that vaping CBD is one of the fastest ways to feel the effects of CBD – you will probably start to notice something within around five minutes of taking a puff on your vape.

If you already use high-quality nicotine vape products such as the Jack’s Flash 9000 Puffs from Spiritbar, the speed of delivery and onset of the effects will be familiar.

However, when vaping, the effect is also more short-lived – so if you are looking for more long-term benefits from your CBD, something like oil or edibles would be the best option while smoking flowers or vaping CBD can be used as a quick pick-me-up when you’re feeling low.

A “miracle” medicine backed by the science

As we’ve seen, CBD can be used to treat a wide range of conditions, and although research into how CBD works is still only just getting started, we already have a good idea about how CBD is able to provide such a broad spectrum of benefits.

Importantly, CBD doesn’t make you feel high – and it’s also considered to be completely safe for adults to use – so if you’re thinking about trying it to help with a condition you suffer from or even just to boost your overall wellness, there’s nothing to stop you giving it a go.

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