Dosing is not a game for amateurs. If you are dosing to treat physical or psychological problems, you need to the advice of a qualitied medical adviser. Having said that, there are warnings you should heed.

The ideal dose of cannabis is the one that works for you. That depends on a lot of factors. There are subjective factors like how you rate your pain or what you want in a buzz. And, there are objective factors like your weight, body mass, and diet.

THC College has a handy calculator to measure dosage for cooking recipes for homemade edibles. But, even that requires a lot of input on your part to find your ideal cannabis dose.

So, start cannabis-light and easy!

Finding the right dose for your recreational use is a matter of trial and error. You like the trip, or you don’t. Then, you change the strain and/or the dose.

But, when you are looking to treat medical problems, you need to watch your choices. While cannabis won’t kill you, and overdose can be very uncomfortable and counter-productive.

The cannabis will affect your brain and body, so its effects will vary person to person. Everyone has a different neurological system and bio-chemistry. And, your ailment is also unique in its form and symptomology. For example, pediatric epilepsy must be dosed much differently than adolescent or adult epilepsy. Multiples Sclerosis symptoms will vary with age and gender. And, Lupus, fibromyalgia, and Chron’s disease may mask or involve other physical or emotional conditions.

So, you should start light under doctor’s advice until you are comfortable managing the experience.

Titrate your way to comfort.

Doctors and nurses are trained to titrate medications, especially where they do not know the patient’s health record, or they are treating children with no medical history. As VeryWell.com says, “Titration is the process of determining the medication dose that reduces symptoms to the greatest possible degree while avoiding possible side effects.”

Those same professionals, for instance, will treat ADHD or infantile spasms by titrating the medication until they produce the positive results they are looking for with a minimum of negative side effects.

So, you want to proceed with cannabis in the same way.

Know what you’re dealing with.

If you intend to titrate your way to comfort, you might pace your self with only one puff at a time. But, even there, you must know what you smoke. If the cannabis strain is a high potency THC or high potency CBD, the reaction will differ from one puff of a balanced hybrid.

So, you need to know everything there is to know about the strains you are thinking over. Almost all strains relieve anxiety, for instance, but each ratio of THC: CBD does it differently and more or less effectively.

Most marijuana medical professionals suggest starting with only 2.5 mg and building only one milligram at a time. Having dosed with the small amount, you wait an hour before taking that second puff. While you wait, you should study your response, even making notes in a diary. You are the best witness to how it is fixing your ailment.

If you are satisfied with the smallest dose, you may have found your silver bullet. But, you may need to go a little further. So, up the ante on your next try. When you increase the dose and frequency incrementally in this way, you work yourself to the most rewarding combination.

Be careful what you eat.

When it comes to edibles, you may want to try microdosing which is just another form of titration. The risk with edibles is that you will overdose because edibles take longer to take effect which tempts you to telescope your dosing trying to provoke the effects.

Microdosing means turning down that whole marijuana brownie in favor of nibbling on small bits at a time. If you have gummy bears or chewables, you don’t consume an entire one at a time. You cut them up into small pieces and eat them widely apart in time. It may take up to three or four hours to notice effects from the first nibble, so you can’t afford to rush the tastes.

In the case of dispensary edibles, you need clear labeling on content and potency. But, until you do some research, you won’t know the value of the THC: CBD ratio. If you also keep a medicating log, you will have more information at hand to measure the dosing effectiveness.

Watch your tolerance.

The more you use, the more tolerant you become of cannabis’s good and bad effects. Tolerance means it takes more cannabis to produce the same effect. That means you will slowly become tolerant of the negative side-effects. But, it also means you may need higher dosage or stronger potency to get the same positive effects.

If you are unconfutable with the tolerance, you can switch strain, brand, or edible. What you must do is pay attention to how things are going.

Closing thoughts.

CBD Project reminds you that “Cannabis compounds have biphasic properties, which means that low and high doses of the same substance can produce opposite effects.” In real terms, that means that small doses stimulate, and large doses sedate.

It also means that CBD has more therapeutic body value than THC, so it should have some potency in any choice you make, balancing off the THC’s psychoactive rush.

It also means that, if you are dosing for physical or emotional problems, you owe yourself two key factors. First, you must educate yourself to the negative effects, and second, you must do so under a marijuana medical practitioner’s advice.