When you have your medicine ready – whether you’ve made ‘Mike’s Milk,’ your own blended oil, or bought ready-to-go cannabis oil, the obvious question needs to be answered: how much do I take?

In general, the answer is ‘as much as you can comfortably tolerate.’ This will be relatively low to begin with but will rise over the course of a week or two if you have some every day…

Start with a couple of drops of your blended oil in the middle of the evening. Yes, not much at all. Give it AT LEAST an hour, preferably two, to see what the effects are, and make sure you’re at least ten hours away from when you need to wake up the next morning. Ingesting cannabinoids like this takes a long time to take effect, so don’t get fooled into having another dose because you feel nothing after half an hour. If you find you’ve overdone it don’t worry. It is literally not possible to actually overdose on cannabis unless you consume about 3.5 pounds of the stuff, or almost a full cup of full-strength undiluted oil (or a couple of pints of the blended, diluted stuff), in one sitting!

If you’re feeling overwhelmed you can minimize the trippy feelings by cracking and sniffing or chewing black peppercorns. Honestly! Other things that can help calm the effects of a too-large dose are a spoon of honey in warm water, and a largeish dose of vitamin C either in tablet form or as fresh citrus fruit. Also just put some music on and go to sleep. It will pass.

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You’ll build up a tolerance, which is good as it means you can take larger amounts of your medicine per day. Try increasing your dose by a couple of drops each week, always noting how it feels two hours later. I now take between five to eight drops each evening, but when I make a new batch of oil I always test it with just five drops the first evening to get a sense of how strong the new mixture seems.

Microdose or one hit per day?

Some people swear by microdosing, a technique that involves having a small amount every few hours through the day. This aims to maintain a steady level of cannabinoids in your system and can help you avoid the ‘high’ feeling of a full dose taken in one go.

It is important to try and have cannabinoids in your system as much of the time as possible, so I do try to take a single drop (a seventh of my evening dose) first thing in the morning and another early in the afternoon. I don’t have any ‘head effects’ from this size of dose so it doesn’t cause any issues with my daily work routine, but in practical terms with the distractions of work, etc. this isn’t always easy to maintain. What I always do is take a full dose mid-evening. As the evening rolls on TV gets a little funnier, and when I go to bed I sleep like an utter log.

I still go to the bathroom four or five times a night because my bladder is a bit scarred and I’m not a young man any more (and I certainly feel the unsteadiness then!) but I get back to sleep quickly and easily, every time. Best of all, sometimes I’ll stick headphones on and go to sleep listening to music – which sounds a-ma-zing. 🙂 If I take my oil a bit late then getting up in the morning can be a bit of an effort, but after a coffee and shower I’m always good to go.