Experimenting With CBN

Here in Canada, Cannabis is legal. For a while now I have been using cannabis as a way to cope with my pain, as well as helping me fall asleep to try and help with my fatigue. For a little over a year now, I’ve been using the same strain—one that is very balanced and somewhat low in THC as high levels usually trigger my anxiety. I didn’t personally find it help a lot, but it did enough to at least let me relax a little. Recently, my mom introduced me to something called CBN and told me to give it a try. Here is my experience.

First of all: what is CBN?

We’ve all heard of CBD and THC, which are both found in cannabis. CBN, or Cannabinol, is a type of cannabinoid that is non-psychoactive. Though all three are cannabinoids, they all work differently. Supposedly CBN has been found to help people cope with chronic pain, as well as offering properties that can help you sleep. With this in mind, as well as it being non-psychoactive to help alleviate any experience with anxiety, I figured it would be worth a shot.

*Make sure to do proper research and decide if this is something that would be beneficial for you, or if it would interact negatively with any medication you are on! I am not an expert.

How I started out 

Because I am using a vape, I have to wait anywhere between 10-20 minutes to feel the affects starting to kick in. With anything, I feel it’s important to start out slow, so I had only taken one healthy puff. After about 10 minutes, I could feel my face start to relax and mind start to slow down. It definitely had an affect on my mood. I felt so much lighter. As for my pain, however, the only difference I felt was that I no longer had the shooting pain down my legs. I was still experiencing my normal amount of back pain. I decided to go back and take a few more puffs and see how I felt.

I felt a difference, but not enough to cope with my painsomnia

Throughout the night, I noticed my pain lighten up a bit, but definitely still felt it lingering. I was a little disappointed as I was mainly hoping for it to help with my back pain, but it was enough to at least catch a small break and cut out pain in certain parts of my body. I slept incredibly well the first night, but since then I am still struggling and having experiences with painsomnia. Could it have been placebo effect? Perhaps. But I will say that regardless of that, it definitely made me drowsy enough to want to go to bed.

End result: will I continue trying it?

I’ve been using it for a little over two weeks now. Has it helped with my pain? Yes. Has it helped me sleep? Sometimes. I’ve found some nights, depending on my pain levels, I fall asleep faster. Sometimes the pain is so bad, however, that it doesn’t matter how exhausted I am. I think my next move would be to find one with higher percentages of THC, CBD and CBN, as there is the possibility that it just wasn’t strong enough.

The verdict: cannabis with CBN is definitely worth trying, and has made enough of a difference for me to want to continue.