What is a tolerance break?
A tolerance break (or, t-break) is a concept that comes from the community of weed smokers themselves. It is a voluntary pause on cannabis with the goal of lowering your tolerance. If you partake most days, a useful T-Break should be around 21 days long, since it takes around three weeks or more for THC to leave your system.
This guide aims to give your break a little shape and offer you information and support.
This guide can help
We created this guide because people would tell us that when they set out to take a t-break, they only lasted a few days. Sometimes they felt ashamed because it was harder than they thought.
It can be hard to take a break and there is no need to feel bad. People usually find some aspect of getting high beneficial. Cannabis causes fewer harms than some other drugs and creates less cravings. For those very reasons, ironically, some people find it challenging to find a balance with cannabis: they might think that cannabis has no harms and no cravings. Everything has pros and cons. And cannabis, like a lot of things, can create dependency.
A T-Break is a good time to re-evaluate balance. If you want to stop completely, just continue the T-Break. Others may return to cannabis and can use this as a support while bringing down their tolerance and finding better balance.
Either way, a little support is a good thing and our research at universities across the US shows that people who use this guide are more likely to complete a tolerance break.
How to use the T-Break Guide
This guide has daily practices. Each week has a different theme. It may be useful to read a few a days at once because there are practical things about sleep and appetite that may be helpful right away.
Care has been put into the content and order, but you know what works for you. Feel free to make this is a choose-your-own adventure guide.
Additional Resources
Contact Us
Questions? Feedback? Contact Tom Fontana, tom.fontana@uvm.edu.
Printable Guide
Some people like having a physical version of the T-Break Guide. You can flip through, mark up, and use the check boxes. (Who doesn’t love a checkbox, right?) There are even some pages in back for drawing and reflection.
Printed copies are also available at Living Well and Harm Reduction Corners across campus.
Translations
Interested in the T-Break Guide in another language? We have translated it into some frequently requested languages that you can download and use.