As an anxiety sufferer, I’d heard from quite a few friends that I should get onto Cannabidiol (CBD). I started taking 5% CBD drops in January and found it really beneficial, so when a brand offered me the opportunity to try their 10% CBD drops I jumped right on it. This post is about my experience with 10% CBD Oil by Enhanced Biotics, with the inevitable background about my year so far and my mental health.
Disclaimer
Enhanced Biotics offered me their £64.99 10% CBD Oil drops as a gift, but as always, opinions are all my own and I only write about brands that I believe in.
My First Experience With CBD
Let’s have a not-so-happy throwback to January this year. If you’ve read this blog before or if you follow me on social media, you probably know I’m a ridiculous person who does too many things at once. I’m a PhD student, a visiting lecturer, a research administrator for an academic network, an on-and-off freelancer and social media consultant, a writer, a blogger and a pole dance performer. If you had a panic attack just reading that, welcome to my life.
Considering I’m on a fee waiver for my PhD – meaning I don’t pay university fees, but have to support myself to get a salary – money is always one of the biggest sources of stress for me. Last year, this became a major problem following a variety of payroll cock-ups at my university which left me dipping into my savings for a couple of months.
If you add the fact that I’d recently started therapy to deal with the aftermath of an abusive relationship dating back to 2014, but that I’d never really healed from, you understand that I wasn’t exactly doing great. With hindsight, the early months of 2019 were a relapse into my worst days.
I’d just started a 12-week course of talking therapy with the brilliant Mind Charity (whom I recommend to everyone if you are looking for free, great, considerate mental health support) and my demons were literally tearing me apart. Things I hadn’t allowed myself to feel in 2014, because I thought I had to shut them down to survive, came pouring out with a vengeance given the four and a half years I allowed them to ferment inside of me. Panic attacks and depression resurfaced, so badly I couldn’t drive, or often be in the car with other people, or be in any situation which implied a minor loss of control or increased exposure to social situations.
I have memories of visiting my grandparents in Rome over the Christmas holidays and spending the entire day crying and the entire evening in bed having panic attacks. I also have memories of being alone in my flat in London, lying on the floor screaming and hoping for this pain and sense of doom to end. I struggled to fall asleep, and when I did so my sleep was tormented, populated by nightmares of blood and violence, and I would feel increasingly tired. I was reliving all my traumas.
It was right then that a few friends recommended I tried CBD and I did so, starting with 5% drops. At around the same time I added Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) – a technique to find mechanisms to deal with unhelpful thoughts – to the talking therapy I was already doing. I was dying to find something proactive to deal with my mental health, something that put me in charge instead of my emotions.
The first thing I noticed after a couple of weeks of using CBD was that my sleep was slightly more relaxed. Plus, the muscular pain that all pole dancers seem to be plagued with was still there, but didn’t feel as intense. So after about six months on 5% CBD, I was keen to try something new.
About CBD Oil
Is CBD Legal?
CBD is a chemical compound part of the Cannabaceae plant family, and before you even wonder, it’s legal in the UK. This is why CBD won’t make you high either – soz.
The Cannabaceae compound that gives you a ‘high’ is called etrahydrocannabinol (THC), but because CBD doesn’t contain more than 0.2% THC, it doesn’t qualify as a controlled substance under the UK Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. Only drugs coming from the cannabis plant containing more than 0.2% traces of the psychoactive compounds that are found in cannabis (like THC) count as controlled substances under UK law.
Is CBD Oil Safe?
CBD Oil is completely safe for human consumption – and I haven’t made it up, the World Health Organisation has said this before me. Always check your experts, kids! I ain’t got no chemistry degree.
The only occasions in which CBD oil might not be safe is when it’s labelled or advertised incorrectly. Enhanced Biotics write on their website that CBD isn’t safe only when “CBD oils are being packaged and labelled as 100% pure CBD oil when […] they are not.”
“The recent deregulation in the UK has led to a flood of inferior products entering the UK market. It is very difficult to mitigate against this, as it is with any pre-labelled supplement that has not undergone it’s own independent tests. The best way to keep CBD oil safe for you and your family is to make sure that you only ever buy CBD Oil from UK retailers who can prove the authenticity of the oil with lab tests, certificates and proof of source.”
Enhanced Biotics
According to them, CBD doesn’t often have any side effects. Only in cases of high doses, people have reported low blood pressure, dizziness, drowsiness and a dry mouth as a consequence of using the product.
How Do I Take It?
I generally only take CBD once, before going to bed, and take it twice a day if I’m feeling particularly stressed or if I know I’m going to have a heavy day. However, Enhanced Biotics recommend you take it twice a day.
Put the dropper under your tongue and drop three to five drops. Hold the oil in your mouth between 60-90 seconds to absorb it before you swallow it. If you’ve just begun using CBD, use the drops for a couple of weeks and make a note of how you feel after each dose. Increase or decrease the dosage or look for a higher strength oil depending on how you feel.
My Experience With Enhanced Biotics’ 10% CBD Oil
I started taking Enhanced Biotics’s 10% CBD oil after returning from a conference in Iceland, the week I was meant to compete in Exotic Generation UK. A pretty intense week on all counts, considering it also was going to be my final one in London before heading back to Sardinia to work there in the summer. I had a lot of errands to run, chapters to deliver and meetings to attend.
After just over two weeks – a very stressful one and a relatively chill one – I definitely felt some changes, particularly in my sleeping patterns. The tormented sleep I was sleeping after coming back from the conference was smoothed out quite quickly. I don’t remember waking up in the middle of the night feeling anxious, and I don’t remember tossing and turning. In fact – and this might be a blend of CBT’s positive impact and my CBD use – I felt strangely zen about things that would make me feel terribly anxious, like work, competitions being poorly organised or me being generally quite socially awks.
I would definitely recommend trying Enhanced Biotics’ 10% oil. Of course do bear in mind this isn’t medication, and that it won’t solve all of your problems. In situations of heightened anxiety, using CBD didn’t fix much: it’s all in your head and about how you manage your worries. However, in my case CBD has definitely been an aid to sleeping better and reducing muscular tension, although I’ve had to do quite a lot of work on myself to get to the fairly chill state I’m in.
The only issue I have with CBD production and sale in the UK at the moment is pricing: even when you take drops just once a day, a 10 ml bottle doesn’t last long. So price tags ranging from £40 to £60 are a bit difficult to front for people like me – a.k.a. broke slashies / PhD students. Hopefully the more popular CBD will become, the more accessible it’ll be.
Info About Enhanced Biotics
Enhanced Biotics’ founder, Tom Saunders, discovered CBD while at university, after hearing about its popularity in the USA. He found it was quite hard to find high quality CBD from a reputable supplier that had been appropriately lab tested here in the UK and thought up Enhanced Biotics. The idea was to create a company providing the most innovative, high quality, safe and properly tested wellness supplements that people can trust.
The brand works with Phytovista laboratories, where their products are rigorously tested to ensure quality standards. Enhanced Biotics’ suppliers are also licensed growers and full cannabis trade association members.
Enhanced Biotics’ higher strength CBD oil drops have been harvested from a farm in Beckington, Somerset. The drops are fully organic, don’t contain any GMOs and are vegan friendly. The oils are extracted using supercritical C02 extraction, meaning they don’t use any solvents.
Buy them here and use my 20% discount code when you check-out: 20EBXY 👌ðŸ»ðŸ‘ŒðŸ»
You have shared your personal experience through your blog. I have read so many blogs related to CBD oil but nobody shared the real experience. Thanks for sharing your personal experience.
Nice review. Everyone has a unique experience with cbd and I am glad yours was pleasant.
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