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Tolerance

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Tolerance is intricately linked to dosing. Tolerance arises from repeated consumption of a drug or similar alternatives. Your body develops a resistance to the compound. This means that with regular use you start to require a higher dose of the drug to elicit the same effect.

Because it is associated with regular use, tolerance is used as one of many criterion for substance abuse so if you think you are becoming tolerant to a drug have a visit to our addiction and substance abuse section to assess whether you are in control of your drug use. Even if you are in control it will be educational and help you detect substance abuse in others.

On the flip side it means that your tolerance decreases when you discontinue use of the drug. This means that if you haven’t used a drug in a while, you need to take a lower dose than usual or you will run the risk of an overdose or a bad trip. Again, titration dosing is your friend as outlined in the dosing section.

Tachyphylaxis is a special kind of tolerance which appears very rapidly after a single dose or a series of small doses. It happens with drugs like psilocybin or LSD and means that for a while you are extremely tolerant to the drug. In effect this means that you won´t feel the same effects from mushrooms the second day in a row but will be completely back to normal after a little while.