With the increasing sophistication of drug testing and ubiquity of CBD, many are curious as to just how long CBD stays in your system. It’s a good question to ask even if you aren’t going to be drug tested. The more you know about what you put into your body, the better.

CBD is a cannabinoid found in marijuana and industrial hemp that for the longest time played second fiddle to THC, since there was a big focus on getting as stoned as possible from your marijuana. It’s thought that high THC levels contribute to how subjectively powerful a user will consider their stash to be. But now the fact that CBD doesn’t produce an intoxicating high associated with impaired functioning is what’s catching the eyes and ears of consumers.

So let’s get at it, just how long does CBD stay in your system?

Factors That Influence CBD Elimination

Much like THC, CBD is also fat soluble so it can find its way into fat cells and stay there for a remarkable period of time. For heavy users, that means that a particularly fat burning workout could result in your body having higher levels of CBD than you did previous to the workout. So, it stands to reason that people who carry more fat on them are much more susceptible to CBD sticking around for some time. Since CBD is stored in the fat cells, people who exercise are much more likely to actively burn the CBD-containing fat cells and return to a CBD-free state as opposed to someone who doesn’t do much exercise at all.

CBD Elimination Time

In general, CBD is thought to be eliminated from the body within 3 days in an infrequent user. The more you use, the longer it’ll take for your body to be completely clean. Casual users will take up to five days and chronic users may take a week or more. Most of the research around CBD elimination has to do with the half-life of CBD. This half life is 18-32 hours, which means that for every period of 18-32 hours half of the drug dose administered is eliminated from the body. In the medical field, it is generally accepted that a drug is completely eliminated after 4-5 half lives. So, the reason there’s some differences between how long various sources say is because some use a longer half life than others and some gauge by 5 half lives instead of 4.

Conclusion

It’s far from THC’s extreme staying power, but I still wouldn’t say that CBD gets eliminated like it’s nothing. Somebody CBD naive will be clean much sooner than someone who has used it each and every day for over a year. Other factors like how often and how much is consumed will also skew the estimated elimination time. If I had to say it as succinctly as possible though, CBD is eliminated from the body in 3 days at best and a week or more at worst.