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Reading the milligram

Everything else on a can is flavour text. Strain names, terpene blends, indica and sativa labelling on a beverage, "uplifting" versus "calming": none of it predicts your evening with any reliability. The milligram figure does.

That is why this site is organised around it and named after it.

The tiers

Microdose, up to 2.5mg. A softening rather than a high. Most people stay entirely functional and would not describe themselves as stoned. This is where the social-tonic category lives and it is the right place to start.

Social, 2.5 to 5mg. Noticeably present and pleasant. Most well-made drinks are built for this band because it is where a drink can still be a drink.

Standard, 5 to 10mg. A real dose. If you do not drink these often, one is your evening. The 10mg end is the regulatory standard serving, which is worth knowing because it is a unit, not a recommendation.

Heavy, above 10mg. Built for tolerance. Not a place to start and not a place to estimate.

The one place the number lies

A milligram figure on the front of a container is not always the dose you are about to take, because the container is not always one serving.

A 100mg bottle is not a 100mg drink, it is a mixer you are supposed to portion. A 750mL spirit is sold at a few milligrams per pour. Those are perfectly reasonable products, and they are also exactly how people get caught out, because every instinct built around cans says the container is the serving.

So on this site, the big number is always one serving, and anything holding more than one is flagged. Where a brand publishes only a per-serving figure and no serving count, we leave the container total blank rather than multiply an estimate by an estimate.

When you are holding an unfamiliar bottle, the question is not "how many milligrams is this" but "how many milligrams is what I am about to pour".

Ratios and the rest

THC:CBD is worth a glance. CBD does not cancel THC, but drinks in the 1:2 range are widely described as gentler and longer, and plenty of people prefer them. There is less hard evidence here than there is marketing, so treat it as preference rather than pharmacology.

Calories and sugar matter mostly because a 10mg drink at 140 calories is a different proposition from one at zero, and because sweetness is what makes a dosed drink dangerously easy to finish quickly.

Onset claims are marketing copy. We record them verbatim, attributed, and we do not treat them as facts. Here is why.