How Often You Drink Cannabis Beverages Matters More Than Who You Are

What 5,000+ Real Consumers Taught Us

There's a common assumption in cannabis — and in cannabis beverages specifically — that your experience comes down to who you are. Your gender. Your age. Your body weight. Your tolerance level. The conventional wisdom says biology is destiny: a 120-pound first-time consumer and a 220-pound seasoned drinker will have fundamentally different relationships with the same drink, and there's nothing you can really do about that.

The data tells a different story.

When researchers analyzed the real-world experiences of more than 5,000 cannabis beverage consumers — across two separate cohorts, twenty participating brands, and a wide range of outcomes from sleep quality to alcohol replacement — one finding stood out so clearly it changed how we think about who benefits from our products.

It wasn't demographics. It wasn't even dose, although dose mattered.

It was consistency. Plain old, how-many-days-per-week-you-actually-drink-it consistency.

If you've ever wondered whether cannabis beverages "work for you," whether you're somehow doing it wrong, or whether the people raving about better sleep and lower stress are just built differently than you are — this post is for you. The findings from our partnership with the MoreBetter Real-World Infused Beverage Study suggest the variables that most predict your experience aren't fixed traits you were born with. They're choices you can make starting today.

The Study: Real People, Real Lives, Real Outcomes

The MoreBetter Real-World Infused Beverage Study is one of the largest naturalistic studies of cannabis beverage consumption ever conducted. Rather than putting participants in a lab and giving them a single test dose under artificial conditions, it followed real consumers using real products in their actual lives — at home, after work, with friends, before bed, on weekends, however and whenever they normally would.

More than 5,000 participants. Twenty cannabis beverage brands. Two separate cohorts running months apart, which allowed researchers to compare findings across time and confirm that patterns weren't flukes. When a signal showed up in cohort one and then showed up again in cohort two, you could trust it. That's exactly what happened with the finding we're about to share.

What the study tracked is what consumers actually care about. Not abstract pharmacology. Not biomarkers in a tube. The outcomes people use cannabis beverages hoping to influence in their day-to-day lives:

Sleep quality and duration
Pain levels
Stress
Mood
Alcohol use and replacement
Productivity
Overall sense of how the day went

These are the metrics that matter at 23rd State. When someone reaches for a FRESH PRESS at the end of a long day or settles in with a Blush Crush Infused Bubbly on a Friday evening, they aren't measuring blood plasma curves. They're noticing whether they slept better, felt calmer, drank less wine than they used to, or had a more present conversation with their partner.

The study captured those outcomes, and then went looking for the factors that explained why some participants experienced bigger benefits than others.

What the Researchers Tested

To answer the question of who benefits most, the research team ran what's called an interaction analysis across every outcome measured. The point of an interaction analysis isn't to ask whether the product works, separate analyses had already established that it did. The interaction question is more interesting: for whom does it work more, and for whom does it work less?

Five candidate variables were tested for their ability to predict the size of the benefit a participant experienced:

Gender
Age
Weight
Dose — how much THC and other cannabinoids the participant consumed per occasion
Use consistency — how many days per week the participant actually drank a cannabis beverage

The same five variables. Across every outcome. Across both cohorts. A clean, well-powered test of which consumer characteristics actually move the needle on whether you get a great experience or a so-so one.

The results were remarkably consistent. So consistent that they pointed to a single, actionable insight that we think every cannabis beverage consumer deserves to hear.

The #1 Predictor of Better Outcomes: Consistency

Use consistency, the simple, behavioral measure of how many days per week a participant drank a cannabis beverage, was a statistically significant predictor of outcome in nearly 90% of analyses.

Read that again. In roughly nine out of every ten ways researchers sliced the data — across sleep outcomes, stress outcomes, mood outcomes, alcohol-replacement outcomes, and more, the consistency of use predicted how much benefit a participant reported.

And the direction never wavered. Not once. In every single analysis where consistency was a significant predictor, the relationship pointed the same way: the more consistently a participant used the product, the greater the improvement they saw — every single time.

This is rare in research. Findings often replicate partially, or flip direction depending on the outcome being measured. Consistency didn't behave that way. It showed up as a strong, same-direction signal almost everywhere the team looked.

What does that mean in practice?

It means a participant drinking a FRESH PRESS three or four evenings a week was systematically more likely to report better sleep, lower stress, improved mood, and reduced alcohol use than a participant drinking the same product once a week or sporadically. It means the person who treats their evening Blush Crush as a regular wind-down ritual is in a different category of outcome than the person who only pulls one out when they happen to remember.

This isn't a marketing claim. It's what 5,000+ real people, tracking real outcomes across real weeks of real life, actually reported.

The Runner-Up: Finding Your Right Dose

The second-strongest predictor across the data was dose. Dose was a statistically significant predictor of outcome in roughly 43% of all tests — about half as often as consistency, but still a meaningful and replicable signal across both cohorts.

Dose mattered in a more nuanced way than consistency. It wasn't simply that more was better. The right dose for any given consumer depends on factors like cannabinoid sensitivity, what outcome they're trying to influence, and what other things they're combining the beverage with. But within those nuances, the dose a consumer settled into was a real driver of how much benefit they reported.

This is intuitive once you sit with it. Cannabis isn't a one-size-fits-all category. A lower-dose serving from FRESH PRESS is going to be a different experience than a higher-dose session, and both will land differently for different people. The consumers who reported the biggest improvements weren't necessarily taking the highest doses — they were the consumers who'd found the dose that was right for them.

That distinction matters, and we'll come back to it.

What the Data Said About Demographics

Here's where the conventional wisdom takes a hit.

Gender, age, and weight — the three demographic variables that most cannabis marketing assumes are the keys to understanding consumer experience — sat well behind both consistency and dose. Each was a statistically significant predictor in only about 23 to 30 percent of tests.

That's not nothing. Demographics do affect cannabis beverage experience in real ways. A smaller person responding to a given dose differently than a larger person is biologically grounded. Hormonal cycles, age-related changes in metabolism, body composition — all of these matter at the margins.

But they matter at the margins. They are not the dominant signal in real-world data. They are dwarfed by something every consumer has agency over: behavior.

A woman in her thirties who drinks a FRESH PRESS four nights a week at a dose she's dialed in for herself is going to report better outcomes, on average, than another woman in her thirties drinking the same product once every couple of weeks at whatever serving she happens to pour. The variable that separates those two experiences is not their demographics. It's how they're using the product.

This is genuinely empowering news. It means the variables that most predict whether you have a great relationship with cannabis beverages are not fixed traits you were born with. They are choices you can make starting today.

What This Means for You as a Cannabis Beverage Consumer

If you take one thing away from this research, take this: the two behaviors that most predict whether cannabis beverages work well for you are both within your control.

You decide how often you reach for one.

You decide what dose you settle into.

Demographics are noise compared to these two levers. Let's talk about how to pull them.

Building Consistency: Turning Cannabis Beverages Into a Routine

If consistency is the single biggest predictor of better outcomes, then the practical question becomes: how do you actually build a consistent use pattern with a cannabis beverage?

A few things we've learned, both from research and from years of conversations with 23rd State customers across Minnesota and beyond.

Anchor it to a moment that already exists in your day. The single most reliable way to build consistency with any product is to attach it to something you already do without thinking. For many of our customers, that anchor is the transition between work and evening — the moment when laptops close, dinner gets started, and the day shifts gears. A FRESH PRESS poured at that moment becomes part of the ritual, not an extra step to remember.

Make it the alternative, not the addition. A lot of our customers came to 23rd State looking for an alcohol substitute — a way to keep the ritual of an evening drink without the next-morning cost. If you're using a cannabis beverage as a wine or cocktail replacement, consistency follows naturally because you're swapping into an existing habit, not building a new one from scratch. Every time you'd reach for a glass of wine, reach for a SHAKE or a Blush Crush instead.

Stock for the week, not the occasion. One of the quiet killers of consistency in any category is running out. The Tuesday-night intention to wind down with a cannabis beverage falls apart fast if the fridge is empty. Customers who buy by the case or set up regular delivery report drinking more consistently than customers who pick up a few cans whenever they happen to be near a store. The fridge stays stocked; the routine stays intact.

Treat it like a wellness habit, not a special occasion. Cannabis beverages can be both, of course. But the research is clear that the people getting the deepest benefit aren't the ones reserving them for parties and milestones. They're the ones treating them like an evening tea, a weekend stretch class, or any other small, consistent input into a better daily life.

The consistency lever is, in the end, just a question of habit design. And habit design is something every adult has more control over than they sometimes give themselves credit for.

Dialing In Your Dose: How to Find Your Sweet Spot

The second lever — dose — is where new cannabis beverage consumers often struggle the most. Cannabis culture historically did a poor job of normalizing low-and-slow exploration. The good news is that the entire infused beverage category has been built around solving exactly this problem, and 23rd State's product lineup was designed with dose discovery in mind.

A few principles for finding your right dose with 23rd State products:

Start lower than you think you need to. Tolerance is real, but it builds. If you're newer to cannabis beverages or coming back after a break, beginning at the lower end of our serving recommendations is almost always the right call. The goal isn't to feel as much as possible — it's to find the dose that produces the outcomes you actually want, whether that's better sleep, less stress, or a calmer transition into evening.

Pay attention to outcomes, not just feelings. The temptation with any cannabinoid product is to chase the immediate sensation. The MoreBetter data suggests something subtler: the consumers reporting the biggest benefits weren't necessarily the ones who felt the most. They were the ones who, over time, noticed they were sleeping better, drinking less alcohol, feeling more even-keeled. Outcome quality is the metric that matters. Tune your dose to that signal, not to the buzz.

Try the full range of products. SHAKE, FRESH PRESS, and Blush Crush Infused Bubbly each occupy different roles in the lineup, and what works best for one consumer or occasion may not be what works best for another. Some customers settle into FRESH PRESS as their daily wind-down product and reach for Blush Crush for weekends and gatherings. Others discover SHAKE as their workhorse and only branch out occasionally. The product that lands best for you is itself a piece of dose discovery.

Give it real time. Cannabis beverages don't always reveal themselves on the first try. The outcomes the research tracked — sleep, mood, stress, alcohol replacement — are pattern-level things that show up across weeks, not single sessions. Giving any new dose-and-frequency combination a couple of weeks before judging it is a meaningful step toward finding what works.

Why This Matters for the Whole Category

Step back from your own fridge for a moment and consider what this research is really saying about the cannabis beverage category.

For decades, cannabis brands have segmented consumers by demographics — gender, age, life stage, income. The MoreBetter findings argue that's the wrong axis for predicting how any given consumer will actually experience a product. The bigger signals are behavioral: how often you drink it, and the dose you settle into.

That has implications well beyond marketing. It means the consumers having the best experiences with cannabis beverages are doing two things that are entirely teachable. They're showing up consistently, and they've taken the time to dial in their dose. Both of those are skills the category as a whole should be helping every new consumer develop, because both of them are what convert someone from a curious first-timer into a long-term, satisfied customer.

We think a lot about that responsibility at 23rd State. Every product page, every recipe, every newsletter, every conversation with a retail partner is, in part, an attempt to help consumers find their right dose faster and build the kind of consistent rituals the data says actually drive outcomes. We didn't always frame it that way. The research clarified it.

The Bigger Picture: You're Not at the Mercy of Biology

Cannabis marketing has spent decades implying that experience comes down to identity. The right strain for women. The right product for older adults. The right dose for lightweight consumers. There's a thread of truth to all of it, and we'd never tell you otherwise — biology does play a role.

But the real-world data on more than 5,000 cannabis beverage consumers is pointing somewhere different. It's pointing at behavior. At habit. At consistency and dose calibration — two things that have far less to do with who you are and far more to do with what you choose to do.

That's a hopeful finding. It means the consumer who feels like cannabis beverages "don't really work for them" may simply be sampling the category once a month at random doses, and a more intentional approach could change their experience entirely. It means there is no demographic verdict on whether 23rd State products are right for you. There is only the experiment you choose to run.

At 23rd State, we built our brand around the idea that adults deserve better options than alcohol for winding down, socializing, sleeping, and being present in their own lives. We're a woman-founded, Minnesota-rooted company that has always believed cannabis beverages could be a serious wellness alternative — not just a novelty. The research validates something we already believed: that the consumers getting the most out of this category are the ones treating it like a real, considered, consistent part of their lives.

You don't have to be a particular age, body type, or gender to be one of those consumers. You just have to decide to be one.

Pour the next one. Pour the one after that. Find your dose. Build the ritual.

The data says the rest tends to take care of itself.

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