One kind of cool thing about blogging for a long time is that once in a while companies reach out to you with something they want to send you for free to review.

I’ve been really lucky to get several pairs of eyeglasses and contacts to review this way, but for the most part, I wind up declining a lot of the offers. A fair amount are straight up weird and I have trouble justifying how many would relate to my blog.

But friends, a weird one caught my eye recently because it combined something that’s kind of pricey that I wonder about and played on the giant hole in my heart because I can’t currently travel.

CBD Living reached out to me and offered me a free travel kit in exchange for a review. So here we are.

Sadly, I travelled no further than the routes between my living room, kitchen, bedroom, and desk the last few weeks, but I kept the little travel kit they sent on my desk and used the items pretty regularly before reporting back to you all.

Part of my interest was raised by one of my cousins who mentioned she had bought a ton of CBD products in the hopes of them helping with her anxiety and to help her sleep (common claims from the CBD industry) and found them a total waste of money.

As someone who is a constantly ball of anxiety – both the kind friends just tease you about and the kind that drives you to a psychiatrist for anti-anxiety medication – anything that claims to lower anxiety always catches my attention.

A good friend from cruise ship days and I once had a discussion about how we are both intensely anxious people and he found that pot fixed it immediately for him. I laughed and let him know the one (totally legal, I was in Amsterdam folks) time I tried it I had one of the worst panic attack of my life and eff that stuff, dude, no thanks.

Well, many years have passed since the nightmare Amsterdam anxiety attack of 2011, and I have read quite a bit about how CBD is supposed to be only the good parts of the cannabis. CBD stands for cannabidiol and it is the essential part of medical marijuana.

Supposedly it’s like a wonder medicine direct from nature. There are claims it helps:

• Seizures
• Anxiety
• Insomnia
• Chronic Pain
• Arthritis
• Acne
• Menstrual Cramps
• Side Effects of Cancer Treatments

The only significant scientific evidence for CBD is for its use in treating epilepsy, and especially two rare forms of childhood epilepsy.

It’s marketed as a supplement and very important to remember that it’s unregulated. Additionally, if you take any medicines, you should chat with your doctor about using CBD because it has been shown to interact negatively with some medications.

So, you know, use at your own risk.

And if you already use it and swear it works for you – cool. But then there’s also the question of how much of this stuff do you want to interact with? Well according to Dr. Hurd, most clinical trials show that participants start to feel something in the 300-600 mg range.

This could explain why a lot of us think the whole CBD thing is an inefficient fad. Most CBD gummies range from 8 to 25 mg a piece. That means you’d need to gobble up 6 of them at the highest dose to really start to get a benefit from them.

So anyway, I was excited to experiment with this travel pack from CBD Living. I’m fairly anxious, 95% sure I already have arthritis in my left hand, and wondered if CBD salve could replace Aleve for cramps.

In the package, I was sent:

• Spray Tincture (100 mg) – $10
• Cherry Lip Balm (50 mg) – $7
• Coconut Salve (100 mg) – $10
• Unscented Lotion (100 mg) – $10
• Cold Therapy Roll On (100 mg) – $10

Now keep in mind, those mgs are for the full product, so something like the spray tincture actually delivers 1.33 mg per spray. Assuming Dr. Hurd is correct, this could explain why my personal assessment is that the CBD aspect doesn’t really do anything for me.

If your entire life has become CBD products perhaps the combination of all these items together and some gummies, applied numerous times per day, might have an effect?

Overall, the spray tincture did nothing for me and I don’t love the oily taste. At 1.33 mg per spray, I have trouble believing it does anything.

The lip balm is actually a totally fine lip balm on its own. I like the consistency.

I have a strong personal dislike of cherry lip balms because they all smell like this cherry Chapstick-esque garbage that doctors used to put on anesthesia masks in the 1980s and 90s for kids before surgery, which still gives me nightmare flashbacks to those days. My hatred of cherry chapsticks is not CBD Living’s fault though and they have and Unflavored option as well. I would consider buying this again because it’s just a nice, hydrating lip balm – and if it’s slowly adding some maybe helpful CBD to my system, why not?

I also liked the consistency of the CBD Living lotion. It wasn’t greasy at all and helped hydrate my hands and I don’t mind the idea of using more CBD lotions to help ward off the delightful signs of arthritis in my left hand. I honestly can’t say that I noticed any improvement on that front during this test phase. Overall though, it’s a solid lotion formula.

The coconut salve smells pretty good but doesn’t hold a candle to Aleve for menstrual cramps. However, of all the products, I did think this one made the most difference. Used with Aleve, I actually did notice an improvement, though whether it was CBD or the fact that massaging right over your ovaries feels pretty good when you have terrible cramps, I can’t say. I’m definitely going to use the entire tin though.

The Cold Therapy Roll On is a hard one for me to assess because I don’t really use cold therapy. Again, I suspect the CBD is negligible but it was cold AF, so I suspect it does the job one expects of a cold therapy. I don’t consider that a travel essential, so I was kind of surprised it was in the kit.

Overall, I’m not a CBD convert, but I’m happy to not wonder about it anymore. If you are a CBD convert, these are pretty solid products.

Hopefully we’ll all be able to use any kind of travel kits sooner rather than later.

Till then, what’s your favorite travel product?