This can happen any time you’ve consumed to much weed — with or without alcohol. Adding alcohol to a low dose of THC impaired driving simulator scores by 21 percent. Adding alcohol to a high dose of THC impaired driving simulator scores by 17 percent. Those who consumed just alcohol had worse cognitive functioning than those who only consumed THC. Those who combined the two had reduced cognitive performance than those who only consumed alcohol.
Addiction
As with the short-term effects of alcohol and weed, the long-term effects differ from person to person. While there are negative benefits, cannabis does have many medicinal benefits including treatment of pain, nausea, issues with eating or keeping down food, and can help treat anxiety and depression. Over time, it can temporarily decrease the prevalence of CB1 receptors which can cause memory issues but, overall, the compounds in cannabis including many of the terpenes can be neuroprotective. This means that they can help protect nerve cells from damage which can decrease your chances of developing Alzheimer’s disease. This post will explore all the differences between these two intoxicants and explore their impact on your health and society at large. When taking Cymbalta, avoid alcohol and other substances that can increase drowsiness, such as sedatives or muscle relaxers.
People who use marijuana in combination with other drugs or alcohol also pose an increased crash risk, research suggests. There are limited funds in the public coffer for minimizing the damage of people’s recreational substance use, so focusing on the substance that does the most damage might make sense, Hutchison said. But there are also many more research questions to answer, and future studies could look at the long-term impacts of cannabis use by following the same people over time, the researchers wrote. But the study fits in with a body of work that has found mixed results regarding marijuana and the brain. Some animal research, for example, hints that at least some cannabinoids, the compounds in cannabis, may be protective for the neural system, Hutchison said. Studies in humans, on the other hand, have returned varied results, and many have been too small-scale to draw firm conclusions.
Alcohol or Marijuana: Which is Worse for Your Brain?
And one study found marijuana users have a 4.8-fold increase in risk of a heart attack during the first hour after smoking because of the drug’s effect on your heart rate. The researchers looked at brain scans from about 850 substance-using adults ages 18 to 55 and about substance-using 440 teens ages 14 to 19, all of whom reported varying levels of alcohol and cannabis use. Long-term alcohol consumption can produce physiological changes in the brain such as tolerance and physical dependence. Unlike alcohol, which slows your heart rate, marijuana speeds it up, which could negatively affect the heart in the short term. Still, the largest-ever report on cannabis from the National Academies of Sciences, released in January, found insufficient evidence to support or refute the idea that cannabis may increase the overall risk of a heart attack.
If you take medication, talk to your doctor before using weed, alcohol, or both. They may weaken the effectiveness of your medication or increase your risk for certain side effects. The researchers reported that combining THC and alcohol consistently impaired driving performance, with worse performance during nighttime simulations.
Cannabis can be addictive but this is more a psychological dependency than a physical one. It can be more habitual or emotional in nature and can be aided by therapy and not necessarily require outside intervention. Additionally, any deficits or issues caused by heavy cannabis use can be reversible. Cannabis is more likely to lead to a use disorder where you are habitually or are psychologically addicted to cannabis and want to use it. Weed can impact your memory and in some severe cases cause or exacerbate schizophrenia or psychosis.
It’s time to clear the smoke
As a team of pain medicine physicians, anesthesiologists, and surgeons, we knew that there had to be a better way to help patients. Our goal was to give patients easy access to medical cannabis as an alternative to traditional pain medications, antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications, and other addictive and harmful drugs. Prolonged alcohol use can lead to physical dependence, where the body becomes reliant on alcohol to function normally.This can cause the shakes and can affect your ability to lead a normal life.
- Hist latest book, Raising Mentally Strong Kids, was published March 2024.
- Alcohol can contribute to social and behavioral issues, including aggression, mood swings, outbursts, relationship issues, and legal troubles.
- If using weed does indeed slow the absorption of alcohol, it might also delay feelings of drunkenness.
‘My heart was racing’
The question policy experts typically ask isn’t which drug is more dangerous, but how marijuana and alcohol should be treated through policy as individual drugs with their own set of unique, complicated risks. That doesn’t mean just legalization or prohibition, but regulation, taxes, and education as well. Health risks are just one way to measure whether helpstay reviews marijuana is safer than alcohol.
Alcohol and marijuana are both intoxicants, but one study from Columbia University researchers estimated that alcohol multiplies the chance of a fatal traffic accident by nearly 14 times, while marijuana nearly doubles the risk. Jon Caulkins, a drug policy expert at Carnegie Mellon University, gave the example of an alien race visiting Earth and asking which land animal is the biggest. If the question is about weight, the African elephant is the biggest land animal. And if the question is about length, the reticulated python is the biggest.
