Is Weed Addictive Compared To Alcohol?

what is worse weed or alcohol

While there’s some research around the effects of drinking alcohol before using weed, there isn’t much about the opposite approach. “Cannabis and alcohol have very different effects on the brain and there will be social implications,” says Grinspoon. “For example, cannabis can make you peaceful, increase your connection with other people and give you personal insights, while alcohol can make people loud and bellicose,” he says.

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“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that roughly three in 10 marijuana users qualify as having a ‘cannabis-use disorder,’ known as CUD,” he writes. The CDC, in turn, cites a 2015 JAMA Psychiatry study based on data from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. Lehman also cites the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), which found that “19 million Americans”—about 30 percent of past-year https://sober-home.org/synthetic-cannabinoids-national-institute-on-drug/ marijuana users—”suffered from cannabis-use disorder” in 2022. As an explanation for the problems that New York has faced in trying to displace the black market, Lehman’s thesis is puzzling. After all, marijuana is no more addictive in New York than it is in other states that have managed legalization better. And even if it were, how would that account for the agonizingly slow pace at which legal pot shops have been opening?

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what is worse weed or alcohol

If you use weed before drinking, pay extra attention to how much you’ve had to drink. To err on the side of caution, assume you’ve had a bit more to drink than you actually have, or aim to drink less than you usually would without using weed. If using weed does indeed slow the absorption of alcohol, it might also delay feelings of drunkenness. This might seem like a good thing, but it makes it harder to know how impaired you really are.

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This means that they can help protect nerve cells from damage which can decrease your chances of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Considering the statistics you just read about marijuana-based crashes, 40 percent of car crash deaths in the US involve alcohol, and 30 percent of deaths involve alcohol above the legal limit for driving. However, this is low compared to 40% of all car crashes that directly involve alcohol. Use of illicit drugs or heavy alcohol use also heightened the odds that a person with diabetes might use cannabis, Han’s team found.

Prior studies have examined the cross-sectional relationship between adolescent sleep and substance use; however, fewer have explored the long-term connections between childhood sleep and adolescent substance use. That could prove to be a toxic mix for people battling diabetes, the researchers warned. The number of adults with diabetes who said that they’d used cannabis at least once over the past month jumped by a third between 2021 and 2022, the new report found. As marijuana loses much of its stigma and laws around its use relax, Americans are increasingly consuming it medically and recreationally. Equating the NSDUH measure of CUD with addiction is also problematic because the survey does not assess whether respondents experienced “clinically significant impairment or distress,” which is a prerequisite for the diagnosis.

  1. The Well is Northwell Health’s commitment to the future of health care.
  2. For example, a 1992 study had 15 participants smoke a placebo, a high dose of THC, or a low dose of THC on three occasions.
  3. There is no known medical use for consumed alcohol, but there are health benefits observed in moderate drinkers, including lower rates of cardiovascular disease and possibly fewer colds, Murray said.
  4. However, having worked in ERs since pot was legalized, I can tell you that people who smoke weed are showing up a lot more now than in the past, and those numbers are climbing.
  5. In 2014, 30,722 people died from alcohol-induced causes in the US — and that does not count drinking-related accidents or homicides.
  6. Weed may appear to be safer than alcohol simply because we aren’t yet aware of certain risks.

“How much you’re impaired depends on the person, and how much you smoke,” Baler said. Because some people are stoned a lot of the time, while others may use marijuana only on weekends, the health effects become difficult to generalize. When it comes to addiction profiles, risk of death https://sober-home.org/ or overdose, and links to cancer, car crashes, violence, and obesity, the research suggests that marijuana may be less of a health risk than alcohol. Both weed and alcohol temporarily impair memory, and alcohol can cause blackouts by rendering the brain incapable of forming memories.

Research on whether smoked marijuana causes lung disease or cancer has yielded conflicting results, with studies that control for tobacco smoking finding no significant effect from marijuana on lung cancer risk. There are so many reasons why someone may choose to use alcohol or edibles, and both options aren’t without risk. But if you’re looking to make an informed choice between one or the other, Newell Bissex says that edibles are a safer option. “I would not have believed this for the vast majority of my life, but research shows that the deleterious effects of alcohol—physical, mental and societal—are far worse than with cannabis consumption,” she says. If you use either cannabis or alcohol and feel like you may be developing substance use disorder, reach out to your primary medical provider or another trusted source for support. In the long term, heavy drinking is responsible for roughly more than 140,000 deaths annually, according to the CDC.

Marijuana and alcohol are no exception, so comparing their level of safety directly is difficult — each possesses the potential for unique risks and benefits. If you’re curious or concerned about how your body might react to either alcohol or marijuana, it may be wise to speak with a health care provider first. At first glance, it might seem that alcohol does the most damage to our brain health and general well-being because it is more widely used. Over 85% of American adults say they’ve consumed alcohol at some point in their lives, and nearly 70% say they’ve had a drink in the past year, as reported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Compare that to just 18% of Americans who said they used marijuana in 2019, according to the CDC.

what is worse weed or alcohol

Aside from direct impacts on health effects and dependency, it’s also key to point out that getting behind the wheel while intoxicated by either substance poses significant risks to the user and others. In general, being intoxicated compromises sound judgment and may lead to unhealthy or risky decisions that a person might not make when sober. It also seems to be at odds with a detailed 2010 analysis in The Lancet, which found that the dependence risks for marijuana and alcohol were similar while rating the overall harm attributable to alcohol more than three times as high. According to a 2023 report sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, adults ages 35 to 50 are turning to alcohol and marijuana at record levels. Recently, North American edible sales have soared, climbing to more than $3.5 billion in 2022, per the market research firm Global Market Insights.

Stephanie Pappas is a contributing writer for Live Science, covering topics ranging from geoscience to archaeology to the human brain and behavior. She was previously a senior writer for Live Science but is now a freelancer based in Denver, Colorado, and regularly contributes to Scientific American and The Monitor, the monthly magazine of the American Psychological Association. Stephanie received a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of South Carolina and a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

While it’s not clear whether marijuana’s role with these outcomes is cause-and-effect, experts generally agree that people younger than their mid-20s should avoid pot. 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.

As Annie Grace, the author of This Naked Mind, brilliantly puts it, “When there is no perceived benefit, there is no desire.” By reshaping our beliefs about alcohol, we have the power to weaken our cravings. My favorite free tool is the 30 Reasons Why People Drink checklist. It’s the perfect starting point to help you uncover your hidden beliefs about alcohol and take the first step to weakening your craving.

Alcohol is more likely than marijuana to interact with other drugs. Marijuana affects the cardiovascular system, increasing heart rate and blood pressure, but a person can’t fatally overdose on pot like they can with alcohol, Baler said. The question of whether alcohol or marijuana is worse for health is being debated once again, this time, sparked by comments that President Barack Obama made in a recent interview with The New Yorker magazine. The finding aligns with some previous research on alcohol’s connections with violence. There probably isn’t a perfect way to evaluate and present all drug harms. Researchers will always need to balance making information simple and accessible for policymakers and the public with the inherent complexity of drugs and their effects.

If your pattern of drinking results in repeated significant distress and problems functioning in your daily life, you likely have alcohol use disorder. However, even a mild disorder can escalate and lead to serious problems, so early treatment is important. Alcohol use disorder is a pattern of alcohol use that involves problems controlling your drinking, being preoccupied with alcohol or continuing to use alcohol even when it causes problems.

This disorder also involves having to drink more to get the same effect or having withdrawal symptoms when you rapidly decrease or stop drinking. Alcohol use disorder includes a level of drinking that’s sometimes called alcoholism. Usually, a bad reaction to mixing weed and alcohol will pass within a few hours.

Alcohol detox can take a significant amount of time and have heavy withdrawal symptoms, while cannabis withdrawal can last anywhere from a few days to a couple weeks. It can also be completely out of your system in 1-3 months with you returned to normal levels and function. Speaking of, let’s examine the addictive tendencies of these substances. It can damage brain cells and lead to deficiencies in neurotransmitters.

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. While this may come as a surprise, both marijuana and alcohol could have some beneficial effects for some users.

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. Remember, consuming weed and alcohol together can make you feel either more or less intoxicated than you would if you were using just one or the other.

It can lead to impaired judgment, decreased reaction times, and difficulty concentrating. It can also lower your inhibitions making you more likely to make riskier or rash decisions that can lead to an accident. They ultimately found a 5.8% increase in injury crash rates and a 4.1% increase in fatal crash rates when comparing the data of cannabis being legalized and when states opened recreational sales.

“We have to have a conversation. There are risks and benefits, and in moderation everything is fine.” “On the other hand, the number of crimes that are committed that have some sort of alcohol component related to them are massive — hundreds of thousands a year, if not more,” he said. Alcohol may take a greater toll on the brain than marijuana does, especially for teens, a new study finds. Cannabis, on the other hand, increases appetite, dry mouth, tachycardia, euphoria, sedation and a slowed sense of time. It can also cause a chronic cough or throat problems due to smoking.

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