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This article has been reviewed by Dr. Anand Dugar, an anesthesiologist, pain medicine physician and the founder of Green Health Docs. Graduating from medical school in 2004 and residency in 2008, Dr. Dugar has been a licensed physician for almost 20 years and has been leading the push for medical cannabis nationwide. One way to develop a healthy relationship with cannabis is to use it intentionally. If you want to seek out medical marijuana for a specific condition consider finding a doctor with Green Health Docs. Getting a medical marijuana card can ensure that you have access to regulated medical marijuana simply and easily. That being said, alcohol still faces all of the same aforementioned tolls on your health and risks of addiction.

Marijuana May Protect the Liver from Alcohol — But Experts Urge Caution

Finally, Baler said, because the drug is typically smoked, it can bring on bronchitis, coughing and chronic inflammation of the air passages. In November 2017, a group of the nation’s top cancer doctors issued a statement asking people to drink less. They cited strong evidence that drinking alcohol — as little as a glass of wine or beer a day — increases the risk of developing both pre- and postmenopausal breast cancer. One of the main negative issues of weed vs. alcohol is all of the issues with smoking marijuana. Edibles cut down on one of the major issues with cannabis because they don’t require smoking and eliminate many of these risks.

Cannabis vs. alcohol: economic and social impacts

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. However, this study was pretty small, making it hard to draw any firm conclusions.

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While both are intoxicants they can affect the body differently and can also impact your health differently. It can cause mood swings and we’re all familiar with people who are “angry drunks.” The impact of alcohol can vary based on how much you’re using https://sober-home.org/end-stage-alcoholism-signs-symptoms-health-and/ and how your body interacts with it. 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.

It can be challenging to ascertain how many deaths are caused by cannabis. While there can be the odd allergic reaction or bad interaction or even a child may inadvertently consume cannabis, there isn’t sufficient data to point towards any deaths caused by cannabis. This post will elaborate on the impacts of alcohol vs. weed on your health, body, driving skills, fatality numbers, and the toll they can take on your life. Perhaps the biggest supporting evidence for this point is a 2010 study published in The Lancet that ranked alcohol as the most dangerous drug in the United Kingdom, surpassing heroin, crack cocaine, and marijuana.

In states where marijuana is legal, beverages infused with THC or CBD are sold –– here’s what to know.

“There are segments of the population that want to bypass the entire process, grabbing this nugget of truth … and claiming smoking marijuana can be good for your health and have medical uses,” Baler said. 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 risk from driving under the influence of both alcohol and cannabis is greater than the risk of driving under the influence of either alone,” the authors of a 2009 review wrote in the American Journal of Addiction.

1. The truth is, both alcohol and weed may cause negative health effects, including addiction.
2. It’s too soon to say what effect commercialized cannabis — and its pervasive use — will have on our health.
3. In contrast, Carroll says research shows rates of interpersonal or domestic violence are actually “lower in people who smoke marijuana than people that don’t.”
4. 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.
5. Ten minutes later, they used a vaporizer to inhale either a low or a high dose of THC.
6. 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.

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. Finally, an increasingly popular way of consuming cannabis in the past few years is through edibles, which are treats such as gummies or popcorn infused with cannabis. These edibles allow THC to be taken up directly into the body rather than inhaled through the lungs.

Likewise if he reported that he sometimes had “a strong urge” to use marijuana and that he increased his dose to compensate for tolerance. Such answers do not necessarily indicate that someone uses marijuana “compulsively,” and they say nothing about whether he harmed himself or anyone else. Many people with alcohol use disorder hesitate to get treatment because they don’t recognize that they have a problem. An intervention from loved ones can help some people recognize and accept that they need professional help. If you’re concerned about someone who drinks too much, ask a professional experienced in alcohol treatment for advice on how to approach that person. If your pattern of drinking results in repeated significant distress and problems functioning in your daily life, you likely have alcohol use disorder.

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. Now while cannabis deaths caused by disease, illness or drug interactions there are some data points regarding accidents, specifically car accidents. Legalization has provided data points about the potential increase in accidents related to cannabis.

However, even a mild disorder can escalate and lead to serious problems, so early treatment is important. Even among those who don’t drink heavily, some will experience diarrhea and cramping. But for a 20-something working in a high-pressure job that required a lot of socializing with clients, it was hard.

While there’s some research around the effects of drinking alcohol before using weed, there isn’t much about the opposite approach. The main reason we don’t know is because marijuana isn’t just one thing. Alcohol is alcohol, whether you’re talking about beer, wine, or spirits.

Although drug policy experts generally don’t dispute the assertion that alcohol is more dangerous than pot, the study, led by British researcher David Nutt, is quite controversial. Experts see the rankings as deeply flawed, largely because they present the harms that come from drugs in a rather crude, one-dimensional manner. Unhealthy alcohol use includes https://sober-home.org/ any alcohol use that puts your health or safety at risk or causes other alcohol-related problems. It also includes binge drinking — a pattern of drinking where a male has five or more drinks within two hours or a female has at least four drinks within two hours. Alcohol can also impact the body’s ability to make the most of the food people consume.

Why is alcohol more socially accepted, despite all the evidence stacking up against it? Carroll thinks that’s an accident of history — because it’s been around and legal for a longer period of time. “It’s hard to argue from data or from actual science that that’s the way it should be,” he said.

In 2014, 30,722 people died from alcohol-induced causes in the US — and that does not count drinking-related accidents or homicides. If those deaths were included, the number would be closer to 90,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Additionally, compounds in cannabis can help prevent some diseases, stunt oxidative damage, and can also help prevent major conditions. Some compounds in cannabis have been found to be anticancer, antibiotic, and antifungal. In general, marijuana is considered less harmful than alcohol but alcohol can be considered more socially acceptable.

New research suggests the risks of even moderate or light drinking may outweigh the benefits. In June, the World Health Organization said that no level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health. And a new study funded by the National Institutes of Health found that binge drinking among adults ages 35 to 50 has reached historic levels.

For one thing, the study looked only at marijuana use in the past 30 days, and the participants had fairly low levels of pot consumption. In addition, Hutchison told Live Science, there could be subtle brain changes that the study’s measurements could not capture. The study included the brain images of 853 adults who were aged between 18 and 55 years and 439 teenagers between the ages of 14 and 18. Scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder conducted a review of existing imaging data that looked at the effects of alcohol and marijuana, or cannabis, on the brain. Before getting into more about safety, it may be helpful to understand some of the key differences between alcohol and marijuana relating to this discussion.

Medical News Today recently covered research investigating cannabis’ effect on the processing of emotions. And a national survey conducted in 2013 found that 52% of Americans thought marijuana should be made legal. Washington, DC, legalized the personal use (but not commercial sale) of cannabis in 2015. Alcohol may take a greater toll on the brain than marijuana does, especially for teens, a new study finds.

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. It’s also important to remember that people can have very different reactions to the same mix of alcohol and weed.

As for marijuana, whose legalization for medical uses has been a matter of strong public policy debate for years, there is ample evidence that beneficial compounds can be found in the plant. While both are intoxicants used recreationally, their legality, patterns of use and long-term effects on the body make the two drugs difficult to compare. But despite eating over 600 extra calories when smoking, marijuana users generally don’t have higher body-mass indexes. In fact, studies suggest that regular smokers have a slightly reduced risk of obesity. On the other hand, self-harm and suicide are much more common among people who binge drink or drink frequently.

More and more people are sober curious, toying with the notion of drinking less. Singh insists that, right now, too little is known about what effects cannabis compounds have on health. According to National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), drinking is responsible for roughly 88,000 deaths per year. It might seem harmless to mix alcohol and weed, but doing so can be a slippery slope toward getting overly intoxicated.