Both alcohol and marijuana can be dangerous substances, and addiction is a potential risk regardless of perceived safety. It’s important to exercise caution and make informed decisions about substance use to minimize potential risks and harms. When it comes to drinking alcohol and smoking cannabis, the road to health is complex and individual experiences may vary.
But it doesn’t seem like anyone is taking on this kind of approach — and Nutt’s style of analysis remains popular around the world. Although Nutt couldn’t get funding to do an analysis in the US or Canada, he said a similar study is being published later this year assessing drug use in several countries in Europe. The analysis may be flawed, but its simplicity and accessibility have won over many policy circles. The individual scores account for a host of variables, including mortality, dependence, drug-related family adversities, environmental damage, and effect on crime. In contrast, “we don’t see any statistically significant effects of cannabis on gray matter or white matter,” Hutchison said. Studies have found that these effects can persist for several weeks after stopping marijuana use.
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. “You can die binge-drinking five minutes after you’ve been exposed to alcohol. That isn’t going to happen with marijuana,” said Ruben Baler, a health scientist at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. 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. Weed seems to have fewer long-term risks than alcohol, but again, there’s a huge discrepancy in the amount of research on weed compared with alcohol.
- Unlike alcohol, which slows your heart rate, marijuana speeds it up, which could negatively affect the heart in the short term.
- On the other hand, low to moderate drinking — about one drink a day — has been linked with a lower risk of heart attack and stroke compared with abstention.
- James Nicholls, a director at Alcohol Research UK, told The Guardian that those findings should be taken with a grain of salt since “any protective effects tend to be canceled out by even occasional bouts of heavier drinking.”
- Sure, research on the topic is ramping up a bit, but there’s still a lack of large, long-term studies.
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. Additionally, while you can have a cannabis overdose it’s not remotely fatal while an overdose of alcohol can cause lasting damage and even death. Weed is not without its pitfalls but alcohol is by far more problematic. When both alcohol and drugs are in the system, the risk of having a fatal car accident is especially high.
The Great Debate: Marijuana vs Alcohol
Both weed and alcohol can carry a potential for misuse and addiction, but this appears to be more common with alcohol. Generally speaking, weed tends to come with fewer risks than alcohol, but there are a lot of factors to consider. Plus, they’re unique substances that produce different effects, which makes side-by-side comparisons difficult.
How we should evaluate drugs and the harm they do
However, despite one drug being more socially stigmatized than the other, both substances have their benefits and pitfalls when it comes to consumption. But how much does all of this information really tell policymakers or the public? It would matter if harbor house sober living marijuana ends up substituting alcohol once pot is legalized (since a safer substance would be replacing a more dangerous one), but the research on that is still early. Health risks are just one way to measure whether marijuana is safer than alcohol.
After being absorbed through the lining of the stomach into the bloodstream, it spreads into tissues throughout the body and reaches the brain in about five minutes, according to Northwestern Medicine. Although for palliative care, he said, “that would be a different realm of medicine,” in which the goal is to drug a person so they do not feel pain. “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. Because marijuana can impair coordination and balance, there is the risk of hurting oneself, particularly if someone drives or chooses to have unprotected sex while their inhibitions are lowered, Baler said. These are two areas where people using marijuana could hurt themselves for the short and long term. On the surface, weed appears to be safer, but there’s simply not enough evidence to declare a winner.
The idea is lawmakers could look at this model to help decide on an individual basis which policies are better for each drug. The truth is, both alcohol and weed may cause negative health effects, including addiction. If you find that smoking weed starts to affect your life in unhealthy ways and leads to unwanted consequences, those https://rehabliving.net/ are signs you might be developing an addiction and should seek medical care. The research on other health effects of marijuana is inconclusive but should warrant some caution. One study linked the use of potent marijuana to psychotic disorders, but other studies suggest people with psychotic disorders may be predisposed to pot use.
Levels of Care in Drug and Alcohol Addiction Treatment
Getting drunk or high can feel similar to some people, while others describe the sensations as very different. Of course, the way you feel when you’re intoxicated also depends on how much of the substance you consume. For example, one person may have a very low tolerance for weed but be able to tolerate alcohol well. Another person might not have any issues with misusing alcohol but still find it hard to function without weed.
In an email survey, college students reported that after a blackout they did things that they could not remember, like driving drunk, having unprotected sex, or engaging in risky behavior. When you drink heavily, it can impair your ability to create new memories. Over 50% of frequent binge drinkers reported at least one time in the past year when they blacked out and forgot where they were or what they did when they were drinking.
Edibles need to be digested and it can take anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours to understand how you feel. In general, marijuana is considered less harmful than alcohol but alcohol can be considered more socially acceptable. After all, you can only purchase cannabis products at dispensaries where in some states you can purchase alcohol in supermarkets. Additionally, alcohol is more socially acceptable in public use or work situations while using cannabis at a work function could be looked down upon. While both are intoxicants they can affect the body differently and can also impact your health differently. It can damage brain cells and lead to deficiencies in neurotransmitters.