But heavy drinking carries a much higher risk even for those without other health concerns. Be sure to ask your healthcare professional about what’s right for your health and safety. For women, more than three drinks on any day or more than seven drinks a week is heavy drinking.
Long-term health risks
Three types of studies are generally performed to help assess the risk that smoking marijuana may increase the probability of having a fatal traffic accident. The first are cognitive studies that measure the effects of smoking marijuana on cognitive processes that are considered to be integral to no level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health safe driving. The second are experimental studies on the collision risk of people under the influence of marijuana. The third are descriptive and analytic epidemiological studies on the relationship between cannabis use and accidents, usually performed through drug testing of injured drivers.
How scientists rank drugs from most to least dangerous — and why the rankings are flawed
However, dosing with edibles can be imperfect and take time to ascertain so when using edibles it’s best to pace yourself and examine how you feel. However, ultimately cannabis edibles can take less of a toll on your health and provide you with a high or relaxation without causing too much damage to your body or health. 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. Suffice to say that alcohol causes more deaths due to violence, accidents, car crashes, and disease than cannabis to the point where there are ever-growing statistics tracking these numbers. While there is the possibility for occasional deaths and accidents caused by cannabis use there isn’t sufficient data to compare it to alcohol. Alcohol interacts with the body differently and has been the cause of many accidents, negative health conditions and even deaths while cannabis is often used as a homeopathic alternative to many medications and still has additional yet-to-be discovered medical benefits.
What happens when you use weed before drinking?
According to the CDC, 3.3 million women are at risk of exposing their babies to alcohol. 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. It’s never a good idea to drive under the influence of drugs or alcohol, but especially both.
Considered together, the results of these studies can teach us a lot about the role of our endogenous marijuana neurotransmitter system during our brain’s ongoing process of repair and re-wiring as we mature. Binge alcohol consumption during the more vulnerable periods of our lives is clearly able to interfere with these critical neural processes and produce significant long-term negative consequences. In spite of many recent advances by laboratories around the world, much remains to be investigated regarding the effects of these two commonly consumed chemicals upon the brain. At least next year I’ll have a better answer to my students’ recurring question. The Scripps scientists discovered that eleven months of binge alcohol consumption that produced a blood alcohol level sufficient to be considered intoxicated decreased neurogenesis by more than fifty percent! Furthermore, the decrease in neurogenesis lasted for many weeks of abstinence.
Additionally, there is evidence marijuana can worsen psychiatric issues for people who are predisposed to them, or bring them on at a younger age. Finally, Baler said, because the drug is typically smoked, it can bring on bronchitis, coughing and chronic inflammation of the air passages. 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. 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.
- Alcohol is not only more addictive it also can cause more lasting damage to your health than cannabis.
- Additionally, compounds in cannabis can help prevent some diseases, stunt oxidative damage, and can also help prevent major conditions.
- “But if overconsumed, edibles may cause anxiety, panic, paranoia, dizziness, rapid heart rate and altered perception,” she says.
- 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.
- In comparison, the number of deaths caused by marijuana is almost zero.
Remember, consuming weed after drinking alcohol might make you feel less intoxicated, which can lead you to drink more than you usually would. Still, there’s some evidence to suggest that regularly combining alcohol and weed may have some concerning effects over time. Still, because of marijuana’s largely illegal status, long-term studies on all its health effects have been limited – meaning more research is needed. When it comes to addiction profiles, art therapy for addiction risk of death 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. Weed can also trigger temporary feelings of paranoia and hostility, but it’s not yet clear whether those symptoms are linked with an increased risk of long-term psychosis. For marijuana, some research initially suggested a link between smoking and lung cancer, but that has been debunked.
Keep in mind that there are dozens of factors to account for when comparing the health effects of alcohol and marijuana, including how the substances affect your heart, brain, and behavior, and how likely you are to get hooked. Recent studies similarly point to the different ways in which individuals can develop an unhealthy relationship with alcohol. For example, about 29.7% of men and 22.2% percent of women aged 18 and over engaged in binge drinking in 2019. While binge drinking isn’t the same as alcohol addiction, it represents a form of misuse that contributes to the risk of developing alcohol use disorder. 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 are signs you might be developing an addiction and should seek medical care.
Compared with sober participants, the intoxicated volunteers were found to have reduced functioning in the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain linked with moderating social behavior. 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 addiction treatment national institute on drug abuse nida 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. Meanwhile, no deaths from marijuana overdoses have been reported, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.