Emily Lachtrupp is a registered dietitian experienced in nutritional counseling, recipe analysis and meal plans. She’s worked with clients who struggle with diabetes, weight loss, digestive issues and more. In her spare time, you can find her enjoying all that Vermont has to offer with her family and her dog, Winston. Experimental research measures the potential risk of an accident using a driving simulator or driving course. It is time to wipe the slate clean and take a closer look at the facts about marijuana.

Deciding about drinking

The immediate effects of weed can vary quite a bit from person to person. 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 alcoholism: causes risk factors and symptoms 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.

We and our partners process data to provide:

The purpose of this paper is to review the scientific evidence on the effects on driving while intoxicated with marijuana and contrast this with the effects of alcohol intoxication. Overall, preliminary evidence indicates that heavy alcohol use during adolescence disrupts the maturation of network efficiency in a dose-dependent manner, with more significant effects observed among females. Even relatively low-level cannabis use (i.e., occasional and regular consumption) as well as heavier use during adolescence may alter the rate of neurotypical functional development in brain regions important for cognitive control. Some neural recovery may be possible after abstinence; however, months or years may be required for complete recovery of functional connectivity from heavy cannabis use.

1. Still, because of marijuana’s largely illegal status, long-term studies on all its health effects have been limited – meaning more research is needed.
2. This isn’t the case with marijuana because there are several different strains of cannabis.
3. It affects gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) which can cause relaxation but long term use of alcohol can affect your levels of GABA or glutamate in the nervous system.
4. Biden and a growing number of lawmakers from both major political parties have been pushing for the DEA decision as marijuana has become increasingly decriminalized and accepted, particularly by younger people.
5. That means the roughly 15,000 cannabis dispensaries in the U.S. would have to register with the DEA like regular pharmacies and fulfill strict reporting requirements, something that they are loath to do and that the DEA is ill equipped to handle.
6. 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.

Nutrition and healthy eating

It moves pot to Schedule III, alongside ketamine and some anabolic steroids, following a recommendation from the federal Health and Human Services Department. After the public comment period and a review by an administrative judge, the agency would eventually publish the final rule. When it comes to alcohol, if you don’t drink, don’t start for health reasons. Heavy drinking also has been linked to intentional injuries, such as suicide, as well as accidental injury and death.

Chronic or excessive alcohol consumption is known to affect balance and disrupts normal walking patterns. This is because alcohol can damage parts of the brain responsible for coordination, including the cerebellum. Akin to this, cannabis use can also affect coordination and motor skills because THC can interfere with the functioning of specific sections of the brain like the cerebellum and the basal ganglia.

You might not think marijuana and quizzes go together, but on the assumption that you arrived at this quiz sober, we pose some serious questions that will require your utmost attention and critical thinking skills. Heavy drug use is never ideal — and marijuana is no different in this regard. 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. With proper tolerance breaks, you can lower your tolerance of THC and become less reliant on large amounts of cannabis to feel the same way and regulate your cannabis use.

While pot doesn’t seem to cause organ failure or fatal overdoses, alcohol kills more than 29,000 people each year due to liver disease and other forms of poisoning. There’s a delay in when you feel edibles because it can take time for the THC to be absorbed into your bloodstream. Edibles need to be digested and it can take anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours to understand how you feel.

And the same goes for driving or if you need to be alert and able to react to changing situations. In fact, he says, using cannabis for pain in lieu of NSAIDs, such as ibuprofen, is better for your kidneys. Since cannabis doesn’t cause cirrhosis or liver failure, edibles are also much safer for the liver, he adds. Turns out, you might not need much alcohol to change the way your body absorbs THC. Tishler believes a better question is not which substance is more addictive, but how we use them.

A 16-year study of more than 65,000 Americans, published in the American Journal of Public Health, found that healthy marijuana users were not more likely to die earlier than healthy people who did not use cannabis. There’s evidence that cannabis is safer than alcohol with respect to a number of other health-related harms too. A New Zealand Medical Journal study compared THC and alcohol in terms of 13 commonly discussed issues related to substance arizona bills aim to curb the sober living fraud that bilked taxpayers use and health. Cannabis-infused beverages are often branded as a healthier alternative to alcohol — “No painful days after drinking or regrets,” a tagline on Cann’s site reads. These kinds of drinks carry a connotation of health, said Emily Moquin, a food and beverage analyst at Morning Consult. They tout themselves as “hangover-free” and without the high calories of alcohol; they claim to help you feel “focused,” balanced, relaxed.

Alcohol is a factor in 40 percent of violent crimes, according to the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence. But various studies found marijuana doesn’t make users more aggressive or lead to crime. There’s also some divergence within the specific categories of harm. But alcohol’s crime risk is due to its tendency to make people more aggressive (and more prone to committing crime), while heroin’s crime risk is based on the massive criminal trafficking network behind it. The individual scores account for a host of variables, including mortality, dependence, drug-related family adversities, environmental damage, and effect on crime. One way to develop a healthy relationship with cannabis is to use it intentionally.

The bottom line is that alcohol is potentially addictive, can cause intoxication, and contributes to health problems and preventable deaths. If you already drink at low levels and continue to drink, risks for these issues appear to be low. In contrast with culpability studies, case control studies compare the prevalence of marijuana use among drivers injured or killed in traffic accidents with a control group of other drivers. The validity of these studies depends upon careful selection of an appropriate control group for comparison. Articles included in this review were identified by entering 30 search terms focused on substance use, adolescence, and neurodevelopment into MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, ProQuest Central, and Web of Science. Studies were eligible for inclusion if they longitudinally examined the effect of adolescent alcohol and/or cannabis use on structural or functional outcomes in 50 or more participants.

Recently, North American edible sales have soared, climbing to more than $3.5 billion in 2022, per the market research firm Global Market Insights. While there’s no arguing both substances are popular and both come with some risks, it’s less clear whether alcohol or edibles consumption is worse for your health. Although not alcohol abuse articles all marijuana smokers are impulsive risk-takers, impulsive risk-takers are likely to smoke marijuana, drive recklessly, and also smoke marijuana before driving. Identification of such traits in a marijuana-using patient should prompt additional counseling on using a seatbelt and other “harm-minimization” interventions.

Both weed and alcohol, together and on their own, are also potentially addictive and can lead to dependence and misuse. Usually, a bad reaction to mixing weed and alcohol will pass within a few hours. 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. A number of recent studies also focus on how combining weed and alcohol affects your driving.