One large study of twins published in 2015 found that brain differences between pot users and nonusers predated the marijuana use rather than being caused by it; pot smokers might have genetic or environmental factors that predispose them to cannabis use, the researchers concluded. Visual processing involves the brain’s analysis and interpretation of visual signals. Seven previously described highwatch online meetings studies have examined the impact of alcohol and cannabis use on visual processing ability across adolescence, including four alcohol-focused studies and three co-use studies. Their findings linked alcohol consumption with long-term changes to the structure of white matter and gray matter in the brain. The truth is, both alcohol and weed may cause negative health effects, including addiction.
Does THC Increase Dopamine?
For decades, our federal government and supporters of marijuana prohibition have led people to believe that marijuana is so dangerous that it must be kept illegal at all costs. They have exaggerated its potential for harm, spread myths about its impact on society, and even spent hundreds of millions of tax dollars on TV ads designed to convince you that anyone who uses marijuana is a loser who sits around on the couch all day. The team notes that any reduction in the size of white or gray matter or a loss in their integrity can lead to impairments in brain functioning.
Decreased cognitive function
Overall, cannabis use can be healthier and less addictive than alcohol use. Many of the issues have to do with legality and preconceived judgment of cannabis. Alcohol has been legal significantly longer compared to cannabis and some of these stigmas can impact people’s judgment about cannabis use. While both are intoxicants they can affect the body differently and can also impact your health differently. 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.
Marijuana may be harder on your heart, while moderate drinking could be beneficial.
Occasionally mixing alcohol and weed — also known as crossfading — likely won’t lead to major health problems. But there are a lot of variables to consider, including which one you use first and how you consume them. “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 mirtazapine interactions with alcohol uses,” Baler said. 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. Additionally, researchers looking to study long-term marijuana use have had difficulty in finding people who regularly smoke marijuana but don’t also smoke tobacco cigarettes.
The idea is lawmakers could look at this model to help decide on an individual basis which policies are better for each drug. But how much does all of this information really tell policymakers or the public? It would matter if 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. And the argument that alcohol is more dangerous than illegal substances could be used as a basis for banning or strictly regulating alcohol just as easily as it could be used as a basis for legalizing or decriminalizing other drugs. Alcohol and marijuana are both intoxicants, but one study from Columbia University researchers estimated that alcohol multiplies the chance of a fatal traffic accident by nearly 14 times, while marijuana nearly doubles the risk.
Therapeutic potential of cannabinoid receptors and novel strategies to treat alcohol dependence
Additionally, any deficits or issues caused by heavy cannabis use can be reversible. That roughly translates to cannabis is not directly related to any increase in the chances of death or has a significant impact on your lifespan. 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. If you do get hungover, you might experience other effects, including headaches and diarrhea. Weed may appear to be safer than alcohol simply because we aren’t yet aware of certain risks. On Tuesday July 23, now-Deputy Prime Minister Charnvirakul announced that criminalization was called off; instead, the government agreed to go forward with regulation and would hold meetings with relevant stakeholders.
- Turns out, you might not need much alcohol to change the way your body absorbs THC.
- But on the flip side, 49 percent of Americans believe that cannabis use affects society positively, per a recent Gallup poll.
- Smoking marijuana interferes with connections being made in the brain “at a time when the brain should be at a clear state of mind, and accumulating, memory and data and good experiences that should be laying out the foundation for the future,” Baler said.
- Due to the recent public attention of the legalization of marijuana in the United States and the constant fight against alcohol abuse, research efforts highlighting the biomedical consequences of the use of these substances are relevant to the drug abuse field and of public health interest.
- Attentional control has been measured in two longitudinal studies focused on the effects of low to heavy alcohol use; in two studies focused on effects of heavy cannabis use; and in three studies exploring co-use of alcohol and cannabis.
But scientists have had a hard time deciphering whether excessive alcohol use causes depression and anxiety or whether people with depression and anxiety drink in an attempt to relieve those symptoms. Chronic drinkers display reductions in memory, attention, and planning, as well as impaired emotional processes and social cognition — and these can persist even after years of abstinence. The finding aligns with some previous research on alcohol’s connections with violence. According to the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, alcohol is a factor in 40% of all violent crimes, and a study of college students found that the rates of mental and physical abuse were higher on days when couples drank. 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.
Preliminary evidence underscores that cognitive control and sensation-seeking behaviors could be an important target in prevention and treatment of substance use in adolescents, given the moderating roles on neurofunctional effects. Further research is required to determine the relative effects of alcohol and cannabis consumption on functional neurodevelopment and whether neural recovery occurs following reductions in use. An additional methodological concern identified in this review is the reliance on youth self-report of substance use. Several studies also used ranges in surveys to capture frequency and quantity of consumption, weakening the ability to explore graded dose effects. Utilization of real-time measures and biological markers can greatly increase the accuracy and reliably of substance use data.84,85 Although the reported studies focused on alcohol and cannabis use, polysubstance use (e.g., tobacco, cocaine, opioids) could affect findings. Although some studies controlled (or excluded participants) for co-occurring use of other substances, future studies with larger samples will be able to better understand the potential compounding effects of other substance use on brain development.
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. While some consumers are chasing sobriety in its entirety, others are becoming “Cali-sober,” meaning they cut out alcohol but continue to consume other substances such as cannabis.
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. The researchers looked at brain scans from about 850 substance-using adults ages 18 to 55 and about substance-using 440 teens ages 14 to 19, all of whom reported varying levels of alcohol and cannabis use. Alcohol was more common than pot as a substance of choice, with 487 adults (57 percent) and 113 teens (26 percent) reporting that they’d used only alcohol in the past six months, and 5 adults (0.6 percent) and 35 teens (8 percent) saying they’d used only cannabis in the past six months. Overall, there is no strong, consistent evidence to indicate that low to heavy alcohol use during adolescence or young adulthood disrupts executive functioning maturation across time. Longitudinal data on cannabis use and executive functioning performance suggest that frequent consumption and greater cumulative use across adolescence may disrupt inhibitory control, working memory (particularly in females), planning, and decision making.
Cannabis can help treat conditions such as epilepsy, and parents risked imprisonment procuring medicine for their children from underground pharmacists. It didn’t matter if you had a tumor the size what does flakka smell like of a football – if you were holding a Thai Stick, you were going to jail. The prison population climbed from around 20,000 in the ‘60s to 330,000 by 2015, the majority serving hard time for drugs.
The research shouldn’t be taken as the be-all and end-all in the great debate over whether cannabis is bad for the brain. 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. Research shows that nearly 90% of Americans have used alcohol at some point or another.
After cannabis is ingested, an observable increase in regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) occurs in anterior brain regions — which are critical for semantic memory, according to a 2001 study in Neuropsychopharmacology. 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. 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.
