Marijuana vs Alcohol: Which Is Really Worse for Your Health?

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. Studies have found that these effects can persist for several weeks after stopping marijuana use. There may also be a link between daily weed use and poorer verbal memory in adults who start smoking at a young age. A recent study looking at cannabis use and intimate partner violence in the first decade of marriage found that marijuana users were significantly less likely to commit violence against a partner than https://rehabliving.net/detoxing-from-benzos-how-to-do-it-safely-a-guide/ those who did not use the drug. It’s impossible to say whether drinking alcohol or using marijuana causes violence, but several studies — including a recent analysis published in the journal Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience — suggest a link between alcohol and violent behavior. A research note published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (PDF) found that, when adjusting for other factors, having a detectable amount of THC (the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis) in your blood did not increase the risk of being involved in a car crash.

Marijuana may be harder on your heart, while moderate drinking could be beneficial.

1. Longitudinal data on cannabis use and neuropsychological development are generally lacking.
2. 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.
3. Following the above review of the literature on alcohol, marijuana, and the immune system, we would like to give an overview of our own findings using inflammatory cytokine array profiles performed with MDDC whole cell lysates from blood donors who abuse alcohol or marijuana.
4. There is also a need for more research into the interaction between alcohol and cannabis, Hutchison said, especially because people who use these substances tend to use both.
5. Admissions navigators are available 24/7 for a free and confidential conversation.

For instance, acute alcohol has been shown to reduce pro-inflammatory cytokines such as TNF-α and IL-1β in rat macrophages [40] and in human blood monocytes [41]. In the context of other inflammatory conditions, alcohol may affect immune function including antigen presentation and disease progression [42]. Because of these difficulties, epidemiological studies have also shown inconsistent effects, some finding decreased or no risk from driving while smoking marijuana, and others increased risk. Most studies are fraught with methodological problems that could lead to underreporting of drug use or misclassification of experimental subjects into or out of the marijuana-using category, confounding results. A number of longitudinal structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies have explored changes in brain volume and cortical thickness that occur across time following alcohol or cannabis use during adolescence. Several studies have delineated the post-substance use effects on brain structure by comparing youth who have and have not consumed alcohol or cannabis, and some have explored the relationship between levels of use and structural effects.

So, there aren’t any major risks?

Legalization has provided data points about the potential increase in accidents related to cannabis. 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. Alcohol is not only more addictive it also can cause more lasting damage to your health than cannabis.

Marijuana appears to be significantly less addictive than alcohol.

Based on these findings, the researchers believe that drinking alcohol is likely to be much more harmful to brain health than using marijuana. Marijuana use, however, appeared to have no impact on the structure of gray or white matter in either teenagers or adults. On the other side of the coin, researchers have found that cannabinoids — which are the active compounds in marijuana — could help to prevent migraine, and a more recent study linked marijuana use to an increased sex drive. Last year, for example, Medical News Today reported on a study linking marijuana use to a greater risk of psychosis in teenagers, while another study claimed that the drug is “worse than cigarettes” for cardiovascular health.

Both drugs may be linked with risks while driving, but alcohol is worse.

Other findings have indicated that activation of both, CB1 and CB2 receptors, has beneficial effects in Alzheimer experimental models by reducing harmful β-amyloid peptide accumulation and tau phosphorylation, as well as by promoting the brain’s intrinsic repair mechanisms [24]. One weakness of driving studies is that subjects are aware of being observed and assessed, so such studies are generally a better measure of what drivers are capable of doing rather than what they actually do. Epidemiological studies attempt to assess the actual risk that a driver may cause an accident under the influence of a drug, relative to that of a sober person driving under similar conditions. The relative risk is expressed in the form of an “odds ratio” (OR), which is the multiplier for the increased accident risk from driving under the influence of marijuana.

What are the Main Differences Between the Effects, Risks & Safety of Alcohol vs Weed?

Chronic alcohol use can lead to liver diseases such as fatty liver, alcoholic hepatitis, and cirrhosis, gastritis and pancreatitis. Cannabis has been found to potentially increase your chances of developing anxiety, paranoia, and psychotic symptoms.There is ongoing research on the relationship between marijuana use and mental health disorders. 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 and how your body interacts with it. Some people may consider both substances similar because of how they make you feel.

Having a blood-alcohol level of at least 0.05%, on the other hand, increased that risk by 575%. For marijuana, some research initially suggested a link between smoking and lung cancer, but that has been debunked. The January report found that cannabis was not connected to any increased risk of the lung cancers or head and neck cancers tied to smoking cigarettes. alcoholic eyes For a 1994 survey, epidemiologists at the National Institute on Drug Abuse asked more than 8,000 people from ages 15 to 64 about their drug use. Of those who had tried marijuana at least once, roughly 9% eventually fit a diagnosis of addiction. To put that in perspective, the addiction rate for cocaine was 17%, while heroin was 23% and nicotine was 32%.

Specifically, existing reviews exclusively focus on alcohol,12,20 cannabis,21 or co-use,22 with some focusing solely on neuropsychological23 or neuroimaging studies24–27 within each substance use group. The aim of this review is to provide a comprehensive overview of the most recent literature that is both (1) focused on alcohol, cannabis, and alcohol and cannabis co-use use during adolescence and (2) meets the criteria for a prospective longitudinal neuropsychological and neuroimaging study in humans. Limitations of existing studies and future directions for research are discussed. But the study fits in with a body of work that has found mixed results regarding marijuana and the brain. Some animal research, for example, hints that at least some cannabinoids, the compounds in cannabis, may be protective for the neural system, Hutchison said.

One reason we know less about the harm of cannabis relative to alcohol is that — until recently — cannabis use was illegal in many states. Now, as the number of people using cannabis is increasing, we will have a better understanding of the potential risks using studies in which we follow large groups of people who use cannabis and those who don’t over time. Alcohol is everywhere yet we are well aware of the risks and dangers of alcohol use and abuse. The cannabis industry is making marijuana as readily available thanks to recreational legalization; it could be as common as alcohol. While there are some issues to the abuse of cannabis they are nowhere near as hazardous as alcoholism and the toll of alcohol on the body. 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.

Essentially, as blood alcohol content (BAC) rises, marked changes can be seen in the electrical activity of the brain. One likely reason for the growing public aversion to drinking is the rise of the sober-curious movement. Celebrities like Bella Hadid, Blake Lively and Katy Perry have founded non-alcoholic beverage brands and championed the concept of sober social lifestyles that epitomize health over hedonism. That being said, alcohol still faces all of the same aforementioned tolls on your health and risks of addiction.

“You’re cumulatively impairing your cognitive function. What’s going to be the ultimate result, nobody can say.” “As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life,” Obama said during the interview. It’s too soon to say what effect commercialized cannabis — and its pervasive use — will have on our health. Proponents of cannabis like to say that it’s “natural,” so it can’t be bad for us. Yet in the 20th century, the tobacco industry designed highly addictive products and incited a worldwide epidemic in tobacco addiction and subsequent cancer, cardiovascular and lung disease. According to the National Institutes of Health, cannabis use among young adults reached an all-time high in 2021.

In addition, 15.4% of their roadside survey control group refused testing, and since this was the subset of the group that was more than likely to have been using illicit drugs, the refusals probably depressed the incidence of marijuana use in the control group and artificially increased the OR. The control group in Mura’s study was comprised of non-trauma patients at the hospital, rather than drivers who had not crashed, making the odds ratio an incorrect calculation. In addition, non-trauma hospital patients are not representative of the population and arguably may have had a lower rate of marijuana smoking, again distorting crack withdrawal the OR. Interestingly, three reports indicate that chronic marijuana smokers are less susceptible to impairment from alcohol on some measures compared with nonsmokers or infrequent smokers. 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.