Weed & Alcohol: Here’s What Happens When You Mix Them
Always consult your healthcare provider before making any changes to your medication regimen, and closely monitor your body’s response if you choose to combine these substances. For some, the potential benefits of combining Cymbalta with medical marijuana may outweigh the risks, but this is not the case for everyone. This is the case even if you use medical marijuana since THC and alcohol have been found to interact.1 It is not currently known if there is any completely safe level of alcohol and THC in the brain’s cannabinoid system. The combination of alcohol and marijuana can impair memory and cognitive function. Both substances affect different areas of the brain involved in learning, attention, and memory formation.
It’s time to clear the smoke
But if you’re sensitive to weed or don’t have much experience using it, it’s best to avoid mixing the two. It’s also important to remember that people can have very different reactions to the same mix of alcohol and weed. If you’re out in a group, one person’s reaction might be very different than yours.
Both CBD oil and alcohol stay in your system long after that time has passed – often days or weeks. A 1979 clinical trial published in Psychopharmacology suggests that mixing CBD and alcohol causes severely impaired motor function and distorted time perception. Various factors could determine the severity of the effects you experience from mixing marijuana and alcohol.
Clinical Research on Behavioral Performance Impairment from Co-use
The efficacy of these products has not been confirmed by FDA-approved research. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. All information presented here is not meant as a substitute for or alternative to information from health care practitioners. Please consult your health care professional about potential interactions or other possible complications before using any product.
- Understanding these risks is crucial for individuals who engage in this combination.
- For cannabis consumption, use of two cannabis products and most concentrate combinations each resulted in greater cannabis consumption on that day, especially when compared to consuming leaf + beer.
- See Yurasek et al. (2017), for a review of effects of combining alcohol and cannabis.
- Still, this is a pretty common combination that people try in an attempt to enhance the effects of both substances.
- The combined use of alcohol and marijuana can also result in increased heart rate, blood pressure, and respiratory depression.
” Options included ‘dry leaf’ (no/yes), ‘concentrate’ (no/yes) and ‘edible’ (no/yes). Too much of a good thing can be a real bummer, even if the worst thing that happens is a bad hangover (or a bad “weedover”). Luckily, this is easy to avoid by just knowing your limits and not overdoing it. If you’re going to use alcohol and cannabis together, we recommend starting low and going slow.
Cross Faded: Understanding the Meaning, Symptoms and Risks
If using weed does indeed slow the absorption of alcohol, it might also delay feelings of drunkenness. This might seem like a good thing, but it makes it harder to know how impaired you really are. In certain cases, a patient can experience withdrawal symptoms after abruptly stopping use.
Specifically, when a person is both drunk and high at the same time, they’re “cross-faded.” This is because the combination of weed and alcohol produces a unique experience more pronounced than consuming either on its own. Meanwhile, as of 2023, medical cannabis is legal in 38 states, while recreational use is legal in 23 states and the District of Columbia. But while beer and weed may seem like a match made in heaven, combining the two can lead to unpredictable effects, including increased impairment and heightened risks of dangerous behavior. As the research indicates, people who use both alcohol and weed together tend to consume more of both. The exact risks of mixing marijuana and alcohol, or other cannabinoids and alcohol, are not well studied. However, you can avoid and identify health emergencies to protect yourself and those around you if you choose to use either of these substances recreationally or you have a prescription for medical marijuana.
Subjects completed three alcohol conditions intended to sustain steady blood alcohol concentrations (0, 0.5, and 0.7 mg/ml) over 5 h. Three hours post-alcohol administration onset, participants were administered cannabis (400 μg/kg). Alcohol significantly impaired driving-related skills including critical tracking, divided attention, and stop-signal performance.
Notably, this is counter to the parallel comparisons with alcohol, where evidence shows that consuming multiple alcohol products on a given day (vs. liquor only) is linked to significantly combining alcohol and marijuana produces more consumption. Research suggests that co-use of alcohol and cannabis has synergistic effects over and above additive risk, as is evinced in the impaired driving literatures. As compared to alcohol drinkers, co-users exhibit twice the risk of driving under the influence 9.