alcohol & Cannabis

What is alcohol?

Alcohol is the most widely used drug in Australia. Most Australians have had a drink at some time, and apart from tobacco, it is the drug that young people are most likely to try first.

Most Australians drink responsibly and drinking in moderation can help you feel happy, relaxed and confident.

Drinking too much puts you at risk of experiencing problems with your physical and mental health; your relationships with your family and friends; your financial situation; and your performance at school, university, work or job seeking. It can also lead to trouble with the police and the legal system.

Some of the harms associated with drinking too much can occur immediately. Alcohol slows down your reaction time and reduces your ability to think clearly, putting you at greater risk of being involved in an accident. It can make you feel invincible, which can lead to aggression and/or violence. Alcohol overdose is possible if you drink too much too quickly. Your body can 'shut down' and you can become unconscious. In extreme cases where medical help is not received, you can die.

As many of the negative effects of heavy drinking and binge drinking aren't always immediately obvious, young drinkers often don't realize the damage they are doing to themselves until it is too late.

What is cannabis?

Cannabis is the most widely used illicit drug in Australia.

People who like cannabis say that it helps them feel happy and relaxed, and it enhances ordinary activities like listening to music, watching DVDs or eating. Cannabis can cause some people to laugh a lot with their friends, and get lost in thoughts and daydreams.

Some people have bad reactions to cannabis, and get anxious, paranoid or nauseous (sometimes to the point of throwing up). Others have panic reactions after smoking, where their heart beats really hard and fast, and they freak out and think that they're going to die.

Research clearly shows that one in three people who start smoke regularly (more than once a week) will end up dependent on ('addicted to') cannabis. If people have trouble controlling how often or how much they smoke, they risk experiencing a whole range of problems, like withdrawal when they stop smoking, lung problems (including cancer), and all sorts of mental health problems like anxiety, depression or paranoia.

Some people are born with a vulnerability to serious mental health problems. If these people smoke cannabis, they increase the risk of experiencing major problems like psychosis or schizophrenia.

Who mixes alcohol and cannabis, and why?When people use more than one drug, either at the same time or in succession, it's called 'polydrug use'. Leaving tobacco out of the picture, the most common pattern of polydrug use in Australia is among people who mix cannabis and alcohol.

Mainly, it's young people who mix the two drugs, and more guys than girls do it. People who mix them say they do it to get more 'out of it', or that they use the second drug to increase the effects of the first.

For some reason, a lot of young people think the whole point of drug use is to get as trashed as possible. But the more trashed you are, the less aware you are of what's going on around you; the less capable you are of looking after yourself and your friends; and the more chance there is that something will go wrong.

What is “greening out” and are you more likely to experience it when you mix?'Greening out' refers to the situation where people, for reasons that we don't understand and cannot predict, feel physically sick after smoking cannabis. They might go pale or even green; they can feel sweaty and dizzy; they experience nausea and might even throw up; and they feel like they have to lie down, but even then, they still feel bad.

Greening out can happen to people who don't smoke often, or to people who smoke every day. It doesn't seem to be related to how much people smoke in a session. It's not something in the cannabis, because their friends are smoking from the same bowl and they're OK. Greening out is a bad reaction to cannabis that can

happen to anyone at anytime, without any kind of warning.

Many people say it's more likely to happen if they have a smoke after they've been drinking. This might be because some evidence suggests that, when you have alcohol in your blood, it makes you absorb THC (the part of cannabis that gets you stoned) faster. So you might end up having what is a normal amount of cannabis for you, but it has a much stronger effect than if you hadn't been drinking. We're not sure about this - more research is needed. But, the fact that you or one of your friends could green out at any time does help remind you that drug use is risky and unpredictable. You don't always get the effects you expect, and you never know what might happen.

What are the risks of mixing alcohol and cannabis?Unpredictable effectsThe effects that a certain drug will have on a certain person at a certain time are totally unpredictable. The more drugs you use at one time, the more unpredictable the effects are, and that includes when you drink and smoke together. If you use alcohol and cannabis together, you have more chance of having a bad reaction - greening out or having a nasty psychological reaction, like getting anxious, paranoid, or even panicky.

Effects on drivingWe know that driving is severely impaired by the combination of alcohol and cannabis. Alcohol by itself makes us much less able to drive safely. Cannabis can also affect our driving ability, although it does seem to have less of an effect than alcohol, perhaps because people realize they are stoned and drive more cautiously.

Without a doubt, the combination of alcohol and cannabis, EVEN AT LOW DOSES OF BOTH, makes us dangerous drivers, putting ourselves, our passengers, and others at serious risk. This has repeatedly been shown in real life experiments under real driving conditions. Don’t kid yourself - even at blood alcohol concentrations (BAC) at or below 0.05, if you have a few cones, you drive as though you have a much higher BAC than you really do.

Getting too out of itIf you’re drunk and stoned, you’ll probably be less aware of, and less able to control, what’s going on around you than if you weren’t so trashed. This includes serious things, like keeping an eye on your drink and your belongings, and negotiating safe sex.

Substituting one drug for anotherPeople trying to cut back on one drug, are at increased risk of starting to use another more heavily in an effort to manage the side effects of reducing the first. Say you’ve been smoking cones every day for a while and you decide you better give it a rest. You might experience problems sleeping. It’s therefore an easy habit to fall into to start drinking a lot more than before to help you sleep. It works the other way, too - people who are trying to cut back on their drinking might find that they are smoking a lot more than they used to. Be aware of falling into the trap of substituting one drug problem for another.

Is the old saying, “beer and grass, you’re on your arse, grass and beer, you’re in the clear” true?Ever heard that old saying? It refers to the fact that there seems to be a difference in the effects that mixing alcohol and cannabis can have, depending on the order that you

use them. Although the effects are not totally predictable, it does seem that you’re more likely to have a bad reaction if you drink and then smoke than if you smoke and then drink.

We don’t know why that is, but some research suggests that if there’s already alcohol in your blood, then more THC is absorbed into your blood. So you might get more stoned and maybe have more of a chance of greening out if you drink and then smoke.

Other research suggests that smoking cannabis can actually slow the absorption of alcohol, reducing the effects you feel from the alcohol.

So it would appear that the old saying is correct to a point, however if you want to reduce the risk of something going wrong, avoid mixing the two drugs together.

Alcohol and cannabis: The mixIf you do use both drugs, you’re better off choosing one to use at any one time. Your body has to work hard to detox from one drug - you just add to the stress your body is under if you use more than one.

Don’t have cannabis around if you’re going to be drinking - that way, even if you feel like a few cones once you’ve had a bit to drink, you won’t be able to.

If you decide to use both alcohol and cannabis together, always make sure you are in a safe place, with people you know and trust, who will be willing and able to look after you if you green out or if you get more out of it than you planned.

Under no circumstances should you drive if you’ve been smoking and drinking - smoking cannabis impairs your driving performance more than if you were only drinking.