- Smoking cannabis before drinking can significantly curb how much people choose to drink, according to new research.
- It’s unclear how the findings would translate to real-world scenarios outside of a lab environment.
- The long-term risks and benefits of replacing alcohol with cannabis, a trend known as “California sober,” are not yet clear.
Can smoking weed help you cut down on drinking alcohol?
A new study say yes — at least within the rigorous confines of a laboratory experiment.
While it remains to be seen how those findings apply to people who use cannabis and alcohol in everyday life, another question looms: Is replacing one intoxicating substance with another even a good idea?
The answer isn’t clear, not yet, anyway, but the timing of the question is relevant as more Americans experiment with being “California sober,” replacing alcohol with cannabis.
While the harmful effects of alcohol are well established — about
The study, which used a simulated bar environment as its laboratory, examined how smoking cannabis before drinking alcohol affected participants’ alcohol consumption.
Researchers found that, compared with a placebo, smoking a joint before drinking led participants to drink less and, in some cases, to report less desire to drink. The findings were published on November 18 in The American Journal of Psychiatry.
“Cannabis can reduce drinking in the short term, but it also carries its own risks. Our study is a first step, and we need more long-term research before drawing conclusions for public health,” said Jane Metrik, PhD, a professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Psychiatry at Brown University, and first author of the study.
“We do not yet know whether cannabis reduces drinking in daily life, where people encounter stress, social pressures, and varied environments,” she told Healthline.
Metrik and her coauthors are careful to point out that their study does not provide evidence that substituting marijuana for alcohol is good for your health.
Still, some experts not involved in the study worry that findings like these could encourage such behavior.
“I’d hate to see these findings interpreted as getting intoxicated on cannabis is better than getting intoxicated on alcohol,” said George Singletary, MD, an assistant professor of addiction medicine at the Tulane University School of Medicine.
The study employed an intricate experimental design designed to simulate a setting where people would be more likely to drink.
The bar lab at Brown University includes beers on tap, a selection of spirits, playful lighting, and a couch to lounge on.
.The study participants included 138 subjects, most of whom were non-Hispanic white and in their mid-20s. They were also already regular consumers of both cannabis and alcohol.
Participants smoked cannabis with three different potencies during three separate visits: 7.2% THC, 3.1% THC, and 0.03% THC (the placebo).
They then spent two hours in the bar lab with the option of consuming up to eight “mini-drinks” of their choice that would raise blood alcohol levels to 0.10g/dL in total. For every drink they did not consume, they would receive $3 as a monetary incentive.
Compared with the placebo joint, participants who smoked the higher-THC marijuana consumed 27% less alcohol. The lower-THC marijuana led to a smaller but still meaningful reduction of 19%. Participants also tended to wait longer before having their first drink after smoking.
The higher-THC marijuana produced a 48% longer wait — about 11 minutes — before the first drink, while the lower-THC marijuana did not differ significantly from the placebo.
Results were less clear when it came to how cannabis affected alcohol cravings.
The higher-THC marijuana appeared to suppress cravings immediately after smoking, but the lower dose did not. And when participants were shown visual cues intended to trigger cravings, such as a glass of water followed by their preferred alcoholic drink, marijuana did not appear to have an effect.
The findings are generally consistent with a similar study published earlier this month that also investigated how cannabis affected alcohol consumption, though with a slightly different experimental design.
Participants drank about 25% less alcohol and also reported lower levels of alcohol cravings after smoking cannabis, compared to when they solely consumed alcohol.
“The fact that both studies converged on basically the same finding (that cannabis is associated with reduced alcohol self-administration in the laboratory) is encouraging,” said Hollis Karoly, PhD, an associate professor of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, and senior author of that study.
Still, experts remain cautious about overinterpreting the results.
“We still don’t have sufficient data to fully understand the long-term effects of using cannabis as an alcohol substitute. The relationship between alcohol and cannabis may be different for different people and in different contexts, and much more research on this topic is necessary,” Karoly told Healthline.
For people who are trying to cut down on their drinking, is going “California sober” a better option? Cannabis may seem, at least anecdotally, as the “lesser of two evils.”
“Given the well-established first-hand and even second-hand harms associated with alcohol intoxication and dependence, it is hardly surprising that a growing number of consumers are gravitating toward an objectively less harmful alternative,” Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).
However, there’s little in the way of hard evidence to support substituting cannabis for alcohol, especially in individuals who are attempting to treat alcohol use disorder.
In other words, cannabis may reduce alcohol consumption in a lab environment, but in the real world, the interconnected usage patterns of cannabis and alcohol are far more complex.
“I would not recommend using cannabis to cut down on alcohol use. That type of recommendation would be premature and potentially risky,” said Metrik.
Singletary also points out that “California sober” is a vague term that may simply help conceal cannabis use disorder under the guise of a supposedly healthier lifestyle.
“The definition of sobriety is getting used in so many different ways, it muddies the water,” Singletary said. “‘California sober’ might apply to someone who drinks a single low-THC beverage per day or someone that’s smoking a high-potency marijuana cigarette five times per day. Those aren’t going to be the same type of patient.”
Whether being “California sober” is the right choice will likely depend on the individual.
“It does seem that cannabis can help some people to reduce their alcohol consumption, [but] cannabis is by no means a ‘risk-free’ substitute for alcohol,” Karoly said. “There is currently very little scientific evidence to speak to whether the ‘California sober’ approach is likely to be helpful or harmful in the long run.”
