Researchers at Brown University built a full-on fake bar, stocked it with participants’ favorite booze…and then handed out joints. I assure you, it was all in the name of science. The researchers were trying to figure out whether getting high makes people drink less. The answer, apparently, is yes. At least for a couple of hours.
Published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, the study found that people who smoked high-potency cannabis drank 27 percent less alcohol, while those on a weaker strain drank 19 percent less, compared to a placebo joint. Participants also waited longer to take their first drink, suggesting cannabis might slow-roll the urge to chase a buzz with another buzz. From personal experience, the two types of intoxication just don’t jibe with my brain chemistry, so I keep them separate.
What the researchers were really testing here is a buzzword you may have heard somewhere on social media: California sober, the cutesy term for swapping beers for bowls/joints/dabs/edibles/THC seltzer water/whatever-the-hell else way some madman out there figures out how to get weed into your system.
NPR points out that a similar Colorado study earlier this year found stoned participants drank about 25 percent less and craved alcohol less intensely. Put together, both studies suggest weed may tamp down drinking for many people, at least in the short term.
The researchers did their due diligence by mentioning the study’s blind spots, like how these were tightly controlled settings. After all, the whole thing took place in a laboratory dressed up like a bar, which will never be as comforting and cozy as a dank and dingy neighborhood bar, and it’s certainly nowhere near the same atmosphere as, say, a wedding bar or the bar at a work function. Different settings breed different interactions while releasing or tampering with different inhibitions, given the context.
There’s a lot more research to be done and a lot more patterns to be observed. For instance, in the Colorado study, a minority of participants actually drank more after consuming cannabis, which just goes to show that the individuals involved in the study matter a lot.
This study and others like it are all an effort to provide some semblance of guidance to people out there who want to have a good time with as few short and long-term negative consequences as possible. The problem is, for as much as we know about alcohol use, we don’t know nearly as much about marijuana. There are a few evidence-based recommendations out there. Maybe with more studies like this, health officials will be able to paint a clearer picture for people who want to get tore up every once in a while.
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