The debate raging around whether cannabis or alcohol is worse for you is one so fiery that you should be wary of reigniting it in public unless you’re willing to get burned. Apparently, humans become very attached to their habits and do not like to be told when their little comforts could be ruining their brain health, not to mention their overall health, financial standing, and relationships.
Dr. Daniel G. Amen of Amen Clinics and more is a rock-star psychiatrist with a massive online following. As usual, he bravely decided to remind us of some crucial facts. He began an Instagram video about the two damaging substances thus:
“Now, those of you who follow me know neither one are good for you. And quite frankly, there are more deaths every year from alcohol than there are from marijuana. There’s more domestic violence. There’s more drunk driving accidents. There’s more bad decisions, people ending up in jail.”
Most of us can probably agree that alcoholics are worse company, though stoner talk is enough to make a sober person hang a noose. The revered bringer of wisdom continued:
“Yet, in our brain imaging study […] where we evaluated 62,454 SPECT scans, and then we looked at how the brain ages, and then we looked at what accelerated aging […] both marijuana and alcohol accelerated aging.”
However, in that particular study, “marijuana was worse.”
Marijuana vs. Alcohol: New Questions About Which Is Worse for Your Brain
On their website, Amen Clinics states, “In an Amen Clinics brain imaging study on the drivers of brain aging that was published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, cannabis abuse, especially cannabis use disorder—one of the most common types of drug abuse—was second only to schizophrenia in accelerating brain aging.”
In addition to an overall decline in brain function and impaired memory, the endless potential consequences of marijuana include depression, suicidality, anxiety, and so forth. In fact, the clinic notes that high-potency use might be responsible for 10% of new cases of psychosis. These repercussions are constantly being confirmed by new findings.
Earlier this year, NPR reported that a new study by Dr. Lynn Silver found that teens who had admitted to cannabis use within the past year had an increased risk of being diagnosed with several mental health conditions a few years later. The teens’ risk of bipolar and psychotic disorders doubled, while their chances of depression rose by a third and anxiety by a quarter. For the second two, the connection appeared weaker in teens who were older when they used cannabis, suggesting how harmful it is to young brains and the development process.
More cases of “scromiting,” bouts of screaming and vomiting caused by cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, have been in the news and on the rise.
Returning to the topic of alcohol use, Amen Clinics lists lovely effects, like brain shrinkage and increased risk of heart attack, stroke, liver disease, cancer, etc. If you were unaware of just how scary the link between alcohol and dementia is, here’s a nice little fact, “Recent research suggests that people who are moderate to heavy drinkers are at a 57% increased risk of developing dementia.”
Of course, Amen Clinics advises eliminating or reducing your consumption of both marijuana and alcohol.
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