UK: Under-25s turning their backs on alcohol, study suggests
86 replies, posted
Weed is not infinitely better, it is slightly less harmful.
If you enjoy the taste of IPAs then there's something seriously wrong with you tbh.
Cocaine in my circle.
But yeah, alcohol is falling out of popularity since other more fun drugs are so easily accessible.
MDMA is awesome but in my opinion it fucks with your brain too much for it to be viable as a complete substitute for alcohol. The effect on your brain's reward system is far more potent than alcohol's, and that could lead to serious psychological issues if abused.
I would have a night of MDMA once a month tops, so hanging out with friends every weekend would mean that I would still have to do alcohol once per four weeks.
Plus, I don't know about drug regulation in other countries, but over here I would be scared to purchase something stronger than weed due to rampant synthetic drugs that are essentially being spiked into the things we think are just MDMA and LSD. I find that really scary, and partaking in consumption of something regulated and legal feels far safer than cheap and potentially questionable unregulated drugs.
I've seen friends just eat shit after ket, I aint touching that shit.
there are ways to stay safe, like testing your drugs. though I can understand being cautious about it.
the article isn't all that surprising. everything I've tried is miles better than alcohol, both hangover and the actual high. rather be flying through a ghost dimension with some good ket than getting black out drunk that's for sure
I get high on life
Personally I like to unwind after a long day by enjoying the taste of a stout fifth of Everclear.
No.
Sorry, just no. Alcohol is by every possible definition significantly more harmful.
I mean, sure, but what's life if you can't enjoy a pint of Guinness™ at your local Irish bar every once in a while?
Guinness is one of the best beer in the world, fight me
I love alcohol but it really sucks when you drink too much. I'm reducing my consumption of alcohol just because it's more enjoyable when your tolerance is low and you just need one beer to get you tipsy.
TBH alcohol is overrated but I like it for different reasons than weed.
It's funny to me when people say beer is gross because they're not wrong, it's really an acquired taste but if you never try it of course you're never gonna like it. Also, there's good beers and shit beers too.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/ba/Development_of_a_rational_scale_to_assess_the_harm_of_drugs_of_potential_misuse_%28physical_harm_and_dependence%2C_NA_free_means%29.svg/220px-Development_of_a_rational_scale_to_assess_the_harm_of_drugs_of_potential_misuse_%28physical_harm_and_dependence%2C_NA_free_means%29.svg.png
It was a brave decision to make this chart, but I hope it illustrates my point well enough.
Yes, alcohol is definitely considered as the objectively more harmful drug. However, marijuana, especially now that 'adding a little something more for extra kick' is commonplace nowadays, can seriously fuck you up of you're not careful.
I was playing the contrast game on the phrase 'infinitely better'. Both drugs can fuck up your life, so you should at least be responsible for the shit you say on forums as it can affect people who are curious about drugs and haven't tried them yet.
"Turning their backs" probably means "not binge drinking at every opportunity". This is good to see.
I enjoy a beer every so often but I've never consumed that much alcohol, just didn't care for getting completely shiftfaced.
Could it be down to the idea there's more to do now than just go out and get drunk with your friends every weekend? It'd be hilarious if it turns out Fortnite led to the drop in teen drinking culture.
I have seen this chart posted more times than I can count in the past seven or so years and not once have I seen anyone scrutinize or even bother to explain the methodology used to create it. To me it always came off as a vast oversimplification of these drug's impact on society.
Gee, it's almost like consuming other drugs with cannabis can have a compounding effect.
Why?
Cannabis and its active compounds can induce anxiety in some individuals (I actually don't like it much for this reason), which can lead to uncomfortable experiences and in some cases, anxiety and panic attacks as they aren't prepared for, or expecting such an experience. Panic attacks from cannabis use can easily be mistaken for psychosis the same as any severe panic attack can be as well. This is why drug education is important. This is more a fault of the user not being careful enough than a fault of the drug itself. If you get potent cannabis extract, you smoke less, and if you have never smoked it before, you smoke as little as possible to see how you react to it.
Alcohol is metabolized into acetaldehyde in the liver, which, with repeated exposure can cause cancer and also causes collagen to build up in the liver, which eventually will lead to liver failure as your liver is slowly converted to scar tissue. Acetaldehyde is literally poisonous. Alcohol can also cause some of the worst withdrawal symptoms of any drug out there, comparable only to benzodiazepine withdrawals and other GABA-ergics. You can actually die from ethanol withdrawals (they can cause grand mal seizures) if you drink for long enough, and being a GABA-ergic, which lowers your inhibitions and anxiety levels, making you feel that everything is fine and dandy, it is very easy for people to delude themselves into believing that their alcohol intake is fine even when they are very much in the throws of alcoholism. It is absolutely accurate to say that cannabis is infinitely better than alcohol when you compare the two. The worst negative side effects one may get from cannabis use are panic/anxiety attacks, mild withdrawal symptoms from prolonged, repeated use (symptoms include trouble sleeping, lack of appetite and in some cases mild nausea, all of which disappear if one abstains from cannabis).
Note that I am not claiming that cannabis is a perfectly safe drug, it's not, no such thing exists, but there is no comparison between it and alcohol, and the majority of negatives that can come from cannabis use could easily be remedied with proper drug education and harm reduction.
Weed also relies on people doing it right the first time or people don't come back where as alcohol just works.
Hence my comment about the chart being a brave decision. It's a vast oversimplification.
Did my entire post go over your head? Cannabis today has far stronger and harmful effects in comparison to cannabis decades ago due to breeding and spiking. If you've got regulated access to weed, spiking isn't a problem for you. If you don't believe me or the article I've linked, ask any experienced toxicologist in any country about 'the drug situation'.
And I agree. I barely use alcohol at all and cannabis is my go-to. My point is that we shouldn't say dumb shit like 'weed is infinitely better than alcohol', which is how someone who's never used cannabis before gets the wrong idea.
Causal association between cannabis and psychosis
If I remember correctly, what the study explains is what the general consensus already is. Cannabis usage is not the reason behind individuals having a psychotic episodes, it's just part of a more complex system. If you're already prone to having psychotic episodes, then cannabis can trigger this. If you're not, good to go.
The interesting part of this study is how they claim there's a 8% increase in individuals becoming schizophrenic later in life when the user has a casual relationship with cannabis. I seem to remember that this was debunked in later years as those who tend to become schizophrenic later in life also tends to sway towards using cannabis / drugs in general.
Sorry for not mentioning this - I was basing my arguments off a study that links a specific enzyme (not everybody has it) to marijuana-induced mental illness (I think it was schizophrenia, could be psychosis though). I'll try to link it if I can still find the article.
Yeah, smoking in general will cause complications down the line if you do it often. There are ways to mitigate this luckily. Edibles is the obvious answer, but you also got wax pens for concentrates that vaporize the cannabinoids and terpenes which prevents both tar and carcinogens that usually comes along for the ride when smoking. There are also dry herb vaporizers, which as the name implies, is a vaporizer that you can use for regular cannabis. This has the same benefits as the wax pen. The only thing to be aware of while using devices like that is that at 205 celsius, benzene will start to vaporize which is a carcinogen. Which isn't too big of a deal because most of the active ingredients in cannabis start to vaporize below 195 celsius.
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