Learn how marijuana can interact with other drugs like alcohol, prescription drugs, and cocaine.
Marijuanaisn’t usually life-threatening on its own. However, when marijuana is combined, laced or mixed with other drugs like alcohol andprescriptions medications, marijuana use can cause several severe health conditions.
TheCenters for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)affirm thatmixing alcohol with marijuanacan cause more significant impairment than what is usual for either of these substances. When marijuana is combined with prescription drugs, this combination can change the way the prescription drug works in the body and exacerbate the effects of both substances.
Dr. Timothy Brennan, the Addiction Institute director at Mount Sinai West and Mount Sinai St. Luke’s Hospitals says, “There are literally hundreds of chemicals in the cannabis plant, including the psychoactive chemicals that give us the traditional marijuana high and chemicals that just happen to be in the plant.”
Brennan explains that these chemicals can interact with any other substance that someone is using. It’s difficult to determine why mixing marijuana with other drugs is so dangerous because research efforts are impeded by the fact that marijuana is still considered a Schedule I drug.
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