Keeping the Balance

Are you in a place where you want to cut down or cut back on alcohol or weed use? In this episode, we go over some of the signs of potentially problematic alcohol and cannabis use, and how to keep everything in balance.

Transcript

Marissa: Welcome to the Last Call Podcast. My name is Marissa Whitaker and I'm the prevention educator at SUNY Cortland.

Sarah: And my name is Sarah McGowan. I'm the assistant Director of Student Health and Wellness at Onondaga Community College. Our jobs are to educate students about potential risks associated with substance use.

Marissa: We approach substance use from a neutral stance and our episodes are rooted in public health with a focus on science and harm reduction.

Marissa: On today's episode, we're going to talk about keeping the balance or when should I take a break from alcohol or weed? So, as a disclaimer, this is not an episode that's meant to diagnose. But if you do have questions or any of this resonates with you connect with your alcohol and other drug office.

Sarah: It's also important to note Mariss, that problematic use can look different from person to person and only you know yourself. So the bottom line is that if you think that your use is impacting your life in any way, it might be a good time to think about taking a break or cutting back. So let's start off with some quick statistics. So 14.4 million adults aged 18 and older have alcohol use disorder. So that is 5.8% of people 18 and older. So what we're going to talk about are items from the DSM Five, which is a diagnostic tool used by professionals in the alcohol and substance use fields to diagnose people who could potentially have substance use disorders. So the first sign that it might be a good time for you to cut back or cut down is if you're consuming more alcohol or spending more time drinking than intended. So that's pretty much speaks for itself. But if you start off thinking, I'm only going to have one or two drinks tonight, and then you go out to a party and you end up hounding back twelve pack, that is a little bit of a red flag.

Marissa: Something else that you might want to be mindful of is if you want to limit or stop your use but you haven't succeeded yet and sometimes it's really tough to say no. So if you're trying to reduce your use, let your friends know. Or if your friend lets you know that they're trying to reduce their use, be supportive of them.

Marissa: Don't say just come out for one.

Marissa: Or it's no big deal. It might be a big deal to them. You don't know their backstory or family history of alcohol use. So be really mindful if someone wants to stop their use or reduce their use, even if it's temporary.

Sarah: The next sign is if you are spending an excessive amount of time drinking or experiencing after effects of alcohol use. So this isn't just spending a lot of time drinking. If you're constantly hungover, you're unable to go to class, you can't meet up with your friends who aren't drinking, or you can't do other things that you want to do because you're recovering from a hangover. That's a big one.

Marissa: So there's also this misperception that everyone is drinking in college and that binge drinking is the norm. That's not the case. And actually, our campus data shows that the majority of students who do engage in drinking do it in a safe manner. We just hear about the ones who don't. Something else to be mindful of is having strong cravings for alcohol. And this doesn't necessarily mean you wake up in the morning and you want to flip a table. If you can't get your mimosa, strong cravings could also refer to, oh, I could use a drink after every minor inconvenience happens. If thinking about alcohol is the solution to cope with any sort of stress or happiness or sadness or anger, that could also be like a low key craving that we might not think about.

Sarah: So the next sign is if your alcohol use has resulted in difficulties performing on the job or at school, showing up doesn't always mean that you're performing well. So just because you're going to class doesn't mean that you're doing well in school. So a lot of the time you do have to spend extra time reading, studying. Those things do take up a considerable amount of time. And if you're drinking, it's impacting that or even on campus job. Any other employment that you might have that could be problematic.

Marissa: Something else that could be problematic is to continue drinking, even if it's causing problems with your family or loved ones. And this doesn't have to be a colossal problem. Sometimes someone's saying, how about you don't drink tonight? Or if every time you're drinking there tends to be a problem or an argument, those can also be problems too.

Sarah: Absolutely. The next one is discontinuing or are only sporadically involved with things that were once enjoyable or important to be able to drink. So a really good example of that is a student who was an athlete who gave that up to be able to drink or smoke weed. And then also if you're basing all of your activities on if you're able to drink or when you're able to drink, that is a good thing to kind of take a look at. If you're basing your whole day around how you're going to get alcohol, how you're going to party, it's also important to take a look at if you're basing your friends on whether they drink or not. It's really good and healthy to have friends from different groups and friends who have different interests in you. And if all of your friends are heavy hardcore drinkers, that is not a good sign.

Marissa: Also, if you've repeatedly been in situations while you're consuming alcohol that have increased the chance of being injured, for example, obviously driving, or if you're maybe caring for kids you're babysitting. Or also things that often are laughed about but could be serious, you wake up with bruises or a cut or a scrape and you're like, how did I get this? If that happens all the time, maybe you should work on how much you're drinking and make some smaller changes so that doesn't happen.

Sarah: Absolutely. The next sign is even though a person feels sad or distressed or it affects an already existing health problem, the person continues to drink. So we've talked about trying not to drink when you're feeling sad or depressed because that can cause negative outcomes. And most 18 year olds are not going to have cirrhosis of the liver, but scar tissue can kind of start to build and continue to build if you're drinking very heavily, and that can lead to cirrhosis.

Marissa: And the last thing that we're going to talk about is having to increase drinking to get the results that you want, which is science talk for your tolerance, goes up. So the usual amount of the alcohol that you're used to drinking doesn't provide the same result that it once did.

Sarah: The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the Ni AAA, says that low risk drinking for women is no more than three drinks on any single day and no more than seven drinks per week. And for men, it's defined as no more than four drinks on any single day and no more than 14 drinks per week. So heavy alcohol use, binge drinking, that's kind of where these guidelines come from. So even if you're drinking within these limits, people can have problems if they drink too quickly or if they have other health issues.

Marissa: So now we're going to switch gears to talking about signs and symptoms of cannabis use disorder or more. So when is your cannabis use out of balance? As another disclaimer to this cannabis misuse and cannabis dependency can be a little more tricky, but sometimes weed is a little more sly. How it can start from I only use sometimes. I'm using every day, so I'm using multiple times a day, and I can sneak up on people rather quickly. So, bottom line, all substances can be misused, weed included. The first thing to look for is if you're using more than you intended. So say you buy an 8th that's supposed to last you the week, but then it lasted the weekend. So when you're buying or using more than you initially set out to, that could be a sign that you might be misusing it.

Sarah: Absolutely. And another way that I see this in students quite often is if they have opportunities to smoke throughout the day when they've already told themselves that they're only going to smoke once that day. And then they're like, oh, no, I decided to smoke with my friend. It can also look like that as well.

Marissa: Yeah, the Opportunistic users, which I think is really interesting, that they might not even have weed, but the second that someone offers, let's go get high, it's like, all right, forget whatever else I was doing. The opportunity came up. So that's interesting. That's good that you mentioned that.

Sarah: So the next sign is difficulty controlling or cutting down on cannabis use. So this most often happens in people who only smoke when they're stressed, but then they get stressed about every little thing throughout the day. So we talked about other ways to cope with stress in our harm reduction episode, which hopefully people found to be helpful. Sometimes weed can also be adding to your stress, and that irritability can also look like, or can also be cannabis withdrawal. So when we talk about it being tricky at the beginning of the episode, sometimes those signs of withdrawal can actually be because of your use. So your cannabis might be causing you to be stressed, you're not able to deal with things with healthy coping mechanisms, and every little thing is kind of stressing you out. So this is leading you to not being able to control or cut down your cannabis use.

Marissa: Something else to keep on your radar is if you're giving up or reducing other activities in favor of cannabis. So similar to alcohol, what we said before, you base your activities around getting high first. So if you're used to playing sports with your friends, but now you're giving that up to smoke a blunt and play sports video games, maybe taking a look at cannabis's role in that situation is something that would be beneficial.

Sarah: Absolutely. And that kind of leads us into the next one, which is continuing to use cannabis despite physical or psychological problems. So some common physical problems, the obvious lung issues from smoking, memory loss, and then some psychological things are increasing. Anxiety, depression, mood swings. So we're not telling you that it's not okay to feel anxious or angry sometimes, because it is, it makes you a human. But if you're finding that you're feeling that way all the time on a regular basis, it might be a good time to reach out and get some help on what you can do to help manage that.

Marissa: Also, your tolerance to cannabis is really important. So needing more to get high. So we talked about taking a tea break on our harm reduction episode, but something else about tolerance that I think as more data becomes available, we'll learn more. If you're using a weed pen for concentrates, that's around 65% to 95% THC, what is that doing to your tolerance level when you go back to smoking flour, which averages around twelve to 25% THC, depending on, you know, what state you're in. So that's something that we don't always talk about when we talk about tolerance to cannabis. But your pinky toe is going to get high if you're used to smoking or vaping 95% THC and you switch to something much lower.

Sarah: Absolutely. The last sign withdrawal when discontinuing cannabis. So some common withdrawal symptoms are irritability, being unable to sleep or eat unless high. It's interesting because a lot of the time these are often the reasons why people start using cannabis in the first place. So when talking to college students, they'll say, I have really bad anxiety. I can't eat this cafeteria food because it's so awful. But then the same signs that they started smoking weed for are the signs that they're seeing that could be withdrawal symptoms. So it's important to ask yourself, do I need this or do I want this? Before your use can become problematic, because that can be helpful yeah.

Marissa: Especially with medical consumers of cannabis. Are you taking your medicine right now, or do you want to get high? And that line can be really blurry sometimes being very mindful of just what you said. Sarah, needing this or wanting this are two really different things.

Sarah: So just to kind of wrap up everything that we talked about, any substance can be misused, whether it's nicotine, whether it's alcohol, or whether it's cannabis. And a lot of the time with cannabis, we hear it's a plant. So how bad can it really be for me? But the bottom line is that anything can be bad for you when used in excess.

Marissa: Yeah. So if any of this resonates with you or you're concerned about your use, it doesn't have to be a huge concern, even minor concerns. You can come to us. We provide a non judgmental environment to discuss different options. We're here to meet you where you're at, and again, we don't diagnose, but we can talk with you about cutting down your use, limiting use, stopping use altogether, or even ways to increase responsible use. It's not just about stopping patterns, but starting new behaviors that are healthy, too.

Sarah: And just kind of closing everything up. If your life is being negatively impacted in one of the ways that we've discussed today, it might be a good time to start thinking about cutting back on your use. So feel free to come chat with us anytime, and we will be happy to help you find the balance.

Marissa: Cool. That is a great way to end the episode. Thanks for listening. Bye.