My experience is very different. I much prefer smoking dope to drinking, but mixing them–especially if the drinking started first–is a sure path to the vomitorium.
I don’t drink a lot, and I don’t smoke dope at all–it simply isn’t available where I liive, except in very rare circumstances. The last time I smoked was at a barbecue, after I had drunk 2 or 3 beers and eaten 2 hamburgers. I was not in any way drunk. Then a stranger showed up with a joint, and asked if I’d like to join in.
Now, before I left the US, I always preferred weed to booze, to the extent that if I had access to the former, I had no interest in the latter. I would have a drink only when it was necessary to be sociable. Well, here I am in a country that makes it virtually impossible to get high, but almost mandatory to get drunk. I had a couple of beers in me and a joint in front of me. What do I do? Well, I gratefully accept the invitation to join.
I had 4 hits. I then wobbled to the bathroom, and sat on the edge of the tub, waiting for what I knew was coming. After a few minutes, I disgracefully hurled the beer and burgers into the toilet. I stood up, rinsed my mouth with mouthwash, and felt great the rest of the evening. Not just okay, which I would have felt with the beer and burgers. I felt great, the way I can feel only when I’ve got some THC in my bloodstream. Without the THC, I would certainly have drunk 6 or 8 more beers, and would have felt bad the next day. Smoking a little weed made me throw up the alcohol (it never made me throw up if I had not been drinking), which left me with no hangover at all the next day.
In other words, though I’ve heard that pot helps calm the nausea caused by chemotherapy, it does not, in my experience, calm the nauseau caused by excessive alcohol consumption. In fact, it tends to bring it on. I’ve never puked after 4 beers alone–but after 4 beers and a shared joint, oh yes. More than once.
Everyone is different. I’ve known people who seem to thrive on alcohol, finding it to be a source of energy and confidence, while I find it debilitating and dissipating at best. Marijuana, on the other hand, makes me feel calm, clear-headed, and (though I hesitate to use such a word) spiritual–unless I mix it with alcohol, in which case it makes me feel sick at first, and then fine later.
My vote: cannabis alone. I never wanted a drink of alcohol when this was available. Second choice: nothing, or water, or fresh air, or some Enya music. Third choice, if needed: alcohol, in moderation. (Moderation isn’t really needed with cannabis, since overdose is virtually unheard of.) Fourth choice: Alcholol followed by cannabis, only because the nauseau induced by the combination will prevent the hangover caused by poisoning one’s bloodstream with alcohol.
Again, everyone is different. Also, I’m not a doctor. Still, I have experience with both substances, and if I have access to cannabis, I will never touch alcohol. Cannabis makes me calm and peaceful, sometimes “philosophical” and sometimes silly. It sometimes makes me want to dance, and it has never given me a hangover. Alcohol makes me reckless and loud. It sometimes makes me want to argue and fight, and always gives me a hangover.
Which is better? For me, there’s no contest. It has always baffled me that one drug, which commonly causes violence and pain, is legal, while another, which commonly causes calm and peacefulness, is illegal. If this is accepted here on earth as reasonable, I’m clearly not from this planet. And I want to go home, wherever that is.