Which Is More Harmful: Caffeine VS. Cannabis

Most people would say they would never give their lives way to drugs. I say LIES and in this article, I will tell you why.

Do you enjoy caffeine? Can you live without it? Are you addicted to it? Cannabis and caffeine are similar in some ways.  I once told someone that caffeine was a drug itself and they just laughed at me because they did not believe that soda, energy drinks, coffee, tea and even chocolate contains this powerful drug or that it was a drug itself. It is the world’s most widely consumed and unregulated psychoactive drug and many would assume it is safe.

A psychoactive drug, or psychotropic is a chemical substance that changes brain function and results in alterations in perception, mood, or consciousness
Caffeine is a central nervous system stimulant. Your central nervous system includes your brain, spinal cord, and the other nerves in your body. Caffeine’s main effect on your body is to make you feel more awake.

Many of us can barely make it through the morning without first downing a cup of hot coffee. It’s become such a big part of our daily rituals that few actually give much thought to what it is that we’re putting in our bodies. Many would tell me they would get a headache if they don’t have their cup of coffee.

Then we have the soft drinks. Soft drinks are introduced at an early age by teachers, parents and other loved ones because they too have the addiction. Sold to you by what that box that tells you how to think known as the television. It is sold as a tasty treat to refresh you, cool you, and fortify you, when really it’s damaging you from the inside out. And it’s legal.

How many soft drinks does your child or yourself consume a day? I bet is many, many cups. It’s a must for every meal for most people.  Most people substitute water for soft drinks.

Soft drinks also contain another drug and substantial amounts of it as well, sugar! But I won’t go into details about that in this post.

We live in a world full of ignorance and in writing this, I wanted to shed light on how ignorant and hypocritical this world is. If you consume coffee, chocolate, soda and have an issue with cannabis enthusiast using cannabis then you are ignorant and a hypocrite. All because people believe in what others say what is and what is not safe and OK for you to consume.

Not only the people being ignorant and hypocrites, but the very government who want to condemn us for consuming a beneficial plant as cannabis, but then tells us what is safe for us to consume like pharmaceuticals and other bullshit. They only care about what is profitable for them.

Below I want to highlight the facts of both cannabis and caffeine and their effects.

Intoxication of caffeine

Caffeine intoxication is currently defined by a number of symptoms and clinical features that emerge in response to recent consumption of caffeine. Common features of caffeine intoxication include nervousness (anxiety), restlessness, excitement, insomnia, rambling flow of thought and speech, gastrointestinal upset, tremors, ta chycardia, diuresis, muscle twitching, periods of inexhaustibility, and psychomotor agitation. In addition, there have been reports of patients with caffeine intoxication having fever, irritability, tremors, sensory disturbances, tachypnea, and headaches.

Intoxication of cannabis

Marijuana can cause undesirable side effects, which increase with higher doses. These side effects include:

• Decreased short-term memory
• Dry mouth
• Impaired perception and motor skills
• Red eyes

More serious side effects include panic, paranoia, or acute psychosis, which may be more common with new users or in those who already have a psychiatric disease.

The amount and effect of these side effects varies from person to person, as well as with the amount of marijuana used.

From my personal experiences. I don’t get none of these, except the occasional short-term memory where I forget things like speaking in a conversation and jump to another topic and forget what I was talking about initially. But it always comes back to you. My perception is not impaired, unless you call a heightened or as I like to call it HIGH-tened perception, where you appreciate things more, impaired.

Deaths with caffeine

Withdrawals of caffeine

Giving up caffeine after using it for a long time is challenging because the body has to get used to functioning without it. Withdrawal symptoms usually start within 24 hours after the last dose – or even within 6 hours for people who consume a lot of caffeine regularly. The symptoms can last for around 36 hours, or even longer for people who consume a lot.

Initially, they’re subtle: The first thing you notice is that you feel mentally foggy, and lack alertness. Your muscles are fatigued, even when you haven’t done anything strenuous, and you suspect that you’re more irritable than usual.

Over time, an unmistakable throbbing headache sets in, making it difficult to concentrate on anything. Eventually, as your body protests having the drug taken away, you might even feel dull muscle pains, nausea and other flu-like symptoms.

Caffeine use can be associated with several distinct psychiatric syndromes: caffeine intoxication, caffeine withdrawal, caffeine dependence, caffeine-induced sleep disorder, and caffeine-induced anxiety disorder.

Signs and symptoms.

The most commonly reported withdrawal symptoms are listed below:

• • • Headache– (often described as being gradual in development and diffuse, and sometimes

• • throbbing and severe)

• • • Fatigue — (e.g., fatigue, tiredness, lethargy, sluggishness)

• • • Sleepiness/drowsiness — (e.g., sleepy, drowsy, yawning)

• • • Difficulty concentrating — (e.g., muzzy)

• • • Work difficulty — (e.g., decreased motivation for tasks/work)

• • • Irritability — (e.g., irritable, cross, miserable,

• • decreased well-being/contentedness)

• • • Depression — (e.g., depressed mood)

• • • Anxiety — (e.g., anxious, nervous)

• • • Flu-like symptoms — (e.g., nausea/vomiting, muscle aches/stiffness, hot and cold spells, heavy feelings in arms or legs)

• •Impairment in psychomotor, vigilance and cognitive performances

Withdrawals from cannabis

Now I won’t be biased, I am an avid cannabis smoker, but to the contrary, I don’t smoke everyday. There are days where I do smoke daily. But for me is not a dire need. I never had any withdrawals from cannabis in all my time smoking. I would wake up refreshed the next day and go about my day without the need  to smoke. But every person is different.

I  consider myself a person who has very strong willpower. There are many who don’t have a high (no pun intended.) willpower. I do know many people who do grow a dependence and that they need to smoke. I will go on further on why they need to smoke, further down this post.

From researching the web, I found that some people do get withdrawals. Here are some of the withdrawals of cannabis.

Although not medically serious, cannabis withdrawal symptoms can occur in one half of patients in treatment for cannabis use disorders. These symptoms include dysphoric mood (anxiety, irritability, depressed mood, restlessness), disturbed sleep, gastrointestinal symptoms, and decreased appetite. Most symptoms begin during the first week of abstinence and resolve after a few weeks

A bit similar to caffeine.

Medicinal benefits of Caffeine.

So what are the benefits of caffeine if used medicinally. Well scouring the internet in this research, I did not find much, but here is what I found.

Here are POSSIBLE health benefits.

Caffeine helps ward off Alzheimer’s.

Caffeine may prevent skin cancer. A new study out of Rutgers University found that caffeine prevented skin cancer in hairless mice. Another study showed that caffeinated coffee drinkers have less risk of developing melanoma.

Caffeine is shown to reduce liver fibrosis risk in patients with hepatitis C.

Caffeine helps those with asthma. A study published in the U.S. National Library of Medicine concluded that caffeine seems to open airways and help asthmatics breathe easier similarly to theophylline a drug currently used and one that’s a close cousin to caffeine. The study.

Here are the health benefits of consuming caffeine

• Caffeinated coffee cuts mouth and throat cancer risk by 50%.
• Coffee can reduce risk of stroke as much as 22%.
• Shown to reduce the risk of several types of cancer.
• Heart rhythm disturbance hospitalizations decrease with coffee drinkers.
• Coffee decreases risk of type 2 diabetes.
• Coffee Appears to Have Protective Effects on The Liver

Medicinal benefits of cannabis

What you see on these 2 charts are cannabanoids. Some of the compounds found in cannabis and each one has different properties. There are strains high in CBD and low in THC, which is the compound that produces the psychoactive high, where as CBD cannot. So you won’t get as high with those particular strains. I will go further on the cannabanoids on another post in the near future. 

It is been shown to shrink cancer with cannabis oil as well. Children are even using the oil for Dravet syndrome, which is a rare form of epilepsy. The potentials for this plant goes ignored because we are too ignorant to see the facts.

Cannabis has Uppers (Sativa) and Downers (Indica).  So in a way Sativa is our coffee as we feel much more energetic. Now having the black market that we currently have, we don’t know what we are getting. Which is why we should grow our own medicine.

In the end,we all have our choices and it is that or freedom to choose what we want to consume. I could care less that you consume your caffeine or whatever else you CHOOSE to put in your body. It is your body. Just like it is my body to freely put what I deem is good for me. We don’t need the government or any other person being our babysitter.

CHOICE is a beautiful thing. Without it we would all be following the same path, even though it seems like we already are.  Decision is what we are left with, but I will be damned if I will let you or a government decide what goes into my body.