Alcoholism accounts for over 100,000 annual deaths in the United States due to drunk driving, terrible health complications like liver disease, suicides and others.
According to statistics, approximately 7,000 children in the U.S under the age of sixteen take their first drink, of alcohol, before their sixteen birthday. Craig Peters is just one of such children. He started binge drinking at around seventeen while still at college in Louisiana. What started out as loads of fun soon became barrier to him living a normal life. Craig was addicted to alcohol.
“I had it in mind that right after college, quitting alcohol would just be a walk in the park for me; after all, I’d have to mature out of the fast-paced teenage life and become more responsible,” said Craig, “However, after attempting to quit alcohol for over five years, it dawned on me that it was harder than I thought.”
Many people find it almost impossible to quit alcohol especially when the habit becomes an addiction, even with support. People have tried rehab, counselling sessions, but all in vain.
To Craig, this was a great interference to his banking career and indeed, he was helplessly watching it slip right through his hands. Worse still, keeping a relationship for more than a month had become a fairy tale to him because no girl matching to the standards of his ‘ideal type of woman’ – responsible, focused, and hardworking could bear to be around him.
Substituting alcohol with cannabis
It is not until Craig discovered the secret in cannabis at the age of 25 that he finally found a way to combat his long-standing problem. Immediately after starting to take it, he found it extremely easy to abstain from alcohol.
Cannabis dampens the desire for other harder drugs, which is certainly less impairing and less costly. Better still, it has no negative effects on the liver, brain or any other human organ.
While some people would regard marijuana maintenance as a situation of a lesser-of-two-evils that is, the substitution of dangerous alcohol with lesser dangerous cannabis, they miss the point of the inner peace that cannabis offers.
Quitting alcohol put my life back together
Craig says cannabis helped him to put his life together. After quitting alcohol, he was able to sober up and complete school and is now pursuing a successful banking career, happily married with a daughter. He never has to worry about hangovers anymore. “I am now past the stage of relapsing and can now do without pot.”
A study on some alcohol abusers using cannabis to beat alcoholism shows that it does fix the negative effects arising from alcohol consumption: nausea, headaches, and tremors, name them. Additionally, an overdose of cannabis is safer than that of alcohol.
Better substitute for narcotics
Alcohol aside, cannabis can also be used successfully as a substitute for other illicit and additive substances like tobacco, methamphetamine, heroin, and others.
Alex, an addicted smoker says she relapsed to smoking again after her cannabis supplier was arrested and so she couldn’t access it anymore. She admits that the cannabis had greatly reduced her smoking as well as she used to take it in moderation. It is because of the existence of laws against cannabis growing and selling that people like Alex are still battling with such addictions.
If cannabis is to be legalized all over the United States, just imagine the number of lives it will save, the broken families it will mend, the future it will help many realize.
It is recommended for individuals recovering from alcoholism to take medical cannabis as prescribed by their doctors since it isn’t addictive.
