If only it was legal, I'd happily replace my alcohol use with cannabis, and I don't think I'm alone in my age group. Not a big surprise that that yields improved brain health.
You don't have to replace alcohol with anything. If its self medication you should ask yourself or an expert how to lower stress with behavior or life style change.
Apart from that a better medication would be Ketamine which is also a NMDA receptor antagonist like alcohol but not as destructive to every cell in the body. Except your bladder.
I don't find the effects of the two substances to be at all comparable, except perhaps that both make it somewhat easier to enjoy low-quality and/or mediocre foods and entertainment. Otherwise, the effects on ability to e.g. think quickly, socialize, be motivated, and enjoy things that require e.g. fast attention switching and working memory are just totally different.
Obviously the effects of different substances for different individuals can vary profoundly, and alcohol for me is far superior in almost every way imaginable.
Which sucks, because the long-term and next-day side effects of cannabis seem so much less bad.
*if it does, this is just one study. That said, because it's not legal in many places, any health effects are understudied (not unlike hallicunogens). There's plenty of movements that push for more study though.
Anyway, it's legal where I live, I avoided it for a long time because of reasons but it tends to give similar relaxing / depresant effects to alcohol, minus the downsides.
I'm confident Big Alcohol is pushing hard against legalizing and developing cannabis. As is the government, because alcohol is heavily taxed and therefore a big source of income.
That said, when I walked through the main street of my city after dark, I thought replacing all the drunks with stoned would have been a major improvement.
Yeah if I were navigating a crowd of people and had to choose a substance for them to be zonked out on, marijuana would be near the top. Or MDMA, haha.
