I, and others that I know, have experienced “the spins”, spinning feeling, from consuming alcohol and THC together in varying degrees. Why does one experience this, and why do these substances cause it?
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Alcohol causes inflammation in your inner ear, which can cause vertigo, dizziness and “the spijns”. Also Blboth alcohol and THC relax you muscles including your eye muscles and coordinatin of eye movements. They also both affect the cerebellum, which is responsible for balance and coordination of movement. So that might be why combining alcohol with pot might have a more profound effect
Your body has three ways of measuring position and movement.
Your inner ear is coated in little hairs that sense the movement of fluid. Your eyes can see what’s going on. And your body can feel through touch.
With three systems, your brain is normally pretty happy as long as two of them agree. If you close your eyes, the other two systems still know what’s going on so everything is still good.
As others have said alcohol messes with your inner ear system. While your eyes are open your eyes and touch both still know what’s going on so you don’t feel too bad.
When you’re lying in bed and close your eyes, you now only have one working system, touch. Your eyes are telling your brain nothing, so it ignores them. Touch is telling your brain that you’re lying on your back. Your inner ear is telling your brain you’re on a rollercoaster, so that gets fed into the calculation and you feel like you’re spinning.
That’s also the reason why you feel mostly fine when your eyes are open, and horrible when you close them.
Interesting that both BPPV (benign positional paroxysmal vertigo) and your combo cause nystagmus (jerking of the eyes), which cops check for during sobriety checks.
The simple rules to remember:
Weed before beer, you’re in the clear
Weed after liquor, you’ll never be sicker
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I wrote a paper on this in college.
Your inner ears have little paddles in them that are surrounded by fluid. When your head spins, the fluid doesn’t move as fast as the rest of your head and those paddles bend. The bending of the paddle tells your brain that your body is spinning. You have three of those in each ear, and each corresponds to a different direction of spin.
When you drink alcohol, the density of the fluid goes down because alcohol has a lower density than water. The paddle density changes, but a lot slower. That causes the paddle to react to gravity (because it sinks) instead of spin, but your brain doesn’t know that. All your brain knows is that one of its spin sensors is going crazy.
The things to do are: get your head as vertical as possible to minimize the number of bent paddles, open your eyes (which are another spin sensor), and put a foot on the floor (which is yet another spin sensor). Also, grab a bucket. When your brain is getting different readings for sensors that measure the same thing it often likes to make you vomit. A lot.
I know a lot less about this part of it, but my understanding is that THC can be having an effect here too, either by altering the ability of the brain to coordinate the inconsistent information as well as changing the blood flow to the ears (and it’s blood flow that is responsible for the density changes in the fluid).
Am I the only one who actually likes the spins? I guess I was made to try every drug because I always like every effect they make on me, even those most people find unpleasant.
Haven’t seen a comment yet saying they like to ride out the spins. Anyone else? Your brain is giving you a free ride on a rollercoaster, why not take it?
I always just thought I was too high and the weed was too strong, come to find out i was too high and the weed was too strong
I’m definitely the outlier here, I love the spins. Nothing like closing your eyes and laying down and it feels like your whole body just got swept up and you’re spinning real fast.
Don’t get me wrong I hate the hangover, but the damage is done so I’m gonna enjoy what I can before the day of misery.
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