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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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).
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