Quitting Weed When You Use Other Substances Too

Quitting weed when you use other substances too changes one thing above all: cannabis stops being the risky part. Cannabis withdrawal is unpleasant and rarely medically dangerous. Alcohol withdrawal after heavy, prolonged drinking is a potentially life-threatening process, and the same caution applies to benzodiazepines and other sedatives. If either of those is in your mix at a daily or heavy level, the safe plan starts with a clinician rather than with a quit date.

Everything else on this page is about the ordinary version of the problem: what order to stop in, how to tell which symptom belongs to which substance, and what to do about the fact that the substances tend to cue each other.

Sort the mix by risk, not by which one bothers you most

The instinct is to start with whichever substance you feel worst about. The safer instinct is to start by sorting what you use into two groups, because they carry very different risks on withdrawal.

Stopping abruptly can be medically dangerous. Alcohol, benzodiazepines, and other sedatives. NIAAA is explicit that people with severe alcohol use disorder may need medical help to avoid alcohol withdrawal if they decide to stop drinking, and that doctors can prescribe medications that make the process safer. This is not a category where you self-manage a taper off a blog post.

Stopping abruptly is uncomfortable but not generally dangerous. Cannabis sits here for most people. Is weed withdrawal dangerous goes through what the evidence says and where the real exceptions sit.

That sorting does most of the work. If your mix is cannabis and tobacco, you are making a practical decision. If your mix includes daily drinking, you are making a medical one, and the order of operations is: talk to someone first, then plan.

Together or one at a time?

For the substances where this is a genuine choice, the honest answer is that the evidence is thinner than the confidence with which people give advice about it.

What exists is mostly preference data rather than outcome data. In a survey of 357 young adults in France who co-use tobacco and cannabis, people using tobacco daily and cannabis 20 or more days a month were considerably less likely to prefer simultaneous over sequential cessation than the lightest co-users, with an adjusted odds ratio of 0.44. The authors concluded that simultaneous cessation appeared more acceptable to people with lower-risk co-use patterns, and called for research into sequential strategies.

Read that for what it is: it tells you what heavier co-users want to do, not what works better. No strong trial evidence establishes a best order. What it does suggest is that "quit everything at once" is a harder sell the heavier the use, which is worth knowing before you commit to it out of principle.

The same paper is a useful corrective in another way. Across both past and future quit attempts, the methods people most often cited were sport, cannabidiol, electronic cigarettes and nicotine replacement therapy, and the authors noted that the likelihood of using recommended cessation methods was low overall. Most people are not using the things with the best evidence behind them.

The tobacco case is its own problem

If you smoke joints or spliffs with tobacco in them, you are not really running two habits. You are running one delivery method that carries two dependencies, and quitting cannabis alone means either switching method or quitting nicotine by accident on the same day.

Co-use of tobacco and cannabis is associated with higher dependence and greater difficulty quitting, which is the finding that survives across this literature even where the cessation-order question does not. Worth deciding in advance rather than discovering at day three: if you stop rolling, are you also stopping nicotine, and if not, where is it coming from instead?

There is no evidence-backed right answer here. There is a difference between having decided and not having decided.

Which symptom belongs to which substance

Co-use makes the first two weeks harder to read, because the withdrawal lists overlap almost completely.

NIDA lists anger, irritability, aggression, nervousness, restlessness, decreased appetite, depression, insomnia, unsettling dreams, headaches, sweating, abdominal pain and tremor among cannabis withdrawal symptoms. NIAAA's own list for alcohol includes trouble sleeping, shakiness, restlessness, nausea, sweating, a racing heart and, at the severe end, seizures.

The practical consequence is not that you need to work out the attribution precisely. It is that a symptom you would shrug off as cannabis withdrawal means something different if you were also drinking heavily. Shakiness, a racing heart, confusion or any seizure activity are reasons to seek help the same day, not to wait out. What happens the first 24 hours without weed covers the cannabis-only version of that timeline for comparison.

The part nobody plans for: the substances cue each other

The strongest practical argument for dealing with them together is not pharmacological. It is that they share situations.

If drinking is when you smoke, then keeping the drinking keeps the cue intact. You are not avoiding the hard part, you are scheduling a weekly appointment with it. The same is true in the other direction, and it is why people often report that the cannabis quit that failed three times worked on the fourth attempt when they also cut back drinking — not because of any interaction in the body, but because the situation that produced the urge stopped happening.

You do not have to quit both. But if you are keeping one, it is worth knowing which evenings you have just made harder, and deciding what happens in them in advance.

A workable sequence

For the common case — cannabis plus tobacco, or cannabis plus moderate drinking, with no sedatives and no medical complications:

1. Name everything you use and how often. Not to feel bad about it. Because the plan depends on it, and the sorting step above needs honest inputs.
2. Clear the medical question first. If alcohol or sedatives are daily, that conversation happens before any quit date. Talking to your doctor about quitting weed covers how to open it without it becoming a bigger conversation than you wanted.
3. Pick the order and write it down. Either order is defensible. Changing it every few days is not, and that is the actual failure mode.
4. Protect the overlap weeks. The first two weeks of a cannabis quit are the worst weeks to also do something demanding. If you are sequencing, leave real space between the two.
5. Decide about the shared situations. The evenings where both substances live need a plan, not a resolution.
6. Use support that knows about both. A service that only addresses one will keep missing the thing that is actually driving the relapses. Marijuana addiction treatment programs covers what to look for, including how to ask whether a program handles co-occurring use.

When this needs a clinician

Say this part plainly, because polysubstance use is the case where a website is most likely to be the wrong source.

Get medical advice before stopping anything if you drink heavily or daily, if you take benzodiazepines or other sedatives, if you use opioids, if you have ever had a withdrawal seizure or delirium, if you are pregnant, or if you have a co-occurring mental health condition. The same goes for hallucinations, severe paranoia, persistent vomiting, or any thoughts of self-harm. Withdrawal and tolerance are among the criteria clinicians use to assess a substance use disorder, and more than one substance in the picture is a reason to have it assessed properly rather than estimated.

In the US, SAMHSA's National Helpline is free, confidential and open 24/7 at 1-800-662-4357. If you are in immediate danger, call your local emergency number.

The thing to take from all of this is not that quitting weed is harder when other substances are involved, although it often is. It is that the cannabis part is rarely the part that needs the caution, and planning as though it is can leave the actual risk unattended.

Sources

• NIAAA — Understanding Alcohol Use Disorder — alcohol withdrawal as a potentially life-threatening process, and the need for medical help in severe AUD
• Simultaneous versus Sequential Cessation of Tobacco and Cannabis: Preferences of Young Adults — co-use, dependence and quitting difficulty, and preference for sequential over simultaneous cessation among heavier co-users
• NIDA — Cannabis (Marijuana) DrugFacts — the cannabis withdrawal symptom list
• American Psychiatric Association — What Is a Substance Use Disorder? — withdrawal and tolerance as diagnostic criteria
• SAMHSA National Helpline — free, confidential support, 24/7, 1-800-662-4357