Smoking is the act of inhaling and exhaling the fumes of burning plant material. A variety of plant materials are smoked, including marijuana and hashish, but the act is most commonly associated with tobacco as smoked in a cigarette, cigar, or pipe. Tobacco contains nicotine, an alkaloid that is addictive and can have both stimulating and tranquilizing psychoactive effects.
The smoking of tobacco, long practiced by American Indians, was introduced to Europe by Christopher Columbus and other explorers. Smoking soon spread to other areas and today is widely practiced around the world despite medical, social, and religious arguments against it. E-cigarettes (vapes), an emerging form of nicotine delivery, differ from traditional tobacco products. Vaping delivers more concentrated nicotine than cigarettes in a smokeless inhaled mist (vapor).
There is a growing practice of prescription drug smoking, which has become a significant drug trend among socially active youth. It is associated with drug problems and symptoms of dependence net of frequency of misuse. Prescription drug smoking includes the inhalation of prescription pills through smoking or vaporization. The transition to smoking prescription pills is a significant act for young people in that it represents an escalation of drug use.
What is Xanax?
Xanax is a brand of alprazolam, a powerful benzodiazepine that is used to treat anxiety and panic disorders by decreasing abnormal excitement in the brain. The medication comes in the form of a tablet that quickly dissolves in the mouth, an extended-release tablet, or a concentrated oral solution.
Benzodiazepines can have therapeutic anti-anxiety, anti-convulsant, muscle relaxing, and sedative effects. Xanax works by increasing the effects of a brain chemical called gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), which promotes calmness and produces a relaxed feeling. The drug decreases the level of excitement in the brain to treat anxiety and panic disorders.
Alprazolam is among the most prescribed benzodiazepine drugs in the U.S. and is among the benzodiazepines most often found in the illegal market, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Xanax is often prescribed for mental health disorders related to anxiety. It can be used to treat general anxiety, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, and phobias. It can also be used to treat seizures. For people who suffer from anxiety, it can create a sense of relief to focus on their lives without issues of anxiety or phobias plaguing them. When used as prescribed, it can calm people down and make them feel relaxed.
Xanax can also reduce physiological symptoms of anxiety and fear, such as a racing heart or hyperventilation. These drugs are so often prescribed because they work well on anxiety and they’re cheap.
However, many people use Xanax for nonmedical reasons, taking it in larger doses or more frequently than prescribed because it can create a euphoric feeling, especially at higher doses. Xanax tends to start acting quickly after a person takes it, and the euphoric effects of the drug will usually manifest themselves within about an hour after taking it.
A tendency has grown in some social circles to view Xanax, as a type of “alcohol” in pill form. It’s become socially acceptable among these groups of friends to get together and share Xanax with one another. Of the 30.5 million people who used benzos in 2015, 17.1% misused them. Misusing Xanax or combining it with other substances like alcohol can amplify its effects, but the results can also be deadly.
Along with recreational use, many people rely on Xanax to deal with issues like situational anxiety without having to commit to therapy, which can be expensive and time-consuming. Xanax is popular in America, for example, because there is a tendency for people to love things that are looked at as a quick fix. Xanax isn’t a long-term medication, so some people “take it when they need it” for relief. The temporary relief they feel can help in a fast-paced world with constant exposure to negative world news, stressful jobs, and uncertainty.
What Happens When You Smoke Xanax?
Studies indicate that those who smoke Xanax often mix them with marijuana or tobacco before smoking, others simply inhale Xanax pills through smoking or vaporization.
Not much is known about smoking Xanax with marijuana, vaping Xanax, or combining Xanax with tobacco, but a new study has correlated a relationship between smoking or vaping nicotine with misuse of prescription drugs such as Xanax. Nicotine is the chemical in tobacco that makes it hard to quit. According to the lead researcher of the study, Alexey Ostroumov, Ph.D. of the Georgetown University Medical Center, nicotine exposure increases the desire to use benzodiazepine.
Smoking or vaping Xanax can also increase the chances of a deadly overdose. That’s because it’s much harder to determine how much you are consuming when you’re crushing up a few different pills and smoking them with tobacco.
Combining Xanax with marijuana or weed will produce an effect that affects how the drugs work. Both Xanax and marijuana are central nervous system depressants, which means they slow the messages between your brain and body. When used individually in low doses, Xanax and marijuana can lower anxiety and make you feel relaxed and euphoric. In higher doses, they can worsen anxiety and cause paranoia, sedation, rapid heart rate, and irritability. Combining the two may reduce the effects of each drug and make it easier to overdose on Xanax.
Possible side effects of mixing Xanax and marijuana include:
- dizziness
- drowsiness
- trouble concentrating
- slurred speech
- confusion
- slowed motor coordination
- impaired judgment
Smoking Xanax either with marijuana or tobacco increases the speed at which the drug reaches the brain. This results in a quicker onset of action that increases the likelihood of dependence and addiction. When this happens, the addict will seek for illegal ways to buy Xanax which often entails purchasing the drug on the street. Black market Xanax has been implicated in recent overdoses because most of them do not contain alprazolam but a far more dangerous drug known as fentanyl.
Smoking a Fentanyl laced Xanax can be deadly because it takes very little to produce a high with fentanyl. This is especially risky when people smoking fake Xanax don’t realize they contain fentanyl as a cheap but dangerous additive that is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine.
