California sober: what does it mean and is it good for you?

Cannabis, now legal in 24 states, is a $40bn industry in America. That may not be much compared to the $260bn alcohol market, but a shift is afoot. As booze trends down, with young people drinking less and beer sales in decline, sales of marijuana are creeping upward, and weed is becoming more mainstream – favored by senior citizens and stressed-out moms alike.

As its popularity rises, more people exclusively use weed – or, cannabis products with the psychoactive THC – as their sole intoxicant.

Offer them a glass of wine and they may decline, saying: “No thanks, I’m California sober.”

If you live in a country or US state where cannabis is legal, you may be considering the switch. Here’s what you need to know about being California sober.

What does ‘California sober’ mean?

The term has been around for years, but picked up wider recognition around 2019, thanks in part to media coverage.

The definition of “California sober” is relatively simple – using weed but no other drugs or alcohol.

Are you really ‘sober’ if you’re California sober?

The medical definition of sobriety is abstinence from intoxicating substances, so California sober is a bit of a misnomer.

When people identify as sober, they usually do so in the context of overcoming addiction to alcohol or other substances. Sometimes, people who say they are California sober (such as Demi Lovato, who identified as California sober in the docuseries Dancing with the Devil before later opting for total abstinence) mean that they use weed while attempting to stop using a different substance. They may not be “capital S” sober, but they’re using the California sober life choice as a method of harm reduction.

Is cannabis really harmless?

Cannabis can have harmful effects, including lung damage from smoking and possible heart damage. Experts often suggest people under 25 avoid it due to its potential impact on the developing brain. If you’re pregnant or breastfeeding, researchers say it can harm your fetus or newborn. Additionally, it should be avoided before driving, and by individuals with a personal or family history of psychosis, as it may worsen their condition.

Cannabis is also associated with impaired cognition, memory and psychomotor skills and cancer.

While it isn’t technically necessary to talk to a doctor before using cannabis, Dr Ziva Cooper, director of the UCLA Center for Cannabis, recommends doing so if you have any questions or concerns, and especially if you use other medications that the drug may interact with.

Weed overdoses, which occur when a person consumes beyond their individual tolerance of THC (age, health conditions and experience with the drug are factors in this), can be very unpleasant and involve extreme anxiety, vomiting and low blood pressure, but they are not life-threatening. But cannabis is essentially never an acute cause of death, while alcohol and hard drugs can be.

What do experts say about people with substance issues using weed?

Researchers I spoke to say using weed to wean yourself off or replace alcohol when you have a substance abuse disorder is inadvisable in most circumstances.

According to Cooper, data suggests that a significant percentage of people use both alcohol and cannabis. “Among those people, the frequency of use of one substance is usually associated with the use of the other,” she says. If you’re trying to replace alcohol with weed and you have developed an association between the two, “the cannabis by itself might actually increase cravings for alcohol,” says Cooper, which could work against your goal.

In talking about his hard-won sobriety, the Jackass star Steve-O has described how he refrains from smoking weed because of the way substance associations have a cascading effect on his addictive tendencies: “My weed bone’s connected to my booze bone,” he said. “And my booze bone’s connected to my coke bone.”

Dr Ayana Jordan, addiction psychiatrist at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, agrees that there are better ways to stop alcohol dependency than using weed, such as evidence-based approaches like cognitive behavioral therapy or FDA-approved addiction medications like naltrexone.

She does not recommend compulsive substance users who were previously weed-free to introduce weed into their lives to replace other intoxicants.

“Over time you can develop cannabis dependence. I have many folks come to me who’ve been using cannabis regularly, and they’re now having insomnia problems because they can’t sleep without cannabis. There are a host of issues that can be introduced as a consequence of cannabis use,” she says.

Can weed ever be a helpful tool for people recovering from other addictions?

However, Jordan is willing to accommodate certain scenarios where her patient is already consuming cannabis and wishes to maintain their current usage level while reducing alcohol consumption and incorporating additional addiction management strategies into their broader plan.

This approach isn’t going to work for everyone, she says. “However, there is room for conversation,” about how it could work for some. Jordan does not see cannabis as a “wellness tool” per se, but understands many people need a little something to help us get through the week. “We need to have adaptive coping strategies to deal with the stressors present in life,” she says. In the US, we lack the public health structures that promote health and wellness in other countries, like the accessible childcare and free community programming in Scandinavia, she notes.

Other physicians have a more pronounced stance on the benefits of going California sober even when in treatment for other addictions. Dr Peter Grinspoon, an instructor at Harvard School of Medicine, has written extensively about his “tremendous success” helping people transition from both opioids and alcohol to cannabis in his clinical practice. “I find cannabis to be particularly efficacious, because it can help treat or palliate many of the symptoms that may have helped incite and fuel the addiction to these other drugs in the first place, such as anxiety, insomnia, chronic pain, and trauma,” Grinspoon wrote last year.

Many people just find they derive benefits from using a recreational substance; intoxicants have been a part of human culture since time immemorial because they can make us feel good.

Matt Leaf, a 42-year-old music video director based in Vancouver, has found success in using weed as a form of harm reduction; after struggling with alcohol and harder drugs in his youth, he’s been California sober for almost a decade.

“If it wasn’t for having weed as a fallback – having something that I really enjoyed doing that could take away from being razor sharp sober all the time – I would have 100% gone back to drinking,” says Leaf, who smokes joints on days when he doesn’t have work, and before he goes on runs.

Are there benefits to being California sober as a lifestyle choice?

Many people who identify as California sober are not evoking a binary with active substance abuse; they simply use the term to denote a personal preference for weed and avoidance of alcohol.

Anna Li, a 29-year-old cannabis content creator based in Toronto, chose to become California sober three years ago. “When I consume cannabis, I’m more present and mindful and empathetic,” she says, compared with the anxiety and angst she experienced with alcohol. The absence of hangovers was a bonus.

Li sees a lot of people sharing their bad experiences with weed online – for example, saying that it makes them feel anxious or ill.

“Everyone’s going to react with the plant differently, just like how people react differently with alcohol,” she says. “There’s going to be a certain portion of the population that just isn’t suitable for cannabis.”

If you’re new to cannabis, experiment with dosage cautiously, she says. Cannabis adviser Sean Akhavan has suggested novices “start with the smallest amount possible to gauge their tolerance level”, such as edibles containing 2.5mg of THC. If vaping or smoking, a microdose would be one “hit”, or two-second inhale, followed by a 10-minute wait before trying another, he says.

Consumption methods can also affect your level of enjoyment. Edibles provide a different experience to smoking, but make it easier to control your dosage, especially when buying from a regulated dispensary. But advanced methods of ingestion involving cannabis concentrates, such as dabbing, create more extreme highs and are far from beginner-friendly.

Your intentions are also meaningful, Li says – consider why you are using weed and your relationship to substance before and while you use it.

It’s also important to note that alcohol and weed are non-equivalent; you might not simply replace an evening glass of wine or weekend cocktails with the same number of cannabis doses. “They are completely different products that create completely different experiences,” says Li, and whether they work for you in the same contexts depends entirely on the individual.

Is cannabis really healthier than alcohol?

It’s hard to say whether one option is healthier than the other for any single individual, says Cooper. She also notes the importance of knowing what is in cannabis products before you ingest them.

To some extent, individuals have to answer that question for themselves, taking both potential personal benefits and risks into account. What researchers know about cannabis is still evolving.

The harms of alcohol are well-studied and can be severe, with recent research finding that alcohol can cause damage even in small amounts. Excessive alcohol consumption was responsible for roughly 140,000 deaths a year between 2015 and 2019, and alcohol contributes to chronic conditions like liver disease, heart disease and cancer.

While there are many factors to consider, experts overall agree weed is safer than alcohol when used responsibly, with fewer harmful social and physical effects.

• This article was amended on 12 April 2024 to correct Dr Ayana Jordan’s school affiliation.