This is what smoking pot and drinking at the same time does to your body.

Image: iStock.

Even if you’ve never smoked week, you probably have friends who do — and there’s a good chance they do so while drinking.

This isn’t hugely surprising; besides tobacco, cannabis is the most commonly-used drug among alcohol drinkers. Go to any music festival where people are drinking and you’ll probably also catch a whiff of marijuana in the air.

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While we’re all pretty aware of the health effects of these two substances individually, until now there hasn’t been a lot of research into how using them simultaneously affects our bodies and behaviours.

A new report in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research compared data of concurrent (i.e. separate) cannabis and alcohol use with that of simultaneous use, and produced some interesting findings.

First of all, simultaneous use of the two substances was twice as prevalent as separate use — so clearly it's not just the cast of Skins who double-up on the regular.

Those who smoked pot while drinking also appeared to consume a larger amount of alcohol, at a higher frequency, than those who drank and smoked separately.

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This is all interesting, but there's probably one question hovering on your lips right now: which one was worse for your health? Well, the answer probably won't surprise you. (Post continues after gallery.)

The researchers found that compared to straight alcohol use, smoking and drinking at the same time doubled the odds of drink driving, tripled the risk of dealing with "social consequences", and made people more than twice as likely to encounter "harms to self".

In this case, "social consequences" referred to two or more items on a list which included things like work and relationship problems, while "harms to self" referred to negative consequences for work and family life.

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According to New York Magazine, the researchers recommend that in regions where weed has been legalised, distributors should "include warning labels communicating risks (especially regarding driving) associated with combining alcohol and cannabis on all cannabis packaging."

As cannabis is yet to be legalised here in Australia, it's not likely these warning labels will appear any time soon, so it might be worth just keeping this risk in mind. You know. If you're into that kind of thing.