EDITOR’S NOTE: “Dr. Sanjay Gupta Reports: Weed 8: Women and Weed” is streaming now on the NCS app.
It was a milestone birthday (you understand, one of those who ends with a zero), and I used to be reveling in Colorado’s beautiful pure magnificence throughout a weeklong go to. My husband booked dinner on my big day at a restaurant alongside the banks of the Roaring Fork River in Glenwood Springs, adopted by dwell music within the backyard of our historic lodge.
What higher night to attempt one thing I hadn’t achieved in many years?
My husband, Ben, and I had gone into a authorized hashish dispensary earlier within the day, an unimaginable choice again after we had been youngsters. In these days, you bought your weed surreptitiously from pals of pals and did your finest to not get caught. The stakes had been excessive: Possession of even small quantities might be thought-about a felony, leading to fines, probation or critical jail time.
I didn’t smoke pot usually in my youth and haven’t a lot since — weed simply makes me sleepy. What’s the enjoyable in that? So, when the budtender within the Colorado store requested for my order, I used to be stumped. I gaped on the 4 massive shows on the wall — much like menus in fast-food eating places — whereas she informed me how every kind of hashish would produce a completely different response.
“Do you want a body high or a head high?” she requested. I stared at her blankly. “Do you want to relax or be energized?” I defined my historical past with weed. I didn’t need to go to sleep, however did energize imply jittery? That didn’t sound enjoyable, both.
“OK, let’s go with a hybrid. You’ll get the best of both worlds,” she determined.
I walked out with a small canister of pre-rolled joints (thank goodness, as a result of my rolling abilities had been lengthy gone), and I used to be prepared for my birthday journey.
Dinner was scrumptious, nearly as delectable because the golden rays of sundown glowing over the river. Soon it was time for the subsequent chapter of my celebration. I pulled a small joint from the canister and lit up, inhaling the smoke into my lungs. “Hold it!” I informed myself, making an attempt my finest to not cough and failing. Channeling my youthful self, I took two extra puffs, holding these longer every time.
I handed Ben the joint. He took a hit, coughed and handed it again. I took one other one — or perhaps two? — and gave it again. He determined to place it out.
“I feel like a kid again!” I stated with a giggle as we walked into the lodge to vary earlier than the live performance. By the time we bought to the room, I used to be positively elevated. “Look, everything is popping out like a 3D movie,” I informed Ben. “Are you seeing that?”
Suddenly the enjoyable stopped. After a dash to the toilet, I spent the subsequent hour or so saying goodbye to my costly birthday dinner. I lastly stumbled over to the mattress, collapsing. Time handed. Or did it?
Ben leaned over and shook me. “Are you breathing? I can’t tell! I’m going to call 911.” I roused lengthy sufficient to ask the ridiculous: “No, wait, before you call, do a search: ‘Can you die from smoking weed?’”
More than a dozen years have passed by since that ill-fated night and looking out again, it’s onerous to consider I had no concept the times of sharing a whole joint to get a respectable excessive had been historical past.
Today, as the principle author masking marijuana for NCS, I do know ranges of THC or delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, the first psychoactive compound in hashish, have risen dramatically over the years — from roughly 4% within the Nineteen Seventies to greater than 20% at present.
“You can even buy cannabis in dispensaries that has a THC content of 35%,” stated Dr. Deepak Cyril D’Souza, Vikram Sodhi ’92 Professor of Psychiatry and director of the Yale Center for the Science of Cannabis and Cannabinoids in New Haven, Connecticut.
Cannabis concentrates, comparable to wax, rosin, shatter and hash oil, can have THC levels between 60% and 90%, and “even for products that are labeled, there’s some concern about the accuracy. That’s something consumers should be aware of,” D’Souza added.
The affect of that elevated efficiency goes far past a foolish, uneducated boomer mendacity on a Colorado lodge mattress worrying about dying whereas stoned. For a rising quantity of individuals, high-potency weed might be devastating.
A hyperlink to habit and worsening psychological well being
About 3 in 10 individuals within the United States who use at present’s stronger marijuana have cannabis use disorder, the medical time period for marijuana habit. One in 6 kids will turn into addicted when marijuana use happens earlier than age 18, in accordance with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA.
In reality, the chance of habit is four times higher when utilizing high-potency hashish in contrast with low-potency hashish, in accordance with a September 2022 review of studies.
Lower-potency merchandise are sometimes 5 to 10 milligrams per gram of THC, research coauthor Tom Freeman, a professor within the division of psychology and director of the Addiction and Mental Health Group on the University of Bath within the United Kingdom, informed me in an e mail.
People are thought-about hooked on weed after they have a robust, uncontrollable urge to make use of, have so as to add extra to get the identical excessive, maintain utilizing regardless of well being, work or social issues, and attempt to stop however fail. Daily or near-daily use is almost definitely to result in habit, in accordance with the National Institute on Drug Abuse. A household historical past of drug abuse and the size of time a individual has been utilizing marijuana also can play a function.
As use of potent weed rises, so do circumstances of marijuana-associated psychosis, in accordance with the September 2022 report. Psychosis is a loss of contact with actuality that may be characterised by listening to voices and having delusions. The danger of a psychotic dysfunction rose fourfold when extremely potent weed was used day by day, the research discovered.
That’s ironic, as a result of docs usually prescribe medical hashish for nervousness, melancholy, post-traumatic stress dysfunction or PTSD, and different psychological well being circumstances, D’Souza stated. Yet two recent analyses of current gold-standard research — one of which D’Souza coauthored — discovered utilizing medical or leisure marijuana for these circumstances didn’t assist in any respect. Weed additionally didn’t enhance different psychological well being circumstances comparable to anorexia nervosa, bipolar disorder or psychotic issues comparable to schizophrenia.
In people at excessive danger of bipolar or psychotic issues — comparable to individuals with family histories — studies confirmed the use of marijuana raises the risk of suicidal thoughts and growing a psychotic or psychological well being dysfunction. Using weed after the onset of a psychological situation can enhance the chance of relapse.
More frequent use of marijuana additionally damages the mind’s working memory, which might lead to issues with security, communications and work success, a 2025 study found.
Experts say marijuana use throughout adolescence and younger maturity is particularly worrisome as it will probably intrude with reminiscence, cognition and mind progress at a important time in a teen’s pure growth. Use throughout adolescence can “cause permanent IQ loss of as much as 8 points,” the SAMHSA website says. “These IQ points do not come back, even after quitting marijuana.”
Heavy use of marijuana by teenagers and younger adults with temper issues — comparable to melancholy and bipolar dysfunction — can also be linked to an elevated danger of self-harm, suicide attempts and death. According to a 2025 national survey, 8% of eighth graders, 16% of tenth graders and 26% of twelfth graders reported marijuana use up to now 12 months.
“Many people believe marijuana to be natural and therefore safe,” Dr. Robert Page II, a professor of medical pharmacy and bodily drugs on the University of Colorado Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences in Aurora, told me previously.
“It is a psychotropic medication, so it’s going to have psychotropic effects,” stated Page, who chaired the medical writing group for the American Heart Association’s 2020 scientific statement on marijuana.
“If you have underlying psychiatric issues, realize that you need to be transparent with your provider and let them know if you’re using this medically or recreationally.”
The dangers attain far past cognitive growth and psychological well being. Research over the previous decade has proven frequent customers of potent marijuana are in danger for strokes, coronary heart assaults, cardiac arrhythmias, coronary heart failure and myocarditis, which is an irritation of the guts muscle.
Regular marijuana customers are almost 25% extra more likely to want emergency care and hospitalization than nonusers. Weed customers who do go to the emergency room or who’re hospitalized have a 72% better danger of dementia in contrast with the overall inhabitants, in accordance with a 2025 study.
Pregnant girls who use marijuana to ease their nausea are placing their growing infants in danger. Past research have proven the use of marijuana throughout being pregnant is linked to low delivery weight, impulsivity, hyperactivity, consideration difficulties, and different cognitive and behavioral points in kids, in accordance with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There is even a connection to autism. Women who used weed throughout being pregnant had been 1 ½ instances extra more likely to have a youngster with autism, a prior study found.
Addiction to potent weed can also be linked to a weird dysfunction the web has nicknamed “scromiting” as a result of mixture of screaming and loud vomiting.
“They are writhing, holding their stomach, complaining of really bad abdominal pain and nausea,” Dr. Sam Wang, a pediatric emergency drugs specialist and toxicologist at Children’s Hospital Colorado, told me previously.
The uncommon situation is on the rise within the United States, consultants say, with emergency rooms seeing increasingly more recurring customers of hashish, together with youngsters, arriving for care. A 2021 study discovered a 29% enhance in visits to the emergency room since marijuana was legalized within the Colorado. More than one-third of the vomiting circumstances had been in individuals 25 years of age and youthful.
Science isn’t “out to get” hashish, consultants say. However, as increasingly more states legalize weed, researchers have been capable of research the well being affect of hashish in a actual world setting, and the findings aren’t all the time constructive.
For those that partake in low doses every now and then, there’s excellent news — the hazards of marijuana are most evident when individuals use day by day, or close to day by day. That doesn’t imply there isn’t any danger, particularly with at present’s extremely potent strains.
“While there may be thousands, perhaps millions, of people who use cannabis sporadically, in very modest amounts and do not experience adverse events, we also know of people who used cannabis a few times and suffered catastrophic adverse events that altered the trajectory of their life forever,” D’Souza informed me.
The dramatic rise in efficiency will not be clear to customers, consultants worry, particularly those that, like me, haven’t used weed in current years (or many years).
While a product label in a dispensary the place marijuana is legally bought would possibly inform a individual the “precise potency” of THC, that’s not essentially the case in unlicensed or unlawful shops. “People buying cannabis illegally may not be able to access reliable information about the potency of the product they are using,” Freeman stated.
In addition, sure varieties of hashish are sometimes a lot stronger than others, consultants say. Cannabis extracts, for instance, are sometimes stronger than hashish flowers.
While individuals do attempt to alter their consumption, “such as by adding less cannabis to their joint or inhaling less deeply,” these efforts fail to fully work, Freeman stated. “Higher-potency products still deliver a larger dose of THC to consumers than lower-potency products.”
I want I’d identified all this once I determined to attempt marijuana once more after years of abstinence. I’d have restricted my consumption to only one puff and really loved my birthday as an alternative of hugging a porcelain throne.
But perhaps it’s finest this fashion. After all, the story all the time will get a big chuckle at events — that’s price one thing, proper?
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