Is Weed Making Us Crazy?
A doctor explains the wave of cannabis psychosis.
Friday, March 15, 2024
Time to read: About 11 minutes. Contains 2,820 words.
When someone who loves and believes in cannabis sees a headline about growing rates of cannabis-induced psychosis, we go through our own version of the five stages of grief. The first stage of Denial is a given—we’ve been gaslit by the US government for over a hundred years regarding the health benefits and risks of cannabis. Then comes Anger, at the journalist for cherry-picking anecdotes and the media outlet for demonizing this plant for clicks.
I’m not sure I can make this metaphor work for the Bargaining stage, but we definitely feel stage four, Depression, at this uphill battle of cannabis being taken seriously as a holistic, versatile medicine, and we ultimately sprint right past Acceptance to ignore those headlines and pretend we never read them at all.
The cycle must end, my friends.
That’s what I decided when I reached out to Dr. Adie Rae—an academic neuroscientist who has studied cannabis for 20 years and reads every white paper touching on the relationship between cannabis and our brains—to walk me through the issues of cannabis-induced psychosis, connection to schizophrenia, risks of heart attack, and the other generally intense associations covered by numerous mainstream outlets of late. I love this plant, I’ve seen its medical prowess with my own eyes, and I wanted to know whether all of this was just the clickbait I hoped it was or a real issue we have to accept and adapt to.
The reality is…a real mixed bag. Regardless, I’m compelled to share every bit of my conversation with Dr. Adie. Now is not the time to brush inconvenient truths under the rug. Information is power, and there are important, relevant takeaways from this surge in extreme articles about the negative impact cannabis can have on mental health. There are also some exaggerations, generalizations, and asterisks worth understanding as we dig into the studies and science cited. Let’s get into it.
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