PSA – Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome & You

Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional. I don’t play one on TV. I didn’t even stay at a Holiday Express Inn last night. This post is based on personal experience & research only.

HeyHey Sportsfans,

Shortform: If you or someone you know has been throwing up a lot lately, and smokes a lotta weed, this shit is for real https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabinoid_hyperemesis_syndrome

Longform: I smoked pretty much all the weed I could get my hands on from since I was 15 until I got hit with this shit. Reefer, as the late great Muddy Waters said, relaxed my body and eased my mind.

However, when I moved to the PacificNorthWest, and was able to get ahold of really GOOD, STRONG ganja on the reg, I started experiencing nausea in the mornings. Not every day, but at least once a week. It didn’t seem to correspond to my drinking or stress or anything else as far as I could tell. I then started throwing up. This got worse, and worse, and WORSE. It got to the point that, at its worst, I would experience repeated cycles of nausea, vomiting and exhaustion lasting about 30-40 minutes each for 4-5 hours. The only relief was in taking long, hot showers (but the symptoms would usually return afterwards). I would throw up everything in my stomach, then stomach acid and bile, then dry heave. It got to the point that I would drink warm water so I would have something to throw up. Real FUN STUFF, folks.

My regular doctor tried putting me on protein pump inhibitor drugs & other courses of treatment to no avail. After getting an esophageal tear from throwing up so much and vomiting up blood, I went to a specialist and had an endoscope. After the endoscope detected no abnormalities, the gut doc asked me if I smoked a lot of weed. I replied in the affirmative. He then said that he’s been seeing a lot of what I was dealing with and prescribed that I quit the reefer, immediately.

Now, seeing as how 1) weed had been seemingly helping my digestion for the past 20 odd years and, 2) the U.S. medical establishment has been complicit in publishing a slew of lies shat out by the pack of puritanical pudfuckers crafting U.S. drug policy & blaming cannabis use on everything from brain damage to poor dental hygiene, I was skeptical. Then, after reading the wiki page above and articles like this: https://www.leafly.com/news/health/what-is-cannabinoid-hyperemesis-syndrome from otherwise weed-friendly sources, I decided there might be something to this. So, after some false starts and backsliding, I quit for about a month and a half. The vomiting and nausea stopped.

Of course, being the inveterate bonghead that I am, I started smoking again. I have found through trial and error that if I watch my use, and smoke weed with low to no CBD (thank you WA state for your labeling regulations!) I can enjoy a bong hit or five in the evening and not feel like I’m dying later.

I apologize if it is out of line for me to be posting stuff like this so soon after joining the commentariat, as well as for my crappy formatting, word choice, etc. I just want to prevent anyone from going through what I did if possible.

Fume en bonne sante!