It’s important for every parent to know: Cannabis-induced psychosis is not just a bad high—it’s brain damage.
My son started using high-potency THC in 10th grade, without my knowledge. He was a varsity hockey player, extremely social and so funny, academically strong, even taking college courses. His dream was to enlist in the U.S. Air Force.
Two weeks before his enlistment date, he stopped using high-potency THC concentrates to pass the entrance exam, and then bam, everything changed.
Seemingly out of nowhere, he began experiencing extreme paranoia. He thought I was after him with a 9mm gun. He had delusional thinking. In his head, he heard his senior class chanting kill…and his last name. He drove around with a crowbar in his car until the police were able to pick him up and bring him to the ER, but not before his extreme paranoia lead him on a high-speed chase from the police. He went to jail and then eventually the hospital.
We are a very close family. We know the normal ups and downs of teenage years—but this wasn’t normal teenage rebellion. This was something completely different, something terrifying.
There was no history of mental illness in our family. No warning signs from childhood. The doctor recognized it immediately and called it Cannabis-Induced Psychosis. She explained that the presentation was different from someone with a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia. Cannabis-Induced Psychosis is like an explosion in the brain. It’s abrupt, violent, and devastating. We thought it was a bad high that would wear off, but it was actually brain damage my son would never recover from.
The THC also damages a part of the brain that allows people to recognize the illness. My son believed his reality was real, and we could not convince him otherwise. I can only relate this to what I have witnessed in an Alzheimer’s patient, except that person was 90, and my son was only 18.
The only immediate way to stop the delusions was to put him on antipsychotic medications. Even today, years later, his brain has not healed enough to get off these medications.
Meanwhile, the marijuana industry continues to market their products as medicinal, but nothing is farther from the truth. Today’s THC products resemble nothing of the weed of the 1970s—they can be nearly pure THC—and young people’s brains are not equipped to handle it.
Parents need to know: one bad choice, one exposure to high-potency THC products, can permanently change your child’s brain.
Cannabis-Induced Psychosis is REAL. It happened to my child. Educate your child on the harms of THC at JohnnysAmbassadors.org
If you’re concerned about your child’s THC use, visit JohnnysAmbassadors.org/parents and join our private Parents of Children with Cannabis-Induced Psychosis (POCCIP) group at www.facebook.com/groups/POCCIP.