When my daughter was a college freshman, she was living at home, working, and taking classes toward her bachelor’s degree in psychology. She was always an artistic, extremely bright, and level-headed girl. Aside from the typical “bumps” in the road as a teenager, we enjoyed a close relationship as a family: going to church on Sundays, visiting theme parks, seeing movies, and traveling together often. All of that drastically changed after she obtained her medical marijuana card in the fall of 2022.
She believed the lie that marijuana is a helpful medicine. Many people today—not just “rebellious” teenagers and young adults, but average, everyday parents and grandparents—have bought into the false narrative perpetuated by the multi-million-dollar marijuana industry that THC can help and even cure various physical and mental health conditions. Our daughter had some anxiety and occasional difficulty falling asleep. She was in a year of recovery from an eating disorder. And she believed that weed would help her stay on a path to overall health and wellness. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
After just 4 months of smoking daily, our daughter became isolated, paranoid, and unable to leave the house. The worse her symptoms became, the more she smoked, and the worse she felt. It was a vicious cycle. She began to believe people were following her and hacking into her social media accounts to spy on her. She couldn’t sleep, often stating she could not “shut her brain off.” She experienced auditory and visual hallucinations so intense, she finally asked me to take her to the hospital to make them stop. Ultimately, she was diagnosed with Cannabis-Induced Psychosis and Cannabis Use Disorder. She had become addicted to weed, the “safe” drug that was prescribed to her by an actual neurologist, and it was destroying her brain.
Today she is living marijuana free, and her brain is slowly healing, but it’s a long and painful process. Essentially, marijuana changes the brain’s structure and function, making healing a very bumpy road. She is back to school and work but is taking everything very slowly. We are devastated by what this dangerous drug has done to our child and our family. But we consider ourselves very lucky, because she is alive and well. She hopes to one day work in field of the mental health and addiction therapy, helping others just like herself from going down the THC road to hell.
Cannabis-Induced Psychosis is REAL.
It happened to my child.
Educate yourself and 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.