Has cannabis ever driven you into psychosis, or nah?

Everyone seems to be getting high and not worrying about potential side effects. I am sure you've heard that you can't overdose on "weed" and that it's super safe. While cannabis does have a wide safety, the increased availability of high-potency cannabis products had spiked up the emergency room visits related to cannabis consumption massively, with a recent 2023 study from Canada indicating that cannabis-related ER visits have increased by 475.3% over 13 years. Cannabis-related ER visits often involve intense anxiety, paranoia, and psychomotor impairment.

But it can get worse. While some researchers believe you can have a psychotic episode from the use of marijuana and get over it in a few hours, others are convinced that marijuana contributes to the development of schizophrenia. What's really alarming is that if you do have a vulnerability to schizophrenia and you smoke weed, especially with a high THC content, your "high" will likely trigger a schizophrenic episode and advance this mental disorder. For people with a particularly risky COMT gene (especially the Val allele, the val allele has been associated with early-onset major depression, and others have shown that this variant may increase risk for panic disorders and anxiety) associated with psychosis, the risk of developing schizophrenia goes up by a lot, a six times kind of a lot, according to a study.

If schizophrenia is a bit of a stretch for you, let us talk about derealization. Derealization is a possible prodromal or concurrent symptom of psychosis. Derealization is characterized by feeling detached, not connecting to the world around you, feeling as if you're watching your life from the outside, that this reality isn't real, or that you live in a dream. This is actually super common. According to the Stanford University School of Medicine, 50% of the general population have had at least one transient experience of depersonalization or derealization in their lifetime, whereas 2% of people meet the criteria for having depersonalization/derealization disorder. But how many live with this unsettling feeling without telling others?

So, this "innocent" experience of "spacing out" or feelings of unreality while under the influence of cannabis could potentially flag a higher risk of developing more severe psychiatric symptoms later in life. Technically, it is best to not consume any drugs or alcohol until the age of 25, when the brain is done with its neurodevelopment. But how many follow this advice?

Do you relate to any of this? Has smoking weed ever felt like stepping out of reality? What has been your experience? Share in the comments.