Cannabis Vomiting Syndrome

Cannabis Vomiting Syndrome is officially known as Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome. This syndrome is characterized by recurrent nausea, vomiting and crampy abdominal pain.

While the use of marijuana (weed or cannabis) has steadily been legalized in more and more states of the USA, only now doctors and legislators are beginning to see the drawbacks of heavy, long-term marijuana use. They should have listened to the men and women who are in the frontline of drugs abuse in The Netherlands: marijuana isn't the soft drug some want us to think it is. It makes virtual zombies out of many a young adult and frequently will lead to onset of schizophrenia[1].

But America is the land of the free. So, the use of marijuana is now free too. Users claim that it is an effective treatment for nausea. It is, but just for a short while. If use for a prolonged period of time it will create the problems you thought it would treat.

It is certainly something that, before legalization, we almost never saw,” Dr. Kennon Heard said. “Now we are seeing it quite frequently.” He works at the University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora, Colorado and he and his team documented this rise in a 2015 paper published in Academic Emergency Medicine[1]. They studied 120,000 patient visits — half of which were studied in 2008 to 2009 (the “pre-liberalization” period of marijuana) and the other from 2010 to 2011. The doctors found that the prevalence of patients exhibiting cyclical vomiting doubled in that time period[2].

The symptoms of Cannabis Vomiting Syndrome can be stopped by stopping the use of marijuana, but that might prove more difficult than anticipated by lawmakers. Another option is to take a hot shower or bath. That will temporarily alleviate the symptoms.Until the water turns tepid.

[1] Frascarelli et al: Cannabis use related to early psychotic onset: Role of premorbid function in Neuroscience Letters - 2016
[2] Kim et al: Cyclic Vomiting Presentations Following Marijuana Liberalization in Colorado in Academic Emergency Medicine – 2015. See here.