The Evolution of Marijuana: Not Your Grandads' Weed

We want to hear from you! Send us a question or comment.

Some of the information in this episode was taken from my good friend Ben Cort, author of "Weed, Inc."  If you want to learn more from him, please reference his Ted Talks:

https://www.ted.com/talks/ben_cort_what_commercialization_is_doing_to_cannabis

The modern marijuana landscape has undergone a radical transformation that few people fully understand. What was once a relatively mild substance with THC concentrations of 0.5-1% has evolved into a highly potent drug containing 15-30% THC in plant form and up to a staggering 90% in concentrates. This isn't your grandparents' weed - it's a completely different substance with serious health implications.

As competition drives dispensaries to create increasingly potent products, we're witnessing a marketplace-driven acceleration of THC delivery with minimal regulation. Unlike alcohol, which faces strict concentration limits and ingredient oversight, marijuana cultivation practices often include concerning chemicals and pesticides that would never be permitted in other consumable products. The result? A substance that's potentially more dangerous than many realize.

The health consequences are troubling. Recovery from marijuana addiction now takes longer than recovery from substances like methamphetamine or fentanyl, with normal cognitive and memory function potentially impaired for 60-90 days after cessation. Young chronic users face significantly higher risks of psychiatric issues including THC-induced psychosis. Perhaps most alarming is Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome (CHS), a painful condition causing violent vomiting that affects up to 30% of chronic users and can only be treated through complete abstinence.

What makes marijuana addiction particularly challenging is its gradual progression, allowing users to easily deny the connection between their use and life problems. If you're concerned about a loved one who uses marijuana heavily, especially if they began at a young age, understanding these modern realities is crucial. Reach out to me at [e-mail] or interventiononcall.com if you need guidance navigating this com

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Party Wreckers podcast, hosted by
seasoned addictioninterventionist, Matt Brown.
This is a podcast for familiesor individuals with loved ones
who are struggling withaddiction or alcoholism.

(00:22):
Perhaps they are reluctant toget the help that they need.
We are here to educate andentertain you while removing the
fear from the conversation.
Stick with us and we will getyou through it.
Welcome the original partywrecker, Matt Brown.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Party
Wreckers podcast.
My name is Matt Brown.
I'm your host.
I'm so glad you've decided totune in today.
I think that I'm probably goingto step on some toes by talking
about what I'm going to talkabout Certainly not from those
that listen on a regular basis,but if you've kind of come
across this as you've beensearching for a specific topic,

(01:15):
I want to talk today aboutmarijuana addiction.
I think that in the landscape ofaddiction recovery, this is
often something that gets reallyoverlooked.
It becomes less significant inthe face of methamphetamines and

(01:36):
fentanyl and even alcohol,which are kind of the big three
in the landscape of interventionright now.
In the landscape ofintervention right now, but as
I've done this for quite sometime, there's definitely been an
evolution of marijuana over thecourse of the last 20 years and

(02:01):
going back even further.
I want to start out by sayingthat the marijuana that's
available to people today is notthe marijuana that your grandpa
grew up with or that we grew upwith.
Our kids are smoking andingesting marijuana that's much
more potent and much morepowerful than anything that we
could have imagined.
Just to put a little bit ofhistory behind this.

(02:21):
If you go back prior to1970-ish, the days of reefer
madness and I don't know howmany of you guys I'm dating
myself, certainly by mentioningthat film, but that was the
first exposure that those thatweren't users of marijuana got a

(02:42):
glimpse, at least from apropaganda standpoint, of the
dangers of marijuana Back then.
The concentration of THC, andthat's really what we're talking
about.
When we're talking aboutmarijuana today, there's really
I mean, there's a number ofdifferent chemicals involved,
but the two main ones are CBD,which is really where a lot of

(03:06):
the good medicinal, valuablethings are coming from.
There's so much research tosuggest that CBD actually really
has a lot of benefitshealth-wise.
Also, it has no psychoactiveproperties.
You cannot get high from CBD,of course, the more popular
chemical that most people wantto focus on and if you're using

(03:30):
this as a way to get high,you're focused on THC.
And as many states and I live inOregon, one of the early states
to legalize recreational use ofmarijuana as many states are
starting to legalizerecreational use of marijuana,
excuse me as many states arestarting to legalize
recreational use.
What we're seeing, you know,since 1970, getting back to that

(03:55):
point, I got distracted therefor a second, but getting back
to that point, prior to 1970,the concentrations of THC were
really probably in theneighborhood of 0.5 to 1% of
coming straight off the plant.
As time went on, we started tosee those concentrations go up a

(04:17):
little bit.
By the time I was in full-blownaddiction in my 20s, and this
is 22 years ago.
We're probably talking about 5%, 4% THC straight off the plant.
Now here's where things startto get interesting Right around

(04:38):
2009, 2010 through 2014, wherewe first started seeing
dispensaries open for medicinaluse and then, of course, as
Colorado and then WashingtonState and then Oregon shortly
followed suit, started tolegalize recreational use.
Now what we have is acompetition marketplace for THC

(05:02):
delivery, because if I own adispensary and you own a
dispensary, we're in the sametown and we are competing with
one another for customers.
In the capitalist system thatwe live in, the only thing for
me to do to attract morecustomers than you primarily is

(05:22):
to increase the THC content ofmy product product.
You know, most of the timethey're not coming because I'm a
nice guy.
They're not coming because Ihave a nice store.
They're coming because myproduct is going to get them
more high than your product will.
And so what we've come to isthis idea that we it's not
legalization of marijuana, it'snot legalization of marijuana.

(05:44):
What we're seeing is amarketplace-driven acceleration
of THC delivery.
And so what's happening now, asrecreational marijuana use has
been legalized in many states,what used to be half a percent
or 1%, and then 4% to 5%, is nowanywhere from 15% to 30%,

(06:10):
depending on the strain,depending on cultivation methods
, depending on what kind ofchemicals were used to
accelerate growth.
There's all kinds of differentthings and there's nothing
regulated about it.
You know, when you look atwhere we've come from
prohibition with alcohol fromthe 1920s there are certain

(06:34):
limitations on concentration ofalcohol and there's certain
limitations on other things thatare allowed or not allowed in
alcohol.
Same thing with nicotine You'vegot nicotine being added to
cigarettes, to vapes, thosekinds of things to make it more
addictive.
But there are some regulationsaround that.

(06:55):
In the marijuana industry,there aren't any regulations.
Nobody can say, hey, you can'tuse these kinds of pesticides,
you can't use these growthaccelerators, you can't
cultivate this way, you can'tgrow it this way.
It's kind of a cowboy industry,and while on paper there may be
checks and balances, when itcomes to the actual enforcement

(07:15):
of it.
It's very, very limited.
I was listening to a talk by afriend of mine named Ben Court,
who is out of Colorado, and someof the data that he had
gathered.
You have the marijuanaenforcement and alcohol
enforcement in Colorado, and,even though marijuana

(07:36):
enforcement has a higher levelof staff and higher level of
funding than alcohol enforcementin Colorado, the number of
inquiries into quality control,those kinds of things it was
about an 80 to one ratio inalcohol versus marijuana
inquiries, and so you have thisentire department that's there

(08:00):
to enforce certain things onpaper, but the actual
enforcement is happening onabout an 80 to 1 ratio when
compared to alcohol as opposedto marijuana, and so that's
happening here in Oregon as well.
Up in Washington, many of theother states where recreational

(08:20):
use has been legalized is thatyou've got no limit on the
amount or concentration of THC,and so you're getting 15 to 30%
right off the plant.
Now, when you start talkingabout distillates and waxes and
dabbing and edibles and all ofthe concentrates and things like
that, we're seeing upwards of80 to 90% concentrations of THC.

(08:44):
Preston Pyshko PhD.
Now that number is staggeringcompared to where we were 50
years ago at half a percent, andso the unintended consequence
of all of this is that the ratesof addiction have gone up for
marijuana.
There's actually we're seeingan increase in overdose from THC

(09:06):
poisoning and I'll get intothat here in just a little bit
but all of these things wheregrandpa's weed was considered to
be non-addictive,non-problematic, we're starting
to see a shift in a verysignificant way away from that,
and as concentrations climb,rates of addiction go up.

(09:29):
As concentrations climb, ratesof addiction go up.

(09:53):
Bipolar borderline personalitydisorder.
We're seeing a real problemwith THC-induced psychosis.
Sometimes that's temporary,sometimes it's not, and what
we're finding is that the ratesof recovery from marijuana
addiction actually take a lotlonger than some of these other

(10:16):
substances, things that we lookat as being very dangerous, like
fentanyl and methamphetamine.
It's taking so much longer forthe body and the brain to come
back into homeostasis withmarijuana addiction than with
some of these other substances,and I think that's what makes
this so dangerous is that theperception is well, this is very

(10:38):
benign.
It's a natural plant, it comesfrom the ground.
Many of the people that Iintervene on, where marijuana is
the primary drug of choice,these are the things they're
saying to their family.
To kind of deescalate theproblem.
This isn't really that bad, momand dad.
It's just weed, it's natural,you know, it's completely
organic, you know.

(10:59):
And marijuana is the mostgenetically modified plant on
the face of the earth today.
When you look at how manygeneticists get involved, how
many different cultivationpractices have evolved to
accelerate the cultivation andharvest times, the THC
concentrations, how they'vemoved most of the grow

(11:21):
operations indoors to moreclosely control a lot of the
variables to produce a higherconcentration of THC, it's just
become much more scientific and,frankly, much more dangerous.

(11:42):
And as these other psychiatricissues are beginning to happen,
we're seeing the recovery timereally get extended.
We're not seeing people able toeven put their feet on terra
firma, mentally speaking, forsometimes 60 days, sometimes 90
days, before they can actuallyhave a return of somewhat normal

(12:06):
cognitive functions, normalmemory function.
Oftentimes short-term memorycan be impacted for months and
months after somebody hasstopped using Because of the
high concentrations.
The numbers are staggering andI really wanted to get this out

(12:27):
today to those families that arestruggling with loved ones who
have, especially a young man.
We're seeing it with youngwomen too, not in the same kind
of concentrations as we are withyoung men, but if you have a
son who started smoking pot atan early age and who's using

(12:48):
let's say, chronically, you know, four or more times a week, the
rate of potential psychiatricimpact goes up exponentially and
most of the time, with thepopulation that I work with,
we're talking daily use andoftentimes more than once a day

(13:08):
for them to be using marijuana.
This also goes for vaping, itgoes for edibles, it goes for
dabbing the higher theconcentration, the more
dangerous this becomes.
Now here's the other thing thatI think we're really starting to
see a shift in, and that is I'mgoing to try to pronounce this

(13:29):
correctly cannabinoidhyperemesis syndrome, and
basically what that is is anoverdose of THC.
Now, sometimes it accumulatesover time, and we usually see it
in people who smoke multipletimes per week over a longer
period of time.
So the effect kind of iscumulative in the body.

(13:51):
But ultimately what you havewith we'll just kind of
abbreviate it as CHS, cannabishyperemesis syndrome,
cannabinoid hyperemesis syndromeis that you'll see very intense
bouts of vomiting where,sometimes multiple times per
hour, people are vomitingviolently, dry, heaving, when

(14:15):
their gut is empty and theycan't seem to stop.
And it's not just vomiting butit's excruciatingly painful.
One person's account that Iread it said that she felt like
she had swallowed the sun.
That's how painful this was forher, and the only thing that
tends to bring them relief istaking very, very hot showers or

(14:39):
baths, and somehow gettingunderneath that hot water helps
the body to at least temporarilyabate some of the symptoms.
That so the upside and thedownside is that if somebody has
crossed that line and they'restarting to experience CHS, the

(15:02):
only long-term fix is abstinence.
They have to stop smoking pot.
If they don't, it will continueor get worse, and so the
prescription that most doctorsare requiring is abstinence from
marijuana use.
That includes marijuana use inall forms.

(15:24):
We're seeing most of the CHScases coming from people who are
inhaling marijuana smoke.
They're smoking marijuana, andthat's just because people who
use more frequently tend to useit that way rather than with
edibles.
Use it that way rather thanwith with edibles.
Um, but when I say inhaling it,I'm talking about the plant

(15:45):
itself, but also the waxes, uh,oils, those kinds of things
where it's inhaled andimmediately becomes active in
the system and and so it gets tothe point where obviously
there's dehydration, there'selectrolyte imbalances.
It's not something that's Idon't want to compare it to like
a fentanyl overdose where deathis eminent.

(16:08):
I think that's probably a littlebit of an overreach, but it's
becoming so common that they'resaying about 10% in some studies
they're saying even up to 30%of people who chronically smoke
marijuana are experiencing somesymptoms of CHS.
And so, as you have loved onesthat are chronically smoking

(16:31):
marijuana, those are the kindsof things that you want to look
out for, and I'll post in theshow notes a link to some of the
symptoms of CHS.
The ones that you're going tosee most readily are just really
intense vomiting and abdominalpain.
The other thing that they'resaying is that the normal
medications that they would givesomebody to help somebody stop

(16:55):
vomiting are renderedineffective, that this acts on
the body in a different way andthe normal anti-nausea
medications, things like Zofranor other medications that would
help somebody to stop vomiting,are not effective, with
somebody's vomiting because ofcannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome
.
And so it seems a little bitparadoxical because in many

(17:21):
cases, especially with chroniccancer patients who are going
through chemotherapy, wheresometimes the doctors will
encourage marijuana use to avoidfeelings of nausea, it gets to
this point where it becomesparadoxical and it actually
becomes the reason that peoplebecome violently nauseous and

(17:41):
violently ill and in a lot ofpain.
They're not exactly sure whythis is.
As I was doing some research forthis episode, I came across a
number of different theories.
Some of them conflicted withone another, but at the end of
the day, there's a lot of voicestrying to pinpoint why this is

(18:02):
happening.
But because of the way that thecannabinoid system in the body
works, uh, they're they're notreally able to say other than
the fact that it's an overdose,uh, from the, from the THC
molecule, and that the onlything to really that can be done
about it is to stop smoking orstop ingesting marijuana

(18:25):
altogether, not just smoking.
So I wanted to bring that tolight today.
I don't want to belabor it, butit's something that's come up
on the intervention on call,family calls.
It's something that comes up insome of the practice that I've
had privately as an.
It's something that comes up'scultivated in a very scientific

(19:01):
way with a ton of chemicals thataren't even fit for topical use
on animals, and thesepesticides are being used on
plants that are being lit onfire and inhaled, and these
chemicals ride along with them.
There's so many different thingsthat are happening that are
just going completely unchecked,and I'm not against adults who

(19:27):
are informed, who are not of theilk that I am, when it comes to
some of that addictivepersonality, that addictive
mindset, that addictive makeup.
By and large, most people whouse marijuana are not going to
become addicted to it in the waythat I was addicted to
substances, but for those thatare, I think it's one of the
most dangerous substances outthere, because we can lie to

(19:49):
ourselves so much more andbelieve the lie, whereas with
methamphetamines I knew exactlywhat the cause of my problems
were.
I didn't want to admit it tomyself, but I knew that they
were contributory to theproblems that I was having With
somebody chronically smokingmarijuana for 10 or more years.
It's very easy for us to say,oh well, I didn't lose my job

(20:10):
because I smoked pot, I've beensmoking pot for 10 years.
I didn't lose my relationshipbecause I've been smoking pot.
That happened over a muchlonger period of time.
But if we can look at it withhonest eyes, we can generally
start to see that there areconsequences from marijuana use,
that we can draw a straightline between marijuana use and
those consequences, and so Ihope that if you have opinions

(20:33):
on this, you'll reach out.
I would love to hear.
I hope that at one point herein the near future I can get Ben
Cort on here and actuallyinterview him and provide you
guys with much more data onexactly what's going on.
He works with a number ofdifferent nonprofits and a
number of different instituteswhere they're actively trying to
pass legislation that willsomehow implement limits on THC

(21:02):
concentrations.
That was the word I was lookingfor, and he's just done much
more research than I have onthis, but I wanted to at least
get the conversation startedtoday.
I would love to hear yourfeedback.
If you have questions, if youhave comments, please reach out
to me.
The email is matt atpartyrecordscom.
If you have comments, pleasereach out to me.
The email is matt atpartyrecordscom.
If you have a loved one who'sstruggling, I would be more than

(21:24):
happy to talk to you about that.
You can always book a sessionwith me at interventiononcallcom
or you can reach out to me.
Like I said, the email is mattat partyrecordscom.
Love to hear from you.
Until then, I hope your lovedone will get sober and stay
sober.
Thanks for your time.

Speaker 1 (21:44):
Until then, I hope your loved one will get sober
and stay sober.
Thanks for your time To learnmore or to ask us a question we
can answer in a future episode.
Please visit us atPartyWreckerscom and remember

(22:10):
don't enable addiction ever.