The new findings could help guide clinicians whose patients express a desire to quit and report psychosis-like experiences associated with cannabis. Helping patients elucidate those experiences could help inform conversations about risk and plans to quit, he said.
Currently, “we don’t really treat people who have these kind of experiences. If you came to me, as a psychiatrist, and asked me why I’m getting paranoid when I use cannabis, I’d tell you to stop using cannabis,” he said.
“But people who continue to use cannabis have a higher risk of psychotic disorder. And we’re now finding out that people who have psychotic-like experiences when they use cannabis tend to be more likely to develop psychotic disorders. So if I smoke weed and I start hearing voices and become suspicious, it might be a marker for me to develop schizophrenia.”
Dr. Sami and his colleagues are continuing to examine, by way of an online survey, why people might have very different experiences with the same drug. The survey is open to all adults whether they use cannabis or not at thecannabissurvey.com.