Two mothers watched their sons spiral into marijuana psychosis. Their message for anyone who still thinks weed is harmless: this is nothing like the giggly paranoia of a stoner movie.

Amy from Connecticut and Linda from Montana returned to Fortitude, the Parent Action Network’s podcast, for a follow-up episode titled “Different Paths, Same Resolve.” Host Crissy Groenewegen first interviewed both women in the show’s second season.

Both sons started using marijuana as college freshmen in 2019. Today one is in recovery and working in psychiatric care. The other lives with a permanent diagnosis.

Amy described what families like hers actually see. “It looks like standing on a roof because you think you have wings,” she said. “It’s not just being a little paranoid.”

“In Front of My Eyes”

Amy’s son first called home in a panic, saying he was “stuck in a different dimension.” Campus doctors called it a panic attack. Over the next two years, ER doctors kept blaming anxiety.

In November 2021, he used a strain from a Massachusetts dispensary that he had told his mother he was afraid to try. That night, she said, “he basically, in front of my eyes, had a psychotic break where he became completely detached from reality.” He believed his family was trying to kill him.

He spent about nine months in untreated marijuana psychosis. When a hospital finally admitted him, a social worker called Amy within hours. “Your son has cannabis-induced psychosis,” she recalled hearing. “It’s very serious. We’re seeing it all the time.”

Marijuana Psychosis and the Push for Potency

Amy said budtenders steered her son toward the strongest products, including vape pens she believes topped 90 percent THC. When she posed as a customer with anxiety, a budtender talked her out of lower-potency flower. “They’re programming these bud tenders to push the most potent products, especially on youth,” she said.

His 2025 relapse started at a vape shop across from his university. Amy made her own purchase there and had police test it. It was delta-9 marijuana in unlabeled tinfoil pouches, kept in a suitcase behind the counter.

She rejects the claim that he was self-medicating a hidden illness. “This was him believing that something was safe and natural and would help social anxiety,” she said.

After repeated relapses, he now carries a permanent diagnosis. “His thought process literally hinges on an antipsychotic for the rest of his life,” Amy said.

The research matches her fear. A Danish registry study found 47.4 percent of patients with cannabis-induced psychosis later developed schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, the highest rate of any substance. In Ontario, an ER visit for cannabis-induced psychosis carried a 241.6-fold higher risk of schizophrenia-spectrum disorder within three years. The Canadian Medical Association Journal highlighted that finding last year.

Massachusetts, where Amy’s son bought from three dispensaries, voted on ending commercial marijuana sales this month. Question 8 fell short.

“Things Can Still Get Better”

Linda’s son, Kobe, flunked out of college after he started using. His father later spotted him outside a homeless shelter, “out of his mind.” In that first episode, Linda said, Kobe had six encounters with law enforcement in a single day.

A second episode took him to California. He got tased at a homeless camp and slept by a dumpster. Someone stole his car and everything he owned.

Linda credits a doctor who spotted cannabis-induced psychosis right away, plus firm boundaries at home. The family met with a life coach at least three times a week, and Kobe worked through rounds of medication. A mother in an earlier Fortitude episode described a similar cycle of relapse.

Today Kobe works at the same psychiatric hospital that once committed him involuntarily during his marijuana psychosis. He is now studying psychiatric nursing.

Both mothers still advocate with the Parent Action Network. Groenewegen said its Capitol Hill Day has grown from about 12 parents to 60 this year.

Linda’s advice to parents in the middle of it is simple. “You can still make things better,” she said. “Things can still get better.”

• People who visited the ER due to cannabis-induced psychosis are 241.6 times more likely to develop schizophrenia
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• Massachusetts Question 8 Falls Short, Sabet Says “This Is Only the Beginning”
• “This isn’t the plant that voters legalized a decade ago,” Mother’s Question 8 Ad Targets High-Potency Marijuana