One TikTok mom described the bouts of uncontrollable vomiting she experienced after smoking marijuana, saying it was more painful than childbirth.
“I was crying and screaming and I thought ‘I can’t take this anymore!’ I hated my life,” she said. “I just begged God to make it stop!”
Dubbed “scromiting” on social media due to the combination of screaming and loud vomiting, the condition, whose medical name is cannabis hyperemesis syndrome (CHS), is on the rise in the United States. Habitual marijuana smokers, including teenagers, show up at emergency rooms complaining of severe intestinal discomfort.
“They were rolling around, clutching their stomachs, complaining of very severe abdominal pain and nausea,” said Dr. Sam Wang, a pediatric emergency medicine specialist and toxicologist at Children’s Hospital Colorado who treats teenagers with the disease.
“They would vomit and then continue to vomit the contents of their stomach, which could last several hours,” Wang told CNN in a previous interview. “They often said they took a scalding hot shower before going to the emergency room, but that didn’t help.”
Immediate treatment includes anti-nausea medications and intravenous fluids to combat dehydration caused by vomiting. But patients also undergo a battery of tests to rule out other causes: blood and urine tests, expensive CT scans, unpleasant upper endoscopy and gastric emptying tests.
For some teens, these tests may be repeated again and again.
“For some of our children, this is their fifth visit in the past two months with symptoms they can’t control,” Wang said.
If they wait too long to come in, the situation could be life-threatening.
“Whether it’s cannabis hyperemesis syndrome or another virus that causes you to vomit a lot, if you vomit for too long, you can develop electrolyte imbalances, shock and organ failure. Central hypoventilation syndrome is no exception,” Wang said.
strange situation
Marijuana hyperemesis syndrome burst onto the medical scene in 2004, when a team of Australian researchers documented recurring abdominal pain and retching in 19 long-term marijuana users. Researchers followed nine of the patients over time and found that symptoms disappeared after they stopped using marijuana, but returned when they restarted use.
Oddly, more than half of the 19 people reported using extremely hot baths or showers to self-treat symptoms. As more and more cases of central hypoventilation syndrome began to emerge, hot baths became a recurring theme as a home remedy.
“These patients generally say they need a very, very hot shower or a very hot bath to get their symptoms to improve,” he said.
The medical name for “scromiting” is cannabis hyperemesis syndrome. – ProfessionalStudioImages/iStockphoto/Getty Images
Why is it hot? “It’s not entirely clear,” said Wang, who is also an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Colorado.
Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive compound in weed, can contact the body’s pain receptors, so one theory is that the distracting sensation of extreme heat interrupts the pain cycle, thereby relieving symptoms.
Even stranger, THC and other cannabinoids in the cannabis plant have been used to relieve pain—and, paradoxically, nausea and vomiting in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. However, despite marijuana’s popularity as a pain reliever, research on its effectiveness has been mixed.
So why do the same compounds that relieve pain also cause pain? Among the countless possibilities: dosage levels. Wang noted that the potency of THC in today’s cannabis products continues to increase.
“There’s good evidence that THC levels in marijuana are increasing significantly now,” Wang said. “In the ’90s, the average was about 4 or 5 percent. Now in Colorado, it’s between 15 and 20 percent.”
Another mystery: Not all heavy marijuana users are affected by central hypoventilation syndrome.
“It’s not entirely clear who is susceptible to this virus,” Wang said. “Is it a specific frequency or duration of use? Is it a specific potency? Is it a specific type of product? We don’t have those data.”
CHS on the rise
Data shows CHS is a nationwide problem. Between 2005 and 2014, only medical marijuana was legal in most states, and a 2020 study found that nearly one in five people hospitalized for cyclic vomiting in the United States reported concurrent marijuana use.
After Colorado legalized recreational marijuana in 2012, Wang and his colleagues found that more than 800,000 cases of marijuana-induced vomiting were reported in Colorado between 2013 and 2018. That number has increased by about 29% since legalization, Wang said. The study, published in September 2021, found that counties with no previous marijuana dispensaries had the highest rates.
A new study published in July 2025 found that emergency room visits among youth ages 13 to 21 increased more than 10-fold nationwide between 2016 and 2023. Another study in November 2025 found that the incidence of central hypoventilation syndrome among adults ages 18 to 35 increased sharply during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021 and remained elevated.
However, all of these studies are limited by the lack of a medical diagnosis or insurance billing code to objectively track central hypoventilation syndrome. To conduct these studies, researchers must compare medical records of vomiting with documented or self-reported instances of marijuana use—data that many refuse to provide.
That has changed. On October 1, 2025, the Federal Council created R11.16, the official medical diagnostic code for cannabis hyperemesis syndrome. The World Health Organization has done the same, allowing researchers around the world to better track the disease. Experts say future studies will be more accurate, allowing researchers to learn more about this unusual condition.
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