‘Scromiting’: Cannabis-Induced Vomiting on the Rise, Researchers Say

For years, cannabis had a polished reputation as the laid-back plant that supposedly calms nerves, sparks snack cravings, and helps settle an upset stomach. Then reality barged in, kicked over the beanbag chair, and introduced a nasty little paradox: in some long-term users, cannabis can trigger repeated nausea, abdominal pain, and severe vomiting. And yes, in especially miserable cases, the vomiting can be so painful that people cry out or scream while it happens. That’s where the slang term “scromiting” comes from.

Doctors do not use “scromiting” as an official diagnosis. The medical term is cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, or CHS. It is a real and increasingly recognized condition linked to frequent, long-term cannabis use. Recent research suggests that cases showing up in emergency departments have risen in the United States, especially among younger adults and adolescents. In other words, this is not just internet drama with a dramatic nickname. It is a genuine medical issue with dehydration, repeat ER visits, missed work or school, and some very unhappy bathrooms in its wake.

What “Scromiting” Actually Means

“Scromiting” is a mash-up of screaming and vomiting. It is not the name of a separate disease, and it does not describe every person with CHS. Instead, it refers to the most intense version of the experience, when repeated vomiting is paired with severe abdominal pain and panic-level misery. It sounds like a horror-movie word because, honestly, it feels like one to many patients.

CHS usually follows a pattern. A person uses cannabis regularly for months or years, sometimes assuming it helps with nausea, stress, sleep, appetite, or all four. Then the body seems to flip the script. Instead of soothing nausea, cannabis begins to be associated with recurring waves of it. Over time, those episodes can escalate into relentless vomiting, retching, and stomach pain. One of the oddest clues is that many people feel temporary relief from hot showers or hot baths. If that sounds strangely specific, it is. It is also one reason clinicians now recognize CHS more quickly than they used to.

Why Researchers Say CHS Is on the Rise

The “on the rise” headline is not just clickbait doing cardio. Newer studies support the idea that CHS is showing up more often in emergency care. A large 2025 study in JAMA Network Open examining U.S. emergency department data from 2016 to 2022 found that CHS-related visits rose substantially over that period. The researchers reported that CHS increased from 4.36 per 100,000 ED visits in 2016 to 22.33 per 100,000 in 2022, with a peak during the pandemic era. The same study found that CHS visits clustered most heavily among adults ages 18 to 35.

Another 2025 JAMA Network Open study focused on adolescents and young adults ages 13 to 21 and found something even harder to ignore: ED encounters for CHS increased 49% per year in the study sample, rising from 160.4 per 1,000,000 ED visits in 2016 to 1,968.3 per 1,000,000 in 2023. That is more than a small blip. That is a giant flashing sign saying, “Maybe we should stop pretending this never happens.”

Why the increase? There is no single explanation, but several factors likely overlap:

1. Cannabis is more available

As legalization and commercialization have expanded, cannabis products have become easier to access in many places. More access generally means more use, and more frequent use increases the pool of people who could develop CHS.

2. THC potency is much higher than it used to be

This is a huge piece of the puzzle. Older generations often compare today’s cannabis to what existed decades ago as if it were basically the same product in a different package. It is not. Yale researchers have pointed out that the average THC content in cannabis seized by the DEA rose from about 4% in 1995 to 17% by 2017, while concentrates, oils, dabs, and some edibles can reach much higher levels. Translation: this is not your uncle’s mellow garage-band weed.

3. Doctors are spotting CHS more often

For a long time, patients with CHS were misdiagnosed with stomach bugs, food poisoning, cyclic vomiting syndrome, reflux, anxiety, or mysterious “abdominal issues.” Now that clinicians are more aware of the syndrome, cases that once slipped through the cracks are more likely to be labeled correctly.

4. Heavy, frequent use carries higher risk

Major medical sources consistently describe CHS as a complication of long-term, frequent cannabis use. Many patients report years of regular use before symptoms become obvious. That is one reason the condition can be so confusing: the person often believes cannabis is helping, right up until it very much is not.

What CHS Feels Like

Symptoms can vary, but the classic picture includes:

• recurrent nausea, often worse in the morning
• repeated vomiting or retching
• abdominal pain or cramping
• loss of appetite
• temporary relief with hot showers or baths
• symptoms that improve after stopping cannabis

Some people experience a long “prodromal” phase first. That means they may feel nauseated, anxious about vomiting, or generally “off” for weeks, months, or even longer before the full-blown vomiting phase begins. Then comes the hyperemetic phase, which is the rough part: repeated vomiting, dehydration, and often an emergency visit because the body runs low on fluids, electrolytes, patience, and dignity.

Why Cannabis Can Reduce Nausea in Some Situations but Cause It in Others

Yes, the irony is almost rude. Cannabis-based medicines can help with nausea in certain medical settings, yet long-term heavy use can trigger CHS. How can both be true?

The short answer is that the body is complicated and likes to humble everyone. Cannabinoids interact with receptors in the brain and the gastrointestinal tract. In the short term, some of those effects may reduce nausea. But over time, repeated stimulation may disrupt the body’s natural regulation of nausea, vomiting, pain signaling, and stomach emptying. Cedars-Sinai notes that cannabis can affect the digestive tract and gastric emptying, which may help explain why chronic use can eventually backfire in susceptible people.

Researchers are still studying the exact mechanism, so there is not a perfect, tidy answer yet. But the clinical pattern is well established enough that major medical centers now treat CHS as a real syndrome, not a myth cooked up by someone who hates dispensaries.

How Doctors Diagnose CHS

There is no single magic blood test that pops up and says, “Congratulations, it’s CHS.” Diagnosis is usually based on the pattern:

• long-term, frequent cannabis use
• cyclical episodes of nausea and vomiting
• abdominal pain
• compulsive hot bathing or showering for relief
• improvement after sustained cannabis abstinence

Doctors also need to rule out other causes of vomiting, which is why people may get labs, urine testing, imaging, or other workups. That step matters because CHS can mimic a long list of other problems, from infections and ulcers to gallbladder disease, pregnancy-related vomiting, migraine-related vomiting, or classic cyclic vomiting syndrome.

One reason CHS diagnosis gets delayed is simple: patients do not always mention their cannabis use, and clinicians do not always ask the right way. Some people are embarrassed. Others genuinely do not suspect cannabis could be causing the problem. Some are convinced it is the only thing helping. Unfortunately, that belief can keep the cycle going.

What Treatment Looks Like

If CHS becomes severe, treatment often starts in the emergency department. The immediate priorities are usually practical and unglamorous: rehydration, electrolyte correction, and symptom control. Traditional anti-nausea medications do not always work well. Some clinical references note that topical capsaicin and dopamine antagonists such as haloperidol may help in acute care, though treatment plans depend on the individual patient and clinician judgment.

Hot showers may provide temporary relief, but they are not a real fix. In fact, overdoing hot bathing can worsen dehydration or even cause burns. CHS is one of those conditions where the body offers a weird coping trick, then charges interest later.

The most important point is also the least flashy: the only known definitive treatment is stopping cannabis use. Not cutting back “a little.” Not switching strains. Not moving from smoking to edibles. Not making peace with a vape pen. Full cessation is the intervention most consistently associated with recovery.

Who Is Most at Risk?

CHS does not happen to everyone who uses cannabis, and researchers are still trying to understand why some people develop it while others do not. Still, the main risk profile is fairly clear. The syndrome is most strongly associated with:

• frequent cannabis use, often weekly or more
• long-term use over years
• heavy exposure to THC-rich products
• starting regular use at a younger age

Recent adult data suggest CHS shows up especially often in younger adults, while adolescent data show that teens and young adults are not magically exempt. That matters because younger users may underestimate the risk, especially when cannabis is marketed in glossy packaging that looks more like candy, self-care, or tech than a drug with real physiological consequences.

When CHS Becomes Dangerous

CHS is not “just throwing up a lot.” Repeated vomiting can spiral into serious complications, including:

• dehydration
• electrolyte imbalance
• weight loss and malnutrition
• kidney stress
• injury to the esophagus from repeated vomiting

Emergency evaluation is important when someone cannot keep fluids down, becomes faint, stops urinating normally, develops severe confusion, has chest pain, or shows signs of significant dehydration. This is especially true for young people, whose symptoms may be dismissed at first as a stomach virus, anxiety, or “something they ate.” Spoiler: the leftovers may be innocent.

Real-World Experiences People Commonly Describe

The experiences below are composite, reality-based examples drawn from common clinical patterns reported by patients and healthcare providers. They are included to make the condition easier to understand, not to dramatize it.

One common story starts with someone who uses cannabis to relax, sleep, or settle their stomach. For months or years, everything seems fine. Then morning nausea starts creeping in. At first it is brushed off as stress, bad takeout, or lack of sleep. The person may actually use more cannabis because it seems to help for a short while. That is one of the cruel tricks of CHS: the same substance that appears soothing in the moment may be fueling the larger cycle.

Another typical experience involves repeat vomiting episodes that seem to come out of nowhere. A person may wake up nauseated, start retching, and spend hours unable to keep food or water down. They may pace, curl up in pain, or stand in a hot shower because it is the only thing that softens the misery. The relief is usually temporary. Once the water stops, the symptoms often come roaring back like they forgot to pay rent and are now collecting.

Many patients describe frustration with the medical system before the diagnosis becomes clear. They may visit urgent care or the ER multiple times, receive IV fluids, get sent home, then return when the vomiting starts again. Some are told they have a stomach bug. Others are worked up for gallbladder disease, ulcers, reflux, or anxiety. It can take repeated visits before someone notices the pattern: long-term cannabis use, cyclical vomiting, hot showers, and no better explanation.

Young adults often talk about the disbelief factor. Friends may laugh it off because cannabis is widely seen as natural or harmless. Family members may be confused because they have heard cannabis helps nausea, not causes it. Patients themselves may resist the diagnosis because stopping cannabis feels impossible, or because they are convinced it is the only thing giving them any relief. That emotional tug-of-war is part of why CHS can keep recurring.

Then there is the recovery phase. People who stop using cannabis often describe feeling dramatically better, though not always overnight. Some improve within days. Others need longer for their appetite, sleep, and digestion to settle. A lot of them are stunned by how clearly the pattern becomes visible in hindsight. The nausea fades. The vomiting stops. The hot-shower obsession disappears. And the body, finally, stops acting like it is trapped in a very rude loop.

Perhaps the most important shared experience is this: many people say they had never even heard of CHS until they were in the middle of it. That lack of awareness is exactly why articles like this matter. You cannot connect the dots if no one shows you the dots exist.

The Bottom Line

“Scromiting” may sound like slang cooked up by the internet, but the condition behind the nickname is medically recognized and increasingly documented. Cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome is a serious complication of long-term, frequent cannabis use. Researchers have found that emergency visits for CHS have increased in recent years, especially among younger people. The pattern is distinctive: recurrent nausea, repeated vomiting, belly pain, and a bizarre but telling urge to live in a hot shower.

The biggest takeaway is not that cannabis causes CHS in everyone. It does not. The real takeaway is that cannabis is not harmless for everyone, and in some people, heavy long-term use can produce exactly the opposite of the calming, anti-nausea effect many expect. If someone has repeated unexplained vomiting and uses cannabis regularly, CHS belongs on the list of possibilities. And if CHS is the cause, the path forward is clear, even if it is inconvenient: stop the cannabis, treat the dehydration, and let the body reset.

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