Cases of a bizarre condition, linked to chronic marijuana users and described by sufferers as excruciatingly painful vomiting – accompanied by agonised screams – are on the increase in America, reports CNN.
It’s a pain worse than childbirth, said one TikTok mother as she described bouts of uncontrollable vomiting.
Dubbed “scromiting” by social media due to the combination of screaming and loud vomiting, the medical name for the condition is cannabis hyperemesis syndrome, or CHS, and it’s on the rise across the United States.
Habitual users of cannabis, including teenagers, are showing up in emergency rooms complaining of severe intestinal distress.
“They are writhing, holding their stomach, complaining of really bad abdominal pain and nausea,” said Dr Sam Wang, a paediatric emergency medicine specialist and toxicologist at Children’s Hospital Colorado, who treats adolescents with the condition.
“They vomit and then just continue to vomit whatever they have in their stomach, which can go on for hours,” Wang told CNN. “They often say they took a scalding hot shower before they came to the ER but it didn’t help.”
Immediate treatment consists of anti-nausea medications and IV fluids to combat dehydration from the vomiting. But patients also undergo a battery of tests to rule out other causes: blood and urine tests, expensive CT scans, unpleasant upper GI endoscopy and gastric emptying tests, to name a few.
For some adolescents, those tests could be repeated again and again.
“For some of our kids, this is their fifth ER visit in the past two months, with symptoms that they can’t control,” Wang said. And if they wait too long to come in, the condition can be life-threatening.
“Regardless of whether it’s cannabis hyperemesis syndrome or another virus that makes you vomit a lot,” Wang said, “if you let it go too long, you can have electrolyte disturbances, go into shock and have organ failure. CHS is no different.”
Bizarre condition
Cannabis hyperemesis syndrome burst upon the medical scene in 2004, when a group of Australian researchers wrote about 19 chronic marijuana users who had repeated episodes of abdominal pain and retching.
The researchers followed nine of the patients over time and found symptoms went away when cannabis use was stopped but returned when it was restarted.
Oddly, more than half of the 19 reported using extremely hot baths or showers to self-treat their symptoms. As more and more cases of CHS began to appear, hot bathing as a home treatment became a recurring theme.
“It’s pretty universal for these patients to say they need a really, really hot shower, or a really hot bath, to improve their symptoms,” said Wang, who is also an associate Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
Why hot? “That’s not entirely clear,” he remarked.
Tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the main psychoactive compound in weed, has access to the body’s pain receptors, so one theory is that the distracting sensation of the extreme heat interrupts the pain cycle, thus easing symptoms.
To compound the strangeness of the disorder, THC and other cannabinoids in the marijuana plant have been used for pain relief – paradoxically relieving nausea and vomiting in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.
However, despite the popularity of marijuana as a painkiller, study results on its effectiveness have been mixed.
Still, why would the same compound relieve and also cause pain? Among a myriad possibilities: dosage levels. Wang points to the ever increasing potency of THC in today’s marijuana products.
“It’s been well documented that the amount of THC that now comes in cannabis is increasing substantially. In the 90s the average was 4% or 5%. Now in Colorado, it’s anywhere from 15% to 20%.”
Another mystery: not all heavy users of weed are affected by CHS.
“It’s not entirely clear who is predisposed to getting it,” Wang added. “Is it a certain frequency or duration of use? Is it a specific potency? Or is it a specific type of product? We don’t have those data.”
CHS is on the rise
Data show CHS is a national problem. Between 2005 and 2014 when only medical marijuana was legal in most states, a 2020 study found nearly one in five people who were admitted to hospital for cyclical vomiting in the US reported concurrent cannabis use.
After Colorado legalised recreational marijuana in 2012, Wang and his colleagues found more than 800 000 cases of reported vomiting due to cannabis in Colorado between 2013 and 2018. That’s about a 29% increase since legalisation, he said.
The study, published in September 2021, found the rate was highest in counties with no prior marijuana dispensaries.
A newer study, published in July 2025, found emergency room visits for adolescents aged 13 to 21 across the nation increased more than 10-fold between 2016 and 2023.
Yet another November 2025 study found the rate of CHS among adults 18 to 35 rose sharply during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 and remained high.
However, all of these studies have been limited by the lack of a medical diagnosis or insurance billing code to enable objective tracking of CHS. To do the studies, researchers had to compare medical records of vomiting with documented or self-reported cases of marijuana use – data that many people decline to provide.
That’s changed. On 1 October 2025, a US federal committee created R11.16, an official medical diagnosis code for cannabis hyperemesis syndrome.
The World Health Organisation did the same, allowing researchers worldwide to better track the condition. Experts say future studies will be more accurate, allowing researchers to shed more light onto this unusual condition.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Few benefits from cannabis for pain, anxiety, insomnia – US review
Is marijuana as safe as we think?
Trying out cannabis at a younger age in medical marijuana states