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Cannabis Hyperemesis Syndrome Support Thread

Is this hyperemesis? I've thrown up twice from oversmoking, but it came and went quickly after vomiting. The first was my first 4/20, I packed a bowl of medical quality herb, packed it down, flattened a thick piece of bubble hash in a pancake on top, and topped the bowl off with a cm of kief. I puked before finishing the bowl in my 2 footer.

The other time I had eaten two whole hash oil edibles, each with 0.5g iso hash oil, and smoked quality herb on top, and I puked as the second one was being absorbed. My tolerance was high at the time.

From what I was told, it was because of too much THC flooding the brain, and the hypothalamus flips the vomiting switch on.

This happened to me the very first time I tried cannabis. It was two or three hits from a bong, and I didn't really feel high (or recognize the high I guess), but the first thing I did was go to the toilet and puke.
I though it was because I started salivating a lot, but I am intrigued by the hypothalamus theory.
 
Woe is me, and me is like whoa this sucks

Hey guys, I haven't posted here on BL since back in 2005 when I was in high school. You guys helped me through countless issues then so I am hoping I can find some support with you guys now. I was going by the username skylined back then. You can still see my immature trip reports in the archive as an eternal testament to my stupidity.

Now, as to the reason I am posting this I believe I have somehow "contracted" CHS from nearly 13 years straight of smoking every day. I average around 7g of high quality bud a week, so a gram a day pretty much. I also am a longtime opiate addict of around 12 years starting from hydrocodone, then quickly into IV oxycodone, hydromorphone, and eventually heroin. For the past 6 years I have been on Methadone treatment, 140 mgs/day.

I started having symptoms around 2 1/2 years ago. I would wake up with my normal opiate dope sickness, take my dose, then try to produce a bowel movement. On the days I would get really sick I would notice acid reflux when I woke up, also feeling like I was filled with gas. I would usually sit on the toilet and get increasingly more and more nauseous as I wait for some kind of relief. Then the waves of nausea and dry heaving start.

Usually when I feel it coming I have learned that hot showers aide the nausea waves and make them less intense (but still incredibly bad). I will usually curl up in the fetal position on the floor of the shower as I let the scalding hot water comfort me as much as it can while I beg God for mercy and wait for it all to end. Normally I have to stay until the shower until the waves are less violent, or I feel good enough to try to crawl back in bed.

My body is sweating so profusely that I can literally soak my shirt, socks, boxers and all in about 1-2 min. I mean the sweat literally pours out of me like nothing I have ever experienced before in all of my years of opiate withdrawal hell. As I lay on the shower floor I try to sip on my water bottle as much as I can so I don't completely dehydrate. God knows what this is doing to my body when I go through this.

This whole process goes on for about 4-5 hours. When I go from the shower to the bed I usually curl up in my sheets and try to fall back asleep. I just lay there with a trash can next to the bed, then lean over and dry heave until the waves subside and I fall asleep. When I wake up I usually feel better.

For the longest time I had no idea what was causing this and could not find any answers on the subject. Naturally, I believed it was related to the Methadone since opiates and nausea go hand in hand together, but no one at the clinic or in my circle of friends had ever experienced the same symptoms. One of my friend who has Crohn's disease had symptoms that kind of matched up, but not exactly.

I was getting my girlfriend to let me use her urine at the clinic in order to continue to get my dose and still be able to smoke. That all stopped around a year ago when they started adding temperature strips and doing random observed tests. They caught me trying to sub my urine, so nevertheless I had to eventually stop smoking. I wanted to smoke, but I absolutely needed the methadone in order to function.

So I stopped smoking and after about a month, the insane nausea waves stopped as well. I didn't smoke for around 8 months, until I finally couldn't take it anymore and ended up getting high, failing drug tests, and eventually left the clinic. Now I have been smoking about 2 months and the other day I got sick again. I started searching on the Internet and found out about CHS, and now I really am freaking out.

I refuse to believe that my favorite plant in the whole wide world would turn on me like this. There has to be some kind of cure out there, aside from abstinence. Marijuana is the only thing that makes me want to get out of bed anymore, and now it is damn near killing me? What kind of sick ironic punishment is this?

I would have gone to a doctor a long time ago, but alas, no health insurance. I kept getting sick about once a week and not knowing what the hell is wrong with me. I can't keep a job, my girlfriend is about sick and tired of trying to take care of me. She goes to the clinic too, but she has never been quite the addict that I have so she does not understand my overwhelming compulsion to continue use a drug that would make me so sick.

I'm sure it won't be long until she gets tired of the helpless addict that I am and my self-destructive behavior, but I kind of expected that after all I have put her through.

So yeah, I know this is not very well written...its 3 am and I'm tired, but I'm almost afraid to go to sleep. I never know if tomorrow is going to be the day that I will have to endure mental and physical torture for hours again. I am very grateful to not be worse off than I am. There are many people out there with much worse afflictions than this, but this is by no means a cake walk. But I can't help but ask the question: why me?

Any thoughts? Suggestions? Remedies?
 
So I really found the stories on here so helpful while I overcame CHS, so I felt like posting my story is the least I could do for those suffering.

So my relationship with weed started when i was about 16 years old. At first, I would only do edibles and maybe only like two or three a week. That went on for about 8 months. And then i started to do edibles or smoking about 5 times a week and that lasted for a year. Then (at this point I was about 18, I began to smoke just about everyday and I would do so before running. Four months after smoking daily I switched to vaporizing (I had a Pax 2), and I basically still did it daily but instead of smoking I would vape.So yeah I just about experimented with every form of intake of this incredible plant.

Fast forward a year after my daily use of smoking/vaping (I had just turned 19) and I got very sick with what I thought at the time was either food poisoning or the stomach virus. This first episode lasted about 2 days with intense vomiting and then 3 more days before I felt 100% again.

Then, a exactly month after my first episode, I wake up in the middle of the night around 3 or 4 am and I have intense stomach cramps and shortly after waking up I start puking for about an hour straight. Surprisingly though, i could go back to sleep around 5am and when i woke up 6 hours later, I felt completely fine. So this incident to me just maybe seemed like a weird anomaly and I kinda just swept it under the rug.

Ok, now here's the really bad part... a month after my second bout, I get sick on 8/13/16 which was a Sunday, around 7pm. I am vomiting for about an hour and then I felt better by around 9pm. The next day, I wake up and feel completely fine... only to experience the exact same thing at the same time later in the day. Then this same thing repeats the next day and the next day, which at this point is Wednesday. Finally, I tell my mom whats going on (she's a doctor), and she seems very perplexed. I would smoke a bowl to calm my symptoms after the vomiting ceased for a little each day and I felt like the weed helped significantly in the short term for helping my symptoms, and so thats why when my mother told me that it could be the weed causing I absolutely looked at her like she was a fool. Little did I know she just about saved my life.

So she forwards me a couple links discussing CHS, and I just wanted the symptoms to stop so bad that I fed into what she was saying and quit smoking that Wednesday 8/16/16.

This is where it gets really bad. Im not sure if part of what I experienced from that Wednesday on was just from my withdrawal or if it was just completely the hyperemesis syndrome's inevitable course, but from Thursday until Monday (8/17/16 to 8/21/16) I was in the worst pain of my life by far. It stopped being just an hour at the same time like it was for the first three days, and I started to literally throw up about 3 times every 5 hours with it waking me up at all hours of the night and keeping me up at night. I don't even know which was worse during these last days, the mornings or the nights but all I know is they all felt incredibly painful. I went from being a healthy and fit girl weighing 132 pounds to weighing 119.... all in one week. Thankfully, the cessation of my usage proved successful and as I write this on Sept 1, I am sitting in my college dorm symptom free and back to the girl I was before CHS claimed me as its victim.=D

I did go to the hospital on the second Sunday that I was experiencing symptoms, and of course they diagnosed me with CHS and gave me phenergan and Zofran, both of which were useless honestly. But one thing that did actually help a lot was Ativan. Ativan is a short-term anxiety medication, and because this illness is literally in the brain and not the stomach I think it is a lot more useful than any medication that is typically used for vomiting.

Another thing to note about my illness, the hot showers did NOT help at all. I'm not sure if it was because I just felt so dehydrated after them or if it was the intense heat that typically makes me feel nauseous but they absolutely did not help me. And I saw someone post that you have to be smoking for 7+ years to get CHS and I just wanna say thats absolutely false as I only had been using the drug for 3 and my daily use was only for 2 years.

I am a lucky one. I had a great support network. My mom's expert opinion, and I got healthy in time to go back to Harvard and continue my studies. I really am so thankful for this thread (with the exception of a few idiotic posts trying to falsify this syndrome), and I really want anyone going through this to reach out to me. Seriously.

Weed will always be my favorite drug and I will continue to spread the word of this magnificent plant, but I think especially with the legalization conversation on the table, we need to just be real with ourselves and concede that just like anything that has mind-altering effects on the brain, moderation is key. Obviously 99% of chronic tokers will never even experience a day of this syndrome, but spreading awareness doesn't hurt. Thanks for reading my story.

TL;DR - 5'3" 132 lbs girl smokes weed daily for two years. has three episodes exactly one month apart, quits weed and gets better about 7 days later. Hot showers, phernergen, and Zofran didn't help, but ATIVAN HELPED.
 
Quart47 Your problems sound exactly like I have experienced (I have posted my problems earlier on this post). Ativan, Zofran and Phenergen do help. Zofran works. Whenever I have had to go to the ER they pump me up with zofran and it stops the vomiting. I have never had a script for zofran as a preventative treatment until recently. At first I had only 4 mg pills. I would take them after starting vomiting but they wouldn't affect the vomiting. Recently I got a script for 8 mg tabs. When I take the 8 mg at the first feeling of impending attack and that stops it immediately before it worsens. In worst case I take an extra 4 mg. This has worked excellent. I have not had a full blown attack in months.

I have found that abstaining from weed for even a week while I could detect the minor symptoms that tell me a full blown attack is coming cannot change the course of the attack. It still happens.
 
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wow I didnt realize something like this exists, ive been a daily smoker over 4 years (about 1-2 grams a day once a day at night), know alot of people who smoke daily a lot more throughout the day never heard of them having this but damn 100 joints I seen on the first page is crazy. The only negative effect ive had from it is some stomach aches and diarrhea in the morning, but it varies day from day and I think it has to do with me getting the munchies and eating a shitload of food then going straight to bed. My biggest meal is at night after I smoke so I think even if i didnt smoke devouring a bunch of junk food then going to bed wont be any good any way u do it lol
 
I am back to this thread after nearly 5 years. To cut to it, I was diagnosed with G.E.R.D. at that time. I had posted in here after spending a few days in and out of hospital with cyclical vomiting, hot showers, the symptoms you all know.
I was told at that time by a seemingly well read doctor that even though many doctors said I had CHS that he, in is professional opinion did not believe I have CHS or that the illness actually exists. He told me to stop smoking for a few days and then go back to it.

I did.

Last Monday I awoke and vomited, had diarhea and proceeded to do both of those while in and out of hot showers for NINE days. I had blood cultures sent to a hemotologist, I had to be given emergency IV twice in these nine days.
Three days ago the vomiting stopped. I had no diagnoses other than the fact that I do smoke a lot of pot, and this has happened before.

Now, the first time (5 years ago) I was released from hospital, I stopped smoking for three days then went back to it without a single fucking issue until last week. I just shared a bag of vapour with my wife and of course feel fine.

Bluelight, fellow sufferers, am I being mislead? Are these doctors missing something? Do some CHS sufferers actually only have fits every half decade? Do I just have GERD?

(a little about me: im a vegetarian but I still probably could eat healthier, I do not drink or use other drugs. I consume caffeine daily. I take a fair amount of TUMS due to 'heartburn' I belch a lot (really, more than is acceptable) and for the last 20 of my 28 years alive, occasionally I will eat dinner at a regular time (could be any food) and awake in the morning feeling terribly nauseated, then vomit totally undigested last nights dinner, then feel fine... Probably once or twice a year.)

Any insight would be great, thanks everyone and I wish everyone that suffers with this a good, warm, bountiful sleep. <3
 
Dam guys idk if anyone's gonna read this or not but that CHS shit happened to me TWICE at first I thought I jus got food poisoning or something and I threw up for about 2 days straight without keeping anything down so I ended up going to the ER all dehydrated. They gave me 3 IVs in 6 hrs quick to replenish my levels and I was on my way home that night. I thought fuck what happened so I stopped smoking weed for a week thinking I jus needed to chill for a min. Shortly after I smoked again and felt good for about 4-5 months but then the sickness came back harder and the only thing that did work was really hot showers. I was talking about 4-5 showers a day but only about 10 mins each jus to calm the nausea. So to all you people thinking that you may have this I suggest you stop because it's no fun going though all this BS jus to smoke a bit wit the homies and get super sick for a week. Don't get me wrong I still wanna get high af rn but I can't because I know how I will get. This shit is real and will have any strong healthy man on his knees in the worst stomach pain ever. So please please guys take care of yourselves and don't fuck around if you have already felt this your body telling you it's done with weed. Lemme know if someone needs more questions answered I can tell you all about it cuz I went through it and back .
 
I am back to this thread after nearly 5 years.

That is all part of CHS. I am a regular user. I have had one month in between episodes and up to a year in between. I am a believer that it is cannabis but I know there must be another component that triggers the vomiting. As a regular user I find it hard to believe that the level of THC in my system varies at all after 2 or 3 weeks of continuous use. If there is a certain level I must reach I know I would reach it after a month or so. There has to be something else involved that triggers the episode. I wish I knew what it was.
 
I had only been smoking cannabis heavily for a month or so before I got symptoms of throwing up very early in the morning until maybe 3-4 pm which lasted about a week. After a week the symptoms would disappear and two to three weeks later symptoms would come back the same way. The only thing that seemed to help were hot showers. I went to the ER twice and Urgent care multiple times. I don't feel symptoms after Id smoke its after a build up in my system ( I assume). When i heard about this syndrome I was confused because I haven't smoked for that long and most people who have this have been smoking for years. I then cut back my weed usage to only once at night when I didn't have symptoms, and I found that I didn't wake up nauseas anymore. I went for a check up with my doctor and he came to the conclusion that I have CHS, I then stopped smoking. I haven't had symptoms in a couple weeks and I stopped smoking weed about three weeks ago. I was hoping to find out if I could smoke again in moderation after taking a break for a month or so, maybe like once or twice a week? Im looking for someone who has tried this and if the symptoms have come back?
 
I was just diagnosed and I need to know has ANYONE found a way to continue to smoke safely. Like would one hit on weekends be okay. There's gonna be some way. How long does it take for another attack to come I would really appreciate a response, thanks
Have you found answers to your questions? I wanna smoke again but moderately
 
I have been diagnosed with cyclical Vomiting Syndrome however I'm not convinced it isnt cannabinoid hyperemesis. I understand quitting cannabis is supposed to help but the second I wake up I'm Vomiting and nothing stops it but cannabis. I have ondansetron and take it often however I usually throw it up before it works and even if I keep it down it doesn't work the greatest. I have a very demanding job so i am scared I will end up back in hospital and missing weeks of work if I have nothing other than cannabis to make it stop while I come off it. Literally my life is hell I've been living with this illness for over ten years and I have been to the hospital over 30 times. I have tried quitting before and it was weeks of non stop vomitting and I basically starved from throwing anything and everything up. I feel like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place and I dont even know if I have the condition so I could be putting myself threw worse hell quitting if I don't have it and have cyclical Vomiting Syndrome instead. I have tried hot baths and showers and I just end up puking while I'm in there. No relief. Does anyone have any further suggestions or can describe what quitting was like for them?
 
30+ years smoking daily. 10 years ago I started having the typical episodes described in this forum. Over the years some of the ER doctors have told me that "It's the weed" and I refused to believe it. Today, I have finally come to terms with the fact that has been my chronic use over many years that is causing my symptoms. I really enjoy smoking and vaping but if it's between quitting or getting violently ill for days, sometimes weeks, I'm gonna quit.
 
I saw on one of the first pages of this thread that someone was eating yogurt every day to keep the sickness away. Well, I've been eating yogurt daily ever since I read that, and it has helped immensely. Usually in the mornings I still feel nauseous, but it is nowhere near the pain and agony that this was putting me through. I make sure to eat a yogurt before bed, then drink a nesquik with miralax in it (that's for my methadone, unrelated), and both of those together seem to prevent me from having those 4-5 hour insane nausea and sweating episodes. It only occasionally gets bad enough where I have to lay down in a hot shower, whereas before it would happen 3-4 times a week.

So I don't know what's in yogurt, but whatever it is, it seems to be working for me.
 
Zofran is the real deal - but real deal expensive, too. If that doesn't stop you from vomitting, I don't know what will. I always had a ton of hand, gave them away once i quit oppies.
I have chs, this shit sucks so bad, I live in the Atlanta area, I traveled to Carlsbad and while I was ther got a medical marijuana perscript,and went bananas for about 6weeks straight and when I returned to Atlanta area this shit hit me, need hot bath need to stop puking, absolutely the worst pain ever, that was first of nov 16. Didn't know what happened chalked it up as food poisoning but damnit if not last week same shit again and doc said it was the weed , I smoke to much , he'll I smoke 14 grams a week or a lil more of some real good Indy!! I told doc he was crazy as hell!! Went home and looked it up and we'll ladies and gentlemen !! Ugh ????
 
It started for me in 2012 and it wasn't marijuana , it was synthetic aka spice . Didn't want to fail drug test for work so started smoking incense and I really liked it , it was amazing how I would get so damn high, now mind you I've been smoking pot for 31 years and never ever had no issues but I started smoking spice pretty heavy, about 30 grams a week and I got sick at work, started puking and getting the sweats, I left and went home thinking I overheated at work and was dehydrated, but all I did when I got home was get in bath tub in the hottest water I could stand and lay there for hours refill tub with hot water till finally the misery was overbearing, now I'm a alpha who never goes to hospital and this will bring u to ur knees!i describe it as I would rather be shot with a 9mm than go thru this,zophran doesn't work at all, I need phinigrin and saline bags and hot ass blankets, only then does the feeling subside enough to rest, so 2013 happened again !! I felt at that point that spice is killing me like all the others, couldn't quit it was hell but after third episode @end of 13 I quit it period and never messed with it again and never had these symptoms again!!so I legally got a mar iguana card while I was in Cali in sept 2015 and well went apeshit at the bud tenders , I have a good job and a good life so I'm able to enjoy all of it in abundance , so after several months I returned back to Atlanta , after returning I slowed down a lot and about a week of being home I had these same symptoms as I had back when smoking insense, cyclical vomiting sweats chills and hot baths, went to er and they said food poising, that shit had me there two days 15 bags Saleen solution , morphine for stomach cramps, I didn't put these incidents together yet until last week when this shit happened again, this time the doc said I smoke to much weed and that's what wrong, well I was an ass to him and still sick as I called him a lier! Well I got home and looked up vomiting and hot baths and it linked me to CHS and as I read I just can't fkn believe it!! I need help, fam this is some scary shit and I don't wanna be sick no mo!! Somebody anybody!!! Talk to me
 
I have had cyclical vomiting episodes for the last 8 years and I am a frequent cannabis user. I usually feel an episode coming on by a burning sensation in my solar plexus regions and an extreme increase in mucus production in my sinuses and my lungs. A few years back I found out by accident that I could suppress or even abort an episode by taking a strong dose of a common NSAID such as ibuprofen or naproxen. Where usually, I only had 10-14 days in between my 24 hour vomiting bouts, I can now go over a month of symptom-free living. It's no cure but certainly a relief to cut in half the periodicity of this ordeal. Carefully honing the dosing over the years, I have come to learn that I get the best results by taking small dosages (200mg) as a preventative every couple of days. I have discussed this with my gastroenterologist and he said that the benefits in this case far outway the damages that more vomiting could do to my esophagus. Obviously, too many NSAIDs will damage your stomach lining and eventually can cause an ulcer. But he was confident saying that 200mg every couple of days does not worry him. In any case, I have been absolutely fine with these low dosages for a couple of years now and very much enjoy the quality of life that it returned to me. What I really want to know about if anyone else had success with using Ibuprofen or other NSAIDs in aborting or preventing an episode.
 
Things That Help CHS Symptoms

I have tried many things to reduce the frequency and duration of my episodes. So far I have found that Probiotics help both before episode to minimize episodes and to aid in recovery from an episode. I have heard of some people using NSAIDs but they haven't helped me. Hot showers always work but they are extremely short term relief.

Recently I returned to working out with free weights. This has helped me to reduce my weight and I believe it has also kept me from having an episode. I have been smoking for 30 years and didn't have any problems until my job changed and I became more sedentary. I am trying to change that for my overall health but noticed it has added benefits of keeping me from having an episode.
I would like to hear from others what their daily level of activity is and if you perform any formal exercise on a regular schedule.

Does anyone exercise regularly and have CHS symptoms?
 
well if no one is gonna reply ill just go ahead...

ive come to the conclusion that this syndrome is the result of endlessly smoking cones through a dirty ass bong. let me define a dirty ass bong..or at least my dirty ass bong..

i would make a bong..and it would be in use for at least 6-12 months. i never cleaned it, never changed the water, once in a while push the yack through the hose since it was clogging up and i wasnt able to pull through. but yeh basically i was using a filthy ass bong..

now with a bong like that...im sure there are a fuk tonne of germs and bacteria in there...smoking through that is definately not healthy...yet i didnt care...i was just aiming to get high. and i did get high..

anyways i recently met someone who also suffered from CHS...and same thing with him..he also was using the same billy with the same water for at least a yr...never cleaning it or whatnot...he went to ER like 5 times. ever since he has been smoking through apples...and using fresh bongs..and has not been back to the ER

so after my 3 times in the ER..i stopped smoking weed for like 6 months. I started smoking again beginning of this year and i started to use clean fresh bongs....but during the month of june...i started to get lazy and fell back into the habit of using a dirty ass bong....in this instance...i used the same bong/same water for 3 weeks...after that 3 week period i decided to go on a detox and once the detox started...my stomach started to feel shit..it felt like CHS all over again but it wasnt full blown.. anyways it subsided and i never had to go ER.... but fuk me it really does make me think...its that dirty ass fuking bong..

anyway...thoughts on my conclusion???

My daughter cleans her bong religiously and has been to the ER twice now for CHS. And hot bath/shower does not help, and she throws up the Zofran. First episode was about 15 months ago, and I'm posting this message from the ER waiting room during episode 2.
 
Hello, I am new to the thread and I decided to post because I think I have CHS, but the symptoms that I have seem to be different from others. I am 34 and have been smoking for about 20 years. I have bad anxiety and depression (I take meds for these) and smoking helps to get my mind to stop racing during my down time, so that I can relax easier. Anyway, I have been to the ER 4 times now in about 4 years. The first 2 visits were in conjunction with drinking, and the doctors told me that I just shouldn't drink. I didn't do that much anyway so it was easy to stop. I have had 2 more episodes since, where the doctors have told me it was because of weed. I have needed 2 round of IV Zofran to get the vomiting to stop. Hot showers seemed to help too. That all seems to fit the bill. However, there have been 2 episodes where I am not vomiting all the time. I only seem to get sick when I eat. I will feel fine, try to eat, get sick until my stomach is empty, then feel fine again and settle for water. Has anyone else had these issues where it's not non-stop vomiting, but just not being able to eat?
 
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